Wormwood Forest, A Natural History of Chernobyl

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This book by Mary Mycio was given to me by a friend who told me I would love it. He was right. It describes the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986 that scattered 20-40 tons of radioactive materials across large areas of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The area is designated the “Zone of Alienation,” and 350,000 people were evacuated and resettled. There are over four million people still living in areas that are contaminated with at least one curie of cesium per square kilometer. The book has detailed information about the levels of contamination of the Zone and the effects on the animals, plants, insects, and fungus. Many sections are difficult to read because of the amount of technical information. However, I’m glad I read it.

The book begins with a quote from Revelation to explain the title. The quote is about a star called Wormwood that falls on the earth “…and the third part of the waters become wormwood; and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.” Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the wormwood plant and Chernobyl is “…the Russianized version…”   The wormwood herb and other plants have thrived since the reactor disaster. There have been effects, such as pine trees that have grown into distorted shapes called “pine bushes.”

It was believed people would never be able to enter many areas contaminated by the disaster, but the author joined the fad of “atomic tourism” by obtaining permits to tour the Zone wearing her camouflage protective clothing and dosimeter. She writes she was shocked to discover the area “…has become Europe’s largest wildlife sanctuary, a flourishing—at times unearthly—wilderness teeming with large animals…” There are large herds of wild boars, healthy populations of wolves and lynx because of the proliferation of their prey, wild horses, and a large variety of birds. The author observes that “…very little is known about the radioactive animals of Chernobyl. What is known is that there are many, many more of them than before the disaster.

The book is undoubtedly controversial in many aspects. For example the author writes although plutonium is a heavy metal and therefore toxic, the myth that it is the “…deadliest substance known to man…” is not accurate. There are other toxins such as arsenic that win that distinction. I expect the effects on people and the various species described in the book will reinforce the opinions of those who oppose nuclear power and the general absence of longer term devastating effects will reinforce the opinions of those who are proponents. One of the author’s tour guides observed that there has not been mutant animals in the zone. He admitted when pressed that “Because with wild animals, mutants die.” Toads and frogs often develop malformations when exposed to toxins, but those are seen more often in the United States than in the Zone.

There were hundreds of children exposed to radioactive iodine who developed thyroid cancer. However, “… perhaps one of the greatest mysteries is the disaster’s impact on people.” “Samosels,” or squatters, originally hid to prevent being evacuated from the Zone. They are dying at the expected ages despite being exposed to twice the maximum dose “allowed.” “Moreover, it seems impossible to tease the health effects of radiation out of the tangle of poverty, alcoholism, smoking, poor diet, and other factors that plague public health in the the places in the former Soviet Union that were unaffected by Chernobyl and that made life expectancy—especially among men—the lowest in Europe.” It is also observed the Samosels inhale “…too little plutonium to influence their dose.”

The “involuntary park” (a term coined by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling) appears to be proving wildlife will thrive after being made radioactive by cesium, iodine, strontium, and plutonium where there is little human activity. Touring the Zone converted the author from “…adamant opponent of nuclear energy to ambivalent support—at least for giving a window of time for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels…” She describes how she believed life would be mutated if it managed to survive the holocaust, but Chernobyl showed her a different view. The ghost towns are a “…tragic testimony to the devastating effects of technology gone awry. But life in the Wormwood Forest was not only persevering, it was flourishing.”  Of course there were and are numerous media ventures to “…exploit Chernobyl’s inherent spookiness.”

There are interesting bits of historical background about the areas impacted by the disaster. For example, it is mentioned that Stalin’s forced collectivization created an artificial famine in the Ukraine that starved ten million people to death in 1932-1933. There are also bits that were fun to read. One example is that the ugly blob that formed after the reactor meltdown cooled is called the “elephant foot.” The authorities wanted to take a sample, so a machine gun was fired at the blob until a chip came off.

One of my favorite passages in the book was a discussion of the author attending a third grade class trip to the New York Hall of Science. There was a terrarium with a sign: “The Impact of Radiation on Rats.” There was nothing in the terrarium except plants, and author decided the radiation had made the rats invisible. Another passage tells a joke about a “babushka” selling apples labeled “Chernobyl.” A passerby notes that no one will buy apples from there and is told people will certainly buy them for their husband, wife, and mother-in-law.

