There is a lake so radioactive you will die if you just LOOK into it for a few hours - and it's 130km from Ireland. Below the surface lies material so unstable it will explode if the air gets at it. It is so toxic it pollutes the wind that blows over it…so lethal that seagulls must be shot if they land on it to prevent them becoming radiation carriers. Welcome to Sellafield's "Dirty Thirty" - the most contaminated place on earth and not far from Ireland's east coast…A source said: "This is the cesspool of the world. No one knows for sure what is in there."
Full article at
http://millennium-ark.net/NEWS/05_World/051112.most.radioactive.html
Sounds like a mess, but the author spared no hyperbole to convey the message. I'm just a casual and occasional observer of nuclear-related information, but this one smells fishy.
"There is a lake so radioactive you will die if you just LOOK into it for a few hours".
Looking into it would not expose someone to radiation, though standing in close proximity would--if the water itself had become radioactive, but 3' of water is usually sufficient to reduce 99% of radioactive emmisions--some use water as an effective alternative to other radioactive sheilding material.
"Below the surface lies material so unstable it will explode if the air gets at it."
Again, chemicals like poatassium explode when air comes in contact with them, spent fuel rods are just that--"spent". So while they may be putting off heat, and the water is effectively keeping them cooled down, I don't expect a nuclear explosion would result. In fact, a melt-down is more of an uncontrolled heating-up process--the risk of actual explosion during a melt-down is more from the accumulation of hydrogen being sparked in the sealed water tanks--not a nuclear explosion.
"It is so toxic it pollutes the wind that blows over it…so lethal that seagulls must be shot if they land on it to prevent them becoming radiation carriers."
As sad as the circumstances may be, I had to laugh at this one. The author makes it seem like radiation poisoning is a contageous virus so you must kill these birds if they become "carriers". And as far as wind becoming toxic, it may pick up toxic particles, but air iself does not become radioactive.
When the author speaks of it as the "most" contaminated place on earth, or uses the word lake when it is only the size of three olympic swimming pools, I again question credibility. Oh, and 1.3 metric tonnes of spent rods seems like a lot, but picture that amount of material as fitting in the trunk of a small car. Uranium / Plutonium materials are so dense that very little weighs a whole lot.
I appreciate you posting this article, but beware of the author's agenda here. I can only take it with a grain of salt due to credibility issues.
Thanks, Andru, for taking the time to break apart and analyze the article I posted. You seem to know far more about nuclear-related information than I do, so I appreciated reading the excellent points you mentioned above.