As a soon-to-be nuclear engineer, I feel the need to defend my field as much as possible from undue criticism about the danger of nuclear power and the aspects surrounding it. I feel like a broken record stating that this defense is the original idea of this blog, but I have to seeing how the last couple posts have been about legitimate nuclear dangers, and this post is no different. Today we're talking about nuclear weapons.
Now, I'm not an idiot, and I don't assume anyone reading this blog is an idiot. Obviously, nuclear weapons are bad. I'm not going to even attempt to defend their existence (outside of their creation leading to the first development of nuclear power). I also don't think I need to explain how dangerous to human life they are; I feel that most people have at least some idea of their local destructive power as well as their lasting radiation. Most importantly, this series of posts is supposed to be on atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides in the air, and so that's what we'll discuss: the morbidly fascinating reach of a nuclear weapon.
Basics of Fallout
A nuclear weapon unleashes a large amount of energy when it detonates. This energy vaporizes most things around it, organic or not, within instants of the detonation. A large amount of this energy also throws nuclear material far and wide, whether it's produced directly by the fission reaction in the bomb, or indirectly by making the dirt and ash thrown into the air radioactive or at least ionized by the energy and radioactive processes of the detonation. This dirt and ash are pushed and pulled by the charged air currents, resulting in the iconic "mushroom cloud" of a nuclear weapon. This cloud of radioactive ash is thrown into the atmosphere where it is free to spread far and wide, and settle wherever the winds and rains take it.
Nuclear Weapons Testing
Fortunately, only two nuclear weapons have ever been used in anger: the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended WWII. Unfortunately, that was followed by the Cold War, and from the period of 1945-1980 at least 500 nuclear weapons tests were performed by various world powers underground, underwater, and--most importantly--in the air. [1]
Any particle in our atmosphere has the ability to travel anywhere in the world. So, given enough sources, the nuclear material from a nuclear weapon can appear anywhere. If you analyzed a cup of soil anywhere in the world, you would almost certainly find cesium-137 in small quantities. But if you somehow had a soil sample preserved from before 1945, you would not find this isotope of cesium in it, as it is a non-naturally occurring isotope; it's created by nuclear processes, either in a reactor or in a bomb.
Now, this isn't always a bad thing. Nuclear materials like cesium are used for some cool applications, like atomic clocks. And cesium has even been used to detect wine fraud [2]. Because if it's in the soil, that means it can make it into our crops, like grapes. But if it's in our crops, that means it's in us! Similar to cesium-137, iodine-131 is a non-natural isotope that exists from the fallout of nuclear weapon tests. The CDC estimates that due to those 500+ tests mentioned earlier, at least 11,000 excess deaths have occurred due to thyroid cancer caused by exposure to ingested iodine-131. [1]
Thankfully, nuclear testing has been banned through the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which has been signed by all nuclear powers except the craziest (looking at you Pakistan and India) [3]. Still though, the world has been changed, potentially permanently, through exposure to non-natural isotopes caused by nuclear weapons, and spread through natural atmospheric dispersion. Thankfully, the average increase in background exposure is tiny, and 11,000 excess deaths in 35 years is not that bad from a cold, utilitarian standpoint. But the global effect of nuclear weapons and their release of nuclear material to the atmosphere, even when not used in anger, is intimidating. Hopefully, in time, humanity can finally phase them out of existence.
[1]National Research Council. Exposure of the American Population to Radioactive Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Tests: A Review of the CDC-NCI Draft Report on a Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population from Nuclear Weapons Tests Conducted by the United States and Other Nations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003. doi:10.17226/10621
Available: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10621/exposure-of-the-american-population-to-radioactive-fallout-from-nuclear-weapons-tests
[2]http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/03/318241738/how-atomic-particles-became-the-smoking-gun-in-wine-fraud-mystery
[3] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL34394.pdf
It's crazy that ~11,000 people died not because they were directly bombed, but because nations were performing tests. That's about 20 people per weapons test. I wonder how many deaths result from other decisions we make, such as using gas cars instead of electric ones.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost frightening! Technology and human progress bring so many amazing things, but there's occasionally things like this in the background that you never even know about! Fortunately we live in a time now where progress is viewed with a little more scrutiny for its lasting effects. Hopefully the mistakes of the past haven't led to anything too permanent!
DeleteNick, electricity is still produced by burning fossil fuels in most nations. Switching to electric cars just means they will have to burn more to produce more power to power your car. So you will pay a larger electric bill instead of gassing up your car every now and then lol.
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but the exhaust from a power plant is more localized and often more remote than the globally-spanning exhaust from cars. That doesn't make a difference on the net effect on the atmosphere, but may change the effect on human lungs.
DeleteThis a very interesting post. I did not know cesium was used to detect wine fraud. I thought that was pretty cool. When referring to nuclear weapons testing, I was surprised that there were at least 11,000 excess deaths. I don't think that is a small number especially when these people were not directly bombed like Nick mentioned in his comment. The damage a nuclear bomb can cause if it were to be used directly somewhere is massive. There are agencies dedicated to detect where nuclear weapons are being tested around the world so that helps keep a peace of mind.
ReplyDeleteYeah I only knew the cesium thing in the first place because of a TV show my mom used to watch, but I looked it up and it was based on truth! It's fascinating and a little weird that things can be dated based on when the first atomic bombs were detonated.
DeleteAnd the deaths are only a "small number" in a statistical way, being spread over decades it's not a very significant effect on the total number of human deaths in those decades. That being said, as nuclear engineers obviously any death from something in the nuclear field is unacceptable.
That is crazy to hear that there were 11,000 deaths just from weapons testing! It makes me wonder since the people that died from he testing most likely lived in the country that was testing correct? So the whole point of having nuclear weapons is supposedly to protect their own country, yet they may be killing some of their own from testing.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't know, the report didn't include a frequency map for different countries. There were far more than enough tests for the nuclear material created to spread globally so its reach certainly isn't limited to the local scale, but yeah I would be surprised if the hundreds of weapons tests in America and Russia led to more health problems in neighboring countries than their own.
DeleteDo you know how the CDC went about acquiring that estimate? 11000 seems like a crazy amount, but is probably pretty reasonable considering how many people are actually existing at this moment.
ReplyDelete