I was interested in the author’s willingness to expose herself to the radiation levels during her tours. She writes she did not wear a cumulative dosimeter. She calculated an estimated exposure of a few hundred millirems, which isn’t much, but she judged her exposure to be “enough.”

Anyone interested in taking a tour of the Zone of Alienation around Chernobyl should read this book. Approval for a visit is obtained by sending a fax to Chernobylinterinform.

I’m going to let the author have the final say with words written in her closing. “If a nuclear disaster really is …in your metaphoric backyard…it seems best not to think about it too much. Not, at least, until many years have passed, and the bountiful evidence of nature’s nearly miraculous resilience and recovery makes the thinking more bearable.”

Animal Farm

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This book by Eric Blair writing under the pseudonym of George Orwell is a departure from the usual non-fiction books reviewed at this web site. The book is even subtitled “A Fairy Story.” However, the story is based on the reality of the brutality of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Orwell had first-hand experience with the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky when he was serving as a foot soldier with Communist forces fighting the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded in the throat by a bullet during combat, but miraculously survived. He then narrowly escaped the Stalinist purge of his Trotsky infantry unit which resulted in execution or imprisonment of those who did not escape. A review of the book “Homage to Catalonia” was posted in May 2011 for those interested in the full story.

Russell Baker wrote a wonderful Preface for Animal Farm, and I intend to use that freely. Stalin had worked diligently to destroy every trace of Trotsky’s contribution to the Russian revolution, and that resulted in millions of people being executed or imprisoned in the Gulag where death was almost certain from the conditions of slave labor. The Stalinists drained the Spanish treasury of gold during this time, but weren’t satisfied with that. They insisted that their allies, including the Trotskyites and Anarchists helping them fight Franco’s Fascists, had to be vilified for supposed support of Franco. That led to the executions and imprisonment of thousands who had fought at the side of the Stalinists. Those actions paved the way for the eventual victory of Franco’s forces. Orwell was quite angry from what he had observed. He was alarmed that “decent people in the Western democracies had succumbed to a dangerously romantic view of the Russian revolution that blinded them to the Soviet reality.” He wrote Animal Farm to warn the world about the immorality of Stalinism. Continue reading →

The Whole Kit and Caboodle

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The web site unm.edu (from the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson) explains that this is an American expression meaning the “whole lot” The definition of the word “boodle” is the same as “a pile of money.” Americans modified the phrase “kit and caboodle,” because it sounds better than “kit and boodle.” Other sites had more complicated descriptions, but I liked this one.

George W. Bush and Social Security

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George W. Bush was vilified for “wanting to privatize Social Security” after he proposed allowing younger workers to voluntarily elect to invest a third of their Social Security taxes in a private IRA type retirement account. However, there has been little political outcry as Barrack Obama champions the continuation of reducing personal Social Security taxes from 6.2% to 4.2%. My rudimentary math indicates that workers are being allowed to keep just under a third of the taxes they were originally paying. A friend points out that Obama’s approach has the advantage that the government isn’t involved in what happens with the money left in the paychecks.  Workers can use the money in any manner they elect, and they might even decide to put it into an IRA. However, it doesn’t do anything to repair or improve Social Security.

A brief history of Social Security was given in a posting titled “Weasels and Social Security,” and preparing that posting has me thinking more about the subject. I’m going to focus this posting on what Mr. Bush really proposed, which was a far cry from “privatizing Social Security.” The information I’ll be using is from a link that provides fact checks on several of his speeches beginning in 2000 on the subject.

Mr. Bush said in his State of the Union address on January 20, 2004,” Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account. We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people.” He continued his advocacy for changes in his acceptance speech at the Republican national convention on September 2, 2004.  “We will always keep the promise of Social Security for our older workers. With the huge Baby Boom generation approaching retirement, many of our children and grandchildren understandably worry whether Social Security will be there when they need it. We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account a nest egg you can call your own, and government can never take away.”

