If Sellafield blows, what will you do?

Dr Bolouswki

If Al Queda decide to hit hit sellafield with anything bigger than a Lear jet, it would most likely spell the end of the eastern seaboard of ireland being anything approaching inhabitable for a very long time. The goverments idea to give us an iodine tablet before we head off to work has a fatal flaw, in that it's what the ancient greeks referred to as 'total 6ollox'...

What's your plan if this horrific event actually happens?

Personally, I've got none. I've been thinking emergency codes sorted with my whole family for quick texting (the phone network would collapse pretty quick if the event happened due to over usage) and we are all straight to Rosslare to boat it to France... (airports would most likely be closed)

Hardly fool proof... any one any ideas? Anyone know anything about the likely effects of Sellafield being hit?

Pepe LeFrits

drive to my dads yacht and sail to france.

TomTom

start swimming the atlantic

Tusky

**** furiously....and if that fails...furiously ****

Crucifix

Say "What the fu-", then die.

Creature

Shake my fist in the general direction of the terrorists.

Lump

Be dead before I have time to think twice.... if it happens well such is life or death..... Oh I live twelve miles from sellafield during college months. If I'm in Ireland, I'll actually have time to think about death and I'm sure that'd scare the shít out of me. Fast and pain less.... I'm sure I'd be in the fallout zone that would kill me fairly quickly.


John

solice

ok, go to dublin, knock on berties door and tell him. "you complete ****** wtf were u thinking. u give me iodine tablets. oh yeah thats fan fcuking tastic that is" and then knock him one

Dooom

laugh loudly, sit in a deckchair and smoke a bunch of cigarettes

rymus

...probably just melt or explode or whatever people do when they get a lethal dose of radiation. No grand plans... I'll just die with the rest of the country.

xx

I'll have a lot of mixed feelings. For one, over 50% of the scumbag population of Ireland will be wiped out
But at the same time, about 50% of all the hot women in ireland will be toast too
It will, however, prove that FF are the worst bunch of kunts to have in the Dail at a time of crisis. Jaysus, I'd love to knock that Bertie lad one, and after that give Noel Dempsey the hammering of his life. But alas, if I'm in dublin at the time it happens, I'd be toast before I could complete that thought.
If I'm home in meath though, I'll join spike on a deckchair and smoke some fatties and grow a third arm in peace.

passive

pray my last few hours away to ensure a good seat in heaven...

i'm sure god would ignore the rest of my life and my outspoken atheism :rolleyes:

...or possibly just eat my entire familys supply of iodine tablets, thus making me completely immune to all types of radiation....

solice

im very upset by all this actually. when the iodine tablets came to the house here we only got five packets. there is six in the family. when i read the leaflet i discovered that i was the one that didnt get them, why, i was not on the voters register. i was not 18.
that would have been all fine and bloody dandy if i was 5 and i could take half tablets from other members in the family but i was 17. i was 18 a month later. wtf is that about. i still havent got my tablets.

and whats the whole thing about only saving those that can vote. i wouldnt vote for bertie now but if sellafield blew