A Pale Grass Blue Butterfly’s wings flit through the forest outside Pripyat, Ukraine. With its pulsating wings, there is something eerie in the air. Except for the sound, the butterfly doesn’t sense the peculiar aura as he skips across the pallid landscape. Not the presence of sound, but the lack of sound; not tranquil, but chilling. Life here seems to be covered by an impenetrable film of gray; melancholy extending the entire thirty-kilometer radius around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The struggling butterfly aligns itself with the dismal scenery to create an abhorrent disparity. The butterfly also provides a startling metaphor. Just as the wings beat to the theoretical concepts of the butterfly effect, so do the repercussions of the Chernobyl disaster. With every pulse comes a new tragedy, extending perpetually into the future for “at least 20,000 years” (Harrell 1). Today, nuclear power is considered a potential alternative to fossil fuels. Nuclear power generation should cease immediately because previous incidents have already caused irreparable damage, catastrophes are inevitable, and nuclear power is not a viable long-term source of energy.
Previous nuclear accidents have already caused irreparable damage of which the data has been distorted. The Chernobyl meltdown created an infinite number of complications as previously illustrated by the wings of our Pale Blue Grass Butterfly. Impact analysis varies greatly from organization to organization, and
Not many people fully know what happened at Chernobyl, or understand the effect it has had on today’s nuclear science. Chernobyl has been named as the largest man-made disaster ever recorded. Chernobyl is the most influential and important event during the 1980’s because it has completely changed how the world views anything nuclear by changing experimentation and usage of nuclear materials and power as a whole. It was extremely influential because it caused thousands of people to move out of their homes, while damaging nearby cities and countries and covering the surrounding area in radioactive smog, and is still a threat to surrounding cities and countries today. It also has caused the nearby area to be thriving with wildlife.
The El Segundo Blue Butterfly is an endangered specie, and it’s been on the endangered specie list since June 1, 1976. They live in the El Segundo Dunes of Los Angeles County in California. They rely on dune buckwheat for their entire life cycle. There are two scientists who have been working on bringing back the butterfly since 2007. The names of the scientists are Travis Longcore and Ann Dalkey there is also a group called “the Xerxes society”. They helped by convincing the “Standard Oil Company” to manage a small portion of the butterflies habitat.
“We may not be suited to this planet, our mind not attuned enough to understand where we live, “ (Pineda, 2012, p. 57). Cecile Pineda, who is the award-winning author of Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step, puts into question the human suitability of this planet. Having been published a year after the accident at Fukushima, Pineda pieces together the nuclear incidents that occurred at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Through her comparisons and records of the horrifying aftermath of the incidences, Pineda seeks to expose her readers to the reality of the environmental situation and make them think about the affects nuclear energy has on our planet. Pineda’s work seeks to convey the dangers of nuclear energy through her style of writing, language
With newer technologies, things that people thought only nature could control are now being manipulated by humans. Louv explains how researchers “are experimenting with a genetic technology through which they can choose the colors that appear on butterfly wings” (Louv 2-4). This example of how people can manipulate nature is included in Louv’s essay because it opens people’s eyes to the fact that natural phenomena will not remain solely natural for long. The things that were once untouched by humans are becoming contaminated. Additionally, this example specifically states how people are able to choose how they want nature to look. A butterfly is
When people hear the term “nuclear energy”, the first thing that jumps to their minds is most often “danger”. Who could blame the world for their intense fears of nuclear power, especially after reading the reports from Dr. Ira Helfand and the American writer, David Biello? Dr. Helfand’s article, “Radiation’s Risk to Public Health”, attacks the nuclear energy with facts and concerns like those of the National Research Council BEIR VI report. Whereas Dr. Helfand supports his claims with scientific evidence, David Biello only had a script from a discussion that followed the Fukushima crisis. David Biello’s article, “How Safe Are U.S. Nuclear Reactors? Lessons from Fukushima”, he uncovers secret concerns and future plans about the incredibly disastrous incident. Although David Biello used credible sources and attempted to appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos, Dr. Ira Helfand contains an authority in his education and knows a great deal more about nuclear power and definitely has the best representation of ethos, logos, and pathos.
Based on the decline of the Karner blue across its historic range, it was listed as endangered in 1992. Since listing, two populations have been extirpated and are being reintroduced to Concord, New Hampshire, and West Gary, Indiana. A third population is being reintroduced to Ohio. The threat of the Karner blue butterfly extinction exists primarily from the loss of critical habitat caused by landscape fragmentation, natural succession and concomitant suppression of the natural disturbance regime (Smallidge 1996; Clough 1992).
