- #1
girts
- 185
- 22
Hi, this has been probably asked a few times here but let me do it again,Since I'm planning to go to Chernobyl NPP for a "hands on" dosimetry learning experience and also for some adventure, I was wondering how safe or should I rather say necessary it would be to go inside the plant itself? Ofcourse I don't mean the sealed off 4th reactor but into the remaining plant and in any of the other reactors that were shut down in a preplanned way.
As far as I talked with one retired engineer , with him we came to the conclusion that one should only be careful to avoid any dust that might contain alpha emitters from inhaling otherwise for a short while say a day or two the gamma background wouldn't do any harm even at the levels present both in the zone and the plant itself.
So because the plant is in a slow decommissioning process I guess we would be wise to wear respirators inside as the dismantling of stuff probably creates some dust that might not be good to breathe in correct?
As for the zone I assume respirators are not needed anymore in general because over the past 31 years rain and natural processes have probably buried most of the contaminated dust from the reactor inside the soil ?
Since Chernobyl (both the destroyed reactors and also the working ones) have ended active energy production for quite some years now I assume that most of the powerful short lived isotopes have already decayed to a negligible level and apart from inhaling dust the radioactivity coming from outside is mostly long lived isotope emitted gamma radiation , like that from CS137 (even though first half life is already over )
What about neutron radiation from decay, I sure don't know all the radioactive isotopes that still emit neutron radiation after a given amount of time but in general?
Oh just by the way, I realize that this question is very hard to answer due to the many variables involved but is there an approximate level of absorbed dose per given amount of time which a human can feel in terms of being tired or feeling a little weak or any other effects (excluding the placebo scare or other self induced feelings) , or do these effects only happen when life threatening levels of ionizing radiation are absorbed like in the case of the first responders of the 1986 accident?
As far as I talked with one retired engineer , with him we came to the conclusion that one should only be careful to avoid any dust that might contain alpha emitters from inhaling otherwise for a short while say a day or two the gamma background wouldn't do any harm even at the levels present both in the zone and the plant itself.
So because the plant is in a slow decommissioning process I guess we would be wise to wear respirators inside as the dismantling of stuff probably creates some dust that might not be good to breathe in correct?
As for the zone I assume respirators are not needed anymore in general because over the past 31 years rain and natural processes have probably buried most of the contaminated dust from the reactor inside the soil ?
Since Chernobyl (both the destroyed reactors and also the working ones) have ended active energy production for quite some years now I assume that most of the powerful short lived isotopes have already decayed to a negligible level and apart from inhaling dust the radioactivity coming from outside is mostly long lived isotope emitted gamma radiation , like that from CS137 (even though first half life is already over )
What about neutron radiation from decay, I sure don't know all the radioactive isotopes that still emit neutron radiation after a given amount of time but in general?
Oh just by the way, I realize that this question is very hard to answer due to the many variables involved but is there an approximate level of absorbed dose per given amount of time which a human can feel in terms of being tired or feeling a little weak or any other effects (excluding the placebo scare or other self induced feelings) , or do these effects only happen when life threatening levels of ionizing radiation are absorbed like in the case of the first responders of the 1986 accident?