European nuclear risk

what a warm welcome to today's talk Wednesday the 31st of May now I was a bit reluctant to cover this topic we did look at it briefly last year but I'm really quite concerned with the way things are going in Ukraine about the risk of a really major nuclear incident in one of the atomic plants in Ukraine now this won't be a nuclear explosion we're not talking about nuclear bombs but we're talking about Conventional Weapons damaging an existing nuclear facility and the effects of this could be absolutely huge let's just listen briefly to the head of the international atomic energy commission we are fortunate that a nuclear accident has not yet happened as I said at the iaea Board of Governors last March we are rolling a dice and if this continues then once they our luck will run out so we must all do everything in our power to minimize the chance that it does as the council knows since returning from my first of two missions to the saporiza nuclear power plant last September I have been urging all parties to protect the nuclear Safety and Security of the plant this has involved numerous meetings intensive consultations and exchanges including at the highest levels in Ukraine and the Russian Federation so I think we can see there that there is a real real risk of this becoming a um a pretty tragic reality let's look at some of the details here now the main one we're concerned about is the zapparicha atomic plant that was the video there and that we just heard Rafael gossy there who's the head of the international atomic energy commission all the links are there quite a few of these come from Sky News which is actually making a very good job of covering this uh dinipo River Russian occupied Ukraine now this is an area the Russians have occupied since I think it was February 2022 and the point is the ukrainians are about to counter-offensive the ukrainians have got the most modern um NATO Weaponry so they're going to go through the Russian forces pretty easily there's going to be tremendous loss of life but the point is when that power station is surrounded um are the Russians simply going to give it up and walk out and say fair cop mate all right you know and it of course there won't be the Russians blowing it up the Russians could blow it up and blame the ukrainians and it's going to be all this he said she said sort of thing it's a real risky situation that I can see at the moment uh now this is one of the workers who talked to uh Sky News um talked about this potentially devastating much of Europe obviously this isn't their real names um Europe Russia Mediterranean um just depends which way the wind's blowing I mean one of the things that's a bit reassuring here is that um this is going to affect Ukraine and Russia because it's more or less On the Border it's in eastern Ukraine essentially western part of uh western border of Russia but you know the levels of incompetence here can be so high that things could easily so easily go wrong as uh as Raphael Grossi said there and uh later on I'll be telling you about the implications of this for for you personally as well level of radioactive pollution and most importantly um the area of contamination could be this is according to the staff at the plant thousands of square kilometers London sea much much worse than Fukushima and uh Chernobyl and they were bad enough of course released a lot of radiation into the sea which is particularly unfortunate uh now it was captured by the Russians that Sky News actually said this was in March 2022 I'm pretty sure it was in February but never mind but since then it's had shells and Rockets hitting it um the Russians have part targeted power lines now you expect this in a war that they want to cut off the enemies supply of electricity but the point is the plant needs the supply of electricity to circulate the cooling fluids and if that if that's cut off then that can be a problem the cores can heat up and uh it's a it's a it's a very dangerous situation it's been seven power Cuts since March 2022 backup generators are there but generally the workforces of poor quality because most of them don't want to work there anymore eleven thousand staff down to 3 500 staff now um most of the reactors are currently shut down we believe I think there's six of them all together these are reactors here these are the individual reactors that's them from the air so the pretty big reactor buildings um yeah there's six six of them we think five of them are shut down but one of them still running but uh how safe they are when they're shut down I really don't know we'll look at that in a minute that's the Chernobyl the terrible consequences of the nuclear um disaster at Chernobyl um so counter-offensive is the big risk it's happening any day now and the level of military activity in the plant has increased and the sky news reports quite clear that the Russians are moving a lot of military equipment into the plan because the ukrainians weren't shallowed so it's becoming a military hotbed in a nuclear power plant in Europe um it really is an issue Ukrainian forces won't shell it um so everyone has their own story and I think the most important thing is not to get into their hands because you're enlightened to you would get out still being the same human being you were when you went in in other words we're not getting the information because the workers are simply frightened to talk we don't know how bad it is and I think we can assume it is bad because it was good we would hear positive things about it um International atomic energy commission com uh calling firm D mirror militarization it's not going to happen Chernobyl reactor 4 1986 I remember it so well um 29 000 kilometers was at a range where that's 180 kilobaker miles per square meter it's a range where you have to basically evacuate people um that was 530 000 so-called Liquidators staff had to go and clean up military and other people and they received an average just this is not the people even in the plant this is just the people round about it 120 millisevers of radiation on average global average is 2.4 so you can see they received many years of radiation in the UK it's 2.7 from background radiation mostly that some of that is from nuclear fallout but most of that's just normal background radiation now released from the Chernobyl plant and therefore these are these are the Isotopes that will be released if a nuclear plant was shelled or bombed or missiled in Ukraine or or the power supply was cut off and uh that there was a disaster as a result of the power supply being cut off so in Chernobyl it was uh iodine 131 the radioactive form Half-Life is eight days but of course that means it's radioactive for much longer than that C is in one three seven half life 30 years strontium 90 Half-Life 29 years and plutonium two for one half-life 14 years but that also decays to another radioactive compound element rather um which is radioactive for 430 years half-life uh the fissile uranium itself thankfully there wasn't much of that released from Chernobyl thankfully Half-Life is 703 million years um so you can see we're dealing with things that are going to be radioactive for many decades 100 years and