Alpha, Beta, Gamma

A night owl in Chernie

I am a night owl, and it is hard for me to find a partner for night rides. Every time I bring someone here, they ask why are we crushing frogs in Chernie and not drinking beer in some cozy cafe...I always tell them that smoking two packs of cigarettes in a cafe can be more harmful to one's health than riding to Vilcha. They mostly just want to get the hell out of here. Many people think this land is cursed.

I myself don't believe in stories about mutants or the Chernobyl snowman. To me it is just an interesting place.

 
Reading Roentgens with hand-held Geiger counter...

 

On the outskirts of Vilcha, my new generation hand-held Geiger counter "inspector" reads 109 mR/hr. The town is located some 45 km from the reactor and in a direction where the first radioactive clouds drifted. My friend "inspector" measures all types of radiation known to man. Now, it is time to learn a couple of simple things about radiation types.

Radiation that goes through us is called gamma radiation. It is cumulative, it adds up, so we can calculate what damage it does to our bodies and how it effects our health. Gamma rays are almost identical to X-rays. X-rays are human made, while gamma rays occur in nature. It is also called cosmic radiation. Everyone who flies in an aircraft at high altitudes is exposed to 25 mR/hr of cosmic radiation. Gamma is a type of radiation that can cause immediate problems. Gamma is a wave. It is sort of like an invisible bullet that can kill in hours. Alpha and beta on the other hand are particles and work as a time-bomb. With breathing of radioactive dust, they get inside of a human body, lodge there and in a few years explode with the cancer cells. Alpha particles are the heaviest of the three, betas are extremely light and gammas have no mass at all. Alpha radiation generally can not travel more than 4 - 12cm (1 - 3 inches) before they are stopped, so we can play billiards with balls of pure plutonium. The dead cells on our skin will stop beta radiation, so even juggling with plutonium balls will be safe, just don't swallow them by mistake.



Dosage through Vilcha

If we travel through the area where radiation levels do not exceed 100 mR/hr, then in one hour we'll receive the same dosage of gamma radiation as one would receive as a passenger on a plane traveling from Kiev to London on a trip lasting a few hours. I don't fly to London, so I can travel to Vilcha where I'll get the same mild dose.

Unfortunately we cannot count the alpha and beta particles that we inhale, yet they are a major risk factor. In the first year after a disaster it would have been suicidal to ride here in an open vehicle as the radioactive particles stay on the ground. I'd have to kiss my shoes goodbye if I'd walked on this grass. Likewise, I'd contaminate and paralyze my Geiger counter if I dared let it touch the radioactive surface. By now, radioactive particles have gone into the soil and levels have fallen. A good thing about it is that now we can travel through these areas with little health risk, but the bad thing is that now this land breathes with radiation from deep inside and it's become more difficult to make further headway with the decontaminating process.

These days, radiation lives in cucumbers and apples, and having a Geiger counter at the greengrocery market is as useful as to have one here. A major concern is the mushrooms. We eat six times as many mushrooms as do Americans. The radioactive particles in the mushrooms are worse than the Cs137 (even though Cs levels have not decreased in the mushrooms as much as half life of Cs137).

Any way, enough of that scientific stuff...let's continue our journey during daylight.



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