Citation needed. Multinationals aren't angels, but I'm hard pressed to think of anything they've done that's on the scale of the Chernobyl disaster, the Aral Sea drying up, the Kyshtym disaster, Lake Karachay, etc. Even things like clear-cutting the Amazon are usually done by locals (although bigcos are more than happy to buy the resulting soybeans, beef, etc).
I think you live on another planet. Union Carbide alone killed thousands and thousands of people. Like there are so many industrial disasters caused by corporations that it's patently absurd to act like the USSR did more.
I checked before I posted. The remaining Pu-239 will have only transitioned through 4 halflives leaving ~5% still actively radiating. Pu-242 will have only transitioned through 1/3 of a halflife.
This is enough that excavation or otherwise disturbing the earth would be unwise.
Overall the area will be ~1/1,000th as radioactive in 100k years, and it’s not that dangerous today.
The flip side of that 24,000 year half life is Pu-239 isn’t that hot. 5% of what little Pu-239 is there isn’t that spicy compared to many places people live without significant worry about the natural radiation dose.
There’s just not enough Pu-242 to be a significant concern on its own outside of the reactor building which is unlikely to be left alone.
> what little Pu-239 is there isn’t that spicy compared to many places people live without significant worry about the natural radiation dose.
Walking around most of the 30km exclusion zone 100,000 years from now will be comparable to walking around a granite quary in terms of gamma dose. Which is still elevated compared to most of the planet, but usually not a worry. However, granite does an excellent job of sequestering the radioactive elements whereas I explicitly called out disturbing the earth as a risk due to inhalation and the compounded effect of internalized isotopes which is much greater at the Chernobyl site than elsewhere. Hence the need for a $2.1 Billion confinement structure which is only designed to last 100 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement
No amount of inhaled Pu-239 is going to be fun for anyone.
It only needs a 100 year lifespan because part of the new safe confinement project is to “facilitate the disassembly and decommissioning of the reactor.” That’s unrealistic for the entire zone, but I think we can safety assume people in 100k years aren’t going to randomly stumble upon the elephants foot.
> death and mutation
Even fairly recent studies are showing the legacy of past exposure in animal populations who lived through higher than current radiation levels and often carry that legacy through genetic damage across generations. Thus they overstate the exposure risk today.
Obviously even 1/1,000th of the current risk isn’t zero but it’s swamped by other considerations.
> No amount of inhaled Pu-239 is going to be fun for anyone.
There’s no benefit, but start talking individual atoms and you’ll have trouble detecting it.
I can’t find a paper on the topic but for a rough estimate, ~5-30% of the fuel was released, but not all of that remained local and some was removed etc. If something like 1/3 the fuel was nuclear waste and 0.8% of that was Pu-239 and 5% of that remains in 10k years. We’re talking well under 1kg Pu-239 across 2600 km^2. So your digger in 100k years is only inhaling and coughing up incredibly dilute material, we’re talking 10^-15 to 10^-20 kg Pu-239 in someone’s lungs depending on assumptions but even the high end is going to be swamped by normal background radiation.
> I think we can safety assume people in 100k years aren’t going to randomly stumble upon the elephants foot.
I think that's a big assumption. Historically, humans are interested in exploring abandoned and forbidden sites and go out of their way to do so.
> part of the new safe confinement project is to “facilitate the disassembly and decommissioning of the reactor.”
I've seen zero concrete plans or funding for this. And seeing as how the site is currently in the middle of a war zone, and has been hit by explosive drones[1], I think it's safe to say that things aren't going to plan.
> Historically, humans are interested in exploring abandoned and forbidden sites and go out of their way to do so.
The waste is still going to be around in some form, just not in a huge lump someone can walk up to.
> zero concrete plans or funding
3,000 people where working on site, so they had funding for the process and while slow quite a bit of visible progress had occurred. “The cranes have so far removed the roof of the reactor's engine room.” https://www.rferl.org/a/inside-chernobyl-nuclear-power-plant... The final storage of all of Ukraine’s high level nuclear waste is unclear, but that’s a common issue in the industry. Getting this high level waste safely offsite and in dry cask storage is a reasonable goal at this point.