Early in the morning of April 27, 1986, the world experienced its largest nuclear disaster ever (Gould 40). While violating safety protocol during a test, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant was placed in a severely unstable state, and in a matter of seconds the reactor output shot up to 120 times the rated output (Flavin 8). The resulting steam explosion tossed aside the reactor’s 1,000 ton concrete covering and released radioactive particles up to one and a half miles into the sky (Gould 38). The explosion and resulting fires caused 31 immediate deaths and over a thousand injuries, including radiation poisoning (Flavin 5). After the
(1)At 1:23 am on April 26th 1986, 2 explosions devastated a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. These explosions unleashed huge amounts of toxic radiation into the atmosphere. This radiation created a toxic plume of radiation that not only devastated Chernobyl but affected almost the whole of Europe. It started with total evacuation of the city, this started within 24 hours of the disaster and immediately an exclusion zone was in place. What the Ukrainian officials didn’t know at the time is just how serious this was. The wind blew the plumes created by this explosion one plume north and one plume west. The plumes were highly toxic and had been contaminated by the nuclear radiation. The radiation going west even reached north wales and many parts of Scotland and the south of Ireland. The radiation going north badly affected Finland, Sweden and parts of Norway. To put that into perspective the disaster released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
* Finally, I will tell you what the effects were and why it’s relevant today.
There have been lots of nuclear accident around the world. One of the accident that had a major impact on the world was the Chernobyl disaster. The disaster took place on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The disaster was caused by a reaction explosion induced by design faults and staff application errors. The accident took place in the course of scheduled tests to check the power supply mode in the event of external sources loss. Even after 10 days, explosions and ejections of radioactive substances continued. The release of radiation and radioactive substance polluted the places within 30 km of Chernobyl, and those areas have been closed for a long period of
That accident was at urban centre in 1986. consistent with the report two-handed down in 2000 by the global organisation X c. Committee on the consequences of Atomic Radiation, twenty eight employees died within the initial 3 months when the incident, nineteen died between 1987 and 2004 of varied causes not essentially related to radiation
Nature is the most beautiful as well as the most dangerous thing. It offers a lot of threats as well as wonders. The human is the humble creature who might only see the nature by its dark side. We are living the inside world, and nature is outside. We think we are independent as we isolate ourselves. Adam Zagajewski’s “Moths” is a wonderful yet imagistic poem which captures a great sense of how human observed and felt about nature: startle and tear away. It offers the readers a snapshot view of a moment, an experience when our little worlds of safety met the unknown world outside. If one does not prepare to deal with these things, he/ she will withdraw even more.
The Chernobyl accident was a disastrous nuclear event that happened on 26th April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The Chernobyl disaster is classified as a level 7 event according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (only two events have been classified this high in the past) and has caused damages that consist of the cost of 500,000 workers and 18 billion rubles, 31 deaths according to the Soviet casualty count (this is still being disputed) and between 4000-27000 affected future deaths due to radiation exposure [G1].
Studies show that the estimated average dose of radiation to the approximated 2 million people in the vicinity of the accident was only about 1 millirem.In order to show how much this dosage is, the average chest x-ray eposes a person to about 6 millirems.Also, the people around the plant are exposed to about 100 millirems to begin with due to the natural environment they live in.[9]
In the modern society, energy is considered one of our most valuable resources. Humanity has managed to tap several sources of energy and utilize it for their daily activities. Almost everything in the society is dependent on energy; otherwise, humanity would cease to exist. The sources of energy vary from firewood, solar energy, geothermal energy and nuclear energy. The sources vary depending on the amount of energy that can be harnessed. Nuclear energy is a controversial subject when it comes to energy matters. Theorists argue that the world’s sources of energy are being depleted at such high rates, that the future will not favor humanity. Richard Watson establishes this ethical argument in his work known as Anti-Anthropocentric Ethics: he argues that any ethics should be based on the survival of humanity (Watson 245). Therefore, an inquiry that should be made in line with energy and ethics should consider the question; is modernization worth killing humanity? Nuclear power sources provide such high energy that can power industries and sustain industrial processes for longer times. The problem with the nuclear power energy is the danger it poses to the society and humanity as a whole (Ingram 37). The Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Russia is a good example relative to the effects of nuclear power and the environment. This essay seeks to analyze and evaluate the ethical issues raised by the Chernobyl nuclear plant as source of energy