User:Walshkj/sandbox

Ecological Impacts (Really, Really, Rough Draft)
For the most part, nuclear facilities receive their power from offsite electrical systems. They also have a grid of emergency back-up generators to provide power in the event of an outage. An event that could prevent both offsite power, as well as emergency power... 50% of all facility accidents that lead to a core meltdown begin with a "Station Blackout". Many of these events are brought upon by natural disasters, which are usually wide, and destructive, in scale that are /capable of effecting both systems. Natural occurrences such as lightning, earthquakes, drought, flooding and wildfires pose just as big a risk to nuclear facilities as technical malfunctions. More recently, the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown was a result of complications sustained by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

Cesium, Ruthenum, Plutonium, Americium, Strontium ****

*** Remember to explain why land impact and water impacts are connected: water is responsible for carrying the radioactive material to areas that directly impacts soils and depositions*****

Impact on Land
Isotopes released during a meltdown or related event are typically diapered into the atmosphere and then settle to the surface through natural occurrences and deposition. Isotopes settling in the top soil layer can remain there for many years as a result of the half-life of said particles involved in nuclear events. Due to the long term detrimental affects on agriculture, farming and livestock, it carries further potential to effect human health and safety long after the actual event. After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011, surrounding agricultural areas has been contaminated with more than 100,000 MBq km-2 in cesium concentrations - the national limit of which is 5,000 Bq kg-1. As a result, eastern Fukushima food production saw massive limitations. Due to the topographical nature of Japan, as well as the weather pattern for the prefecture, similar occurrences of cesium deposits as well as other dangerous isotopes residing in top layer of soils all over eastern and northeastern Japan. Luckily, mountain ranges have shielded western Japan. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 caused approximately 125,000 mi2 of land across the Ukraine and Russia to be exposed to radiation. The amount of focused radiation caused severe damage to plant reproduction - resulting in most plants being unable to reproduce for a minimum of three years.

Impact on Water
Tritium and strontium-90 are two of the most predominant chemicals in a working nuclear facility. Maintained properly, the pose little to no harm to the environment. Contrary to some beliefs, the varying amount of nuclear material released during a nuclear disaster, does not dilute when released into water systems - meaning that no matter the mount of material added into a water system, that system will maintain the radioactive levels of the material added no matter the volume of water or quantity of material. Due to the nature of this, bodies of water that are exposed to high amounts of radioactivity, similar to those released during nuclear accidents, will further pollute any body of water and its tributaries. We can see this in two of the most predominant nuclear accidents in the last century; the Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl incidents.

Fukushima Daiichi Incident
After the earthquake, the Fukushima plant released tonnes of nuclear material into the pacific ocean and has continued to do so for the last nine years at a rate of 300 tonnes a day. Unfortnuately, given the current health and safety risks for the location of the leak, it remains unable to be patched. After 5 years of leaking, the leak reached all corners of the pacific ocean from North America to Australia, to Patagonia. Not long after the tsunami and resulting nuclear accident, fish caught at a commercial fishery in Canada started noticing fish that were bleeding from the mouth, eyes, and gills - ultimately destroying many Northern Pacific fish populations including the Northern Herring. Along the same coast, independent scientists have measured a 300% increase in radiation levels, and its increasing every year (500% off of some California beaches)***

In 2019, the Japanese government announced that it was going to dump contaminated water from the Fukushima reactor back into the Pacific Ocean. To keep what cores it had remaining cool, it relied on pumped water from local prefects, leading to an excess of stored contaminated water. Japanese Environmental Minister Yoshiaki Harada reported that the Tokyo electric power company had collected over a million tons of contaminated water, and by 2022 they would be out of spaces to safely store the radioactive water. By doing so, it would only exacerbate both environmental and economic issues surrounding the pacific ocean ***.

Further concerns come to light in thoughts of the frequency of pacific storms, and what potential risk radiological pollution will have on the water cycle. As the water is evaporated and subsiquently precipitated, that radiation has the potential to be carried as well, potentially infected multiple gound sources when pacific storms make landfall in the rainy seasons.

Chernobyl Incident
Evidence can be seen from the 1986 Chernobyl event, which due to its flat topography, weather, and porous soil content, the contamination of groundwater proved to be disastrous. Due to the "insolubility" of radiation in groundwater, the ecological effects of the disaster can be seen in various aspects down the environmental process line. radionuclldes carried by groundwater systems in and around the areas of Chernobyl has resulted in the uptake to plants in the region and up the food chains into animals, and eventually, humans - as one of the largest exposure points of radiation was through agriculture contaminated by radioactive groundwater. During this event, the groundwater transportation of radioactive material carried over borders in to neighboring countries. Belarus, lying to Chernobyl's northern border, was subject to approximately 250,000 hectares of previously usable farmland being held by state officials until deemed safe. As with any introduction of a foreign agent into an ecosystem, radioactive material carried by groundwater proved to be an extreme breach in biological security.

** REMEMBER TO ADD TO MY SOURCES DOCUMENT ON WORD****

This is to be added to the "Nuclear and Radiation Accidents and Incidents" Wikipedia page

Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents