Category: radiation

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Ten Years 3/11 & Fukushima

On this day, ten years ago (how can it already be that long ago?!?), on 11 March 2011 (“3/11” in American date writing convention) northern Japan was hit by a triple disaster of an unprecedented scale.

First, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever measured, with its epicentre off the Tōhoku coast, shook the main island of Honshu and caused some destruction. This photo taken near Namie shows a

Zwentendorf

On this Day, 42 years ago, on 5 November 1978, nuclear power was stopped by the people here in Austria. At Zwentendorf on the Danube, a nuclear power plant (NPP) had been under construction since 1972, but by 1978 the public mood had changed, partially influenced by the strong anti-NPP movement and demonstrations in Germany. So a referendum was called by the then government, which

Fukushima water

You may have seen some headlines about Fukushima lately, namely about the site of the stricken nuclear power plant (NPP) planning to release a million tonnes of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. This is not actually news, as this move has been in the pipeline for a long while, nor is it all that sensational and threatening. Over a year ago there were already similar headlines (about the possibility of such a move coming), and on my ex-Facebook page I posted the following text in reaction to this article:

Trinity

On this day, 75 years ago, on 16 July 1945, the first atomic bomb explosion was set off in what was called the “Trinity” test in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA. The image above is a historic photo of the mushroom cloud that formed shortly after the detonation. The whole event was meticulously documented, including by means of super-high-speed cameras. Here’s another example; it shows

The Nuclear Landscapes of the Polygon, Kazakhstan

A few years ago I had an extended exchange with a guy in Canada who did an intriguing project about the Polygon/Semipalatinsk Test Site (STS) in Kazakhstan, the place where the Soviet Union carried out the majority of its nuclear tests. The project was part of a master’s thesis in Landscape Architecture, at the University of Toronto, and proposed a number of structural “interventions” at the site, so a kind of commodification for visitors. It was envisioned that