Mr. Bush clearly stated that his ideas were for workers under 50, and that benefits promised to older workers and people who were already retired would not be changed. However, I learned that elderly relatives were sending money to organizations promising to prevent George W. Bush from gutting Social Security with his plans “to privatize it.”

The outcry against what Mr. Bush had proposed was reinstated when the stock market tanked in 2008. There were frequent news reports that the market collapse would have been even more devastating to people if Bush’s proposal to “privatize Social Security” had been accepted. I’ve done some calculations based on a worker who has a static salary of $50,000/yr to estimate the results. That worker has Social Security “contributions” of $6200/yr. Half would be taken from the paycheck and the employer is required to match it. The Bush proposal would have allowed the worker to voluntarily invest one third of the total, or $2066.67/ year in a private account. The worker could also choose to leave all the money in Social Security.

Everyone who has investments in the stock market knows that 2008 was a scary year. The hypothetical young worker who elected to open the private retirement account would have been just as spooked. There would have been about $8300 added to the account if the account had been opened at the beginning of 2005. The value would have dropped to about $5700 at the end of 2008 if it had been invested in a Standard and Poors 500 index fund. The good news is that more shares are purchased per dollar invested when the market drops if you have the guts to keep buying when the market is plummeting. Continuing to invest the $172/month in the same S&P 500 fund would have resulted in your account being worth about $16,400 (including a net dividend of about 2 % after expenses) versus the $14,469 put into the account by the end of 2011.

What would the account have in it at the end of a career? Who knows? The stock market has historically been a good place to invest. However, as all those financial documents say, “past performance is not an indication of future performance.” Mr. Bush’s proposal was that people could invest the money according to their willingness to take risk. People could have put the money into insured CDs, and those could have very high yields if surging inflation happens a few years as many predict.

I’ve provided a fun link to a calculator to allow a reader to play with various investment scenarios. I entered data for a person opening a private account beginning in 2005 that is worth the $16,400 estimated above. I kept salary static at $50,000/yr for the worker who retires at age 62. The account would be worth $58,000 for a person who began the investments at age 40 and $94,000 for someone beginning at age 30 using an annual rate of return of 2%. The account would be worth about $81,000 for a forty year old and $154,000 for a thirty year old worker with a rate of return of 5%.

I see at least two important lessons. It is important for people to begin preparing for retirement as early as possible. That is especially true for young people who can’t depend on Social Security unless our politicians suddenly develop the courage to improve it.   The other lesson is to be successful in politics you must dress up your policies and criticize others with selective language. For example, you can explain your idea to let people keep about a third of their Social Security contributions is a tax break for the middle class while Bush’s idea about allowing people to voluntarily put a third of the money in a private account is “privatizing Social Security.”

Game Over, How You Can Prosper in a Shattered Economy

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This book by Stephen Leeb is the second recent review about the inevitability of an economic collapse. The review of the book posted last week predicts what will happen in the United States compared to what happened in Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. That book provided little guidance other than encouraging stockpiling of food, medicine, and barter goods. There is advice in “Game Over” on how to be best prepared for predicted collapse caused by runaway inflation and shortages of commodities.“Growing numbers of the world’s 6.6 billion people are now actively seeking to equal Americans’ high consumption lifestyle…” There are limits to all commodities, and governments and central banks are not acting as if they have the restraint necessary to keep inflation under control.

Peak and decline of oil supplies and inadequacies of alternative energy production are likely to cause energy production to fail to keep up with the world’s appetite. Replacing carbon fuels with wind is impossible, because there isn’t enough iron oxide to build enough towers and turbines. It is not yet clear whether solar cells produce a net gain in energy. Thin film photovoltaics require cadmium telluride, and there isn’t a wealth of that available in the world. Producing energy by converting corn into ethanol uses more energy than is gained and making fuel out of food when there is a shortage of food is, to be kind, idiotic.   Continue reading →

At Stake

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This idiom is usually used as a financial term to describe an amount of money that was put at risk in a bet or business venture. It is speculated that it originated with the brutal practice of tethering a bear to a stake and turning dogs loose to attack it. Apparently the bets would be placed on whether the dogs or the bear would be killed. The money that was bet was called “at the stake,” or “at stake.”