more into the future now um one important thing is is iodine tablets if there is a radiation leak and I really think the iodine tablet should be issued in case they're needed and I'll show you why they need to be issued ahead of time because if they're issued at the time it would be too late so potassium iodide now this is from um WebMD it will only protect the thyroid gland it'll only have it'll only of all these things it'll only protect against the iodine it will not protect against these ones but it will protect against the radioactive iodine it says you'll take your potassium iodide before or right after you're exposed to radioactive iodine you can take it in three to four hours but it won't be as effective this is why I think we need to start giving iodine out now to have it at home especially in Europe arguably in the UK it depends which way the wind's blowing so yeah I think we probably should issue it in in the UK throughout Western Europe United States you should be pretty safe um because if there's a radioactive iodine leak we're not going to get iodine to everyone in three to four hours it needs to be in the home ready and um as soon as the authorities tell us to take it we could then take it take your medication once a day until the risk of radiation exposure no longer exists but the authorities can tell us that on the on the radio obviously we wouldn't take it until we're ordered to do so but to have it available because three to four hours later it won't be as effective this needs to be taken at the time and if there's no nuclear disaster which I so hope there won't be then okay with most you know the iodine tablets in your cupboard and say what you know they don't do any harm um most important pregnant or lactating women newborns children and then young adults older adults at less risk but still there the other people that are risk of people that are low in iodine and a lot of people are low in iodine um iodines are fairly common actually um an underestimated um deficiency in my view so that would be good to have there um 130 milligram pills for adults um children over 68 kilograms 150 pounds much the same 130 milligram pill uh young uh lighter children under under 150 pounds under 68 kilograms 65 milligrams 3 to 12 year olds 65 milligrams of iodine and uh newborns to one month 16.25 and especially in these younger age groups so important they would need to take it straight away if they were exposed to this so what is the harm in having some in the house I really think this is something government should be thinking about it's not something we can do as an individual because you're not allowed to buy iodine in in the UK the the chemists the pharmacists don't sell it strange strange I've been using it all my career to sterilize skin and things like that but um basically can't get it now you've gotta you only can only get it online if you go into the Pharmacists and that's riding I went in a few weeks ago they didn't know what I was talking about you know I couldn't believe it but anyway um the government need to issue is what I'm saying NHS points out adults need 140 micrograms so we can see we've got massive doses here if we're taking 130 milligrams so hundreds of times the normal the normal dose that we would uh would require So Family Protection how can we protect ourselves and our families um I'll just show you that that was the Chernobyl thing there the the after effects of this and the cost of it and this is going to be ongoing for um hundreds of years Chernobyl is going to be after looked after for a thousand years into the future um if Humanity survives and that's just north of uh Kiev Northern Ukraine imagine we had that situation repeated in eastern Ukraine it just doesn't bear thinking about management for a thousand or two years after a shelling of a nuclear power station haven't we made ourselves so vulnerable we've had peace in Europe since 1945 well we haven't because we've had Wars but um we've made ourselves so vulnerable by having all these nuclear power plants and I'm sure any sophisticated power for example or or fill in the gaps yourself could uh missile our nuclear power stations really quite easily and debilitate the entire country in in one sweep it really is bizarre how we've made ourselves so vulnerable to this Family Protection not a lot really this is from the UK government site Sheltering stay indoors um and protect yourself from um well if you're indoors you're not breathing in the air you're not getting the dust there's actually some useful uh this is vaguely useful from the government side radioactive material we can breathe it in uh directly radiation comes out in the rain that was one particular uh problem in the uh in the UK the the radioactive cesium I think it was was going over the Lake District near where I live and it rained and that washed out the radioactive cesium into the grass and of course the sheep eat the grass so um couldn't eat sheep for quite a long time and maybe maybe that ban was lifted earlier than some of us would have liked uh you could argue so Sheltering staying indoors with the Windows Doors closed if there's a problem degree of protection from breathing it in and from dust and technically it's not fall out because a Fallout is from a nuclear explosion but this is the same really it's the stuff that goes up in the air and then falls back down on the ground evacuation has happened around about Chernobyl for some areas stabilidene tablets are recommended by the government and food of course milk particularly so the radiation goes into the radioactive elements go into the the ID and the cesium the strontium uh the plutonium it goes into the soil into the grass into the plants and into the food chains so particularly milk will accumulate it really quite strongly an eating contaminated food over a period of time even though there's a very small dose the dose will accumulate so um it is a concern I really think we should be there should be more public information on this I think iodine should be available in the home and it's worth stocking up with some a few tin foods and things like that dried foods that you can make up in the home with some clean water um because although the chances of this are smallish that they're I mean what is the chance I want to put a percentage on it 10 20 percent but I certainly don't trust um I don't trust the competence of those involved it's as simple as that and I don't trust the intentions of those involved it's as simple as that and this is a risk and I just felt like I should bring it to you um as I say I did it with hesitation because I don't want to cause undue anxiety but it's a health-related matter and what we do on this channel is try and improve health and this is a massive risk to health and could be ongoing for a couple of thousand years which is really quite frightening let's hope uh cool heads prevail but sometimes they don't thank you for watching

Channel: Dr. John Campbell

Views: 507,402

Keywords: physiology, nursing, NCLEX, health, disease, biology, medicine, nurse education, medical education, pathophysiology, campbell, human biology, human body

Id: CQp6AUDRaRo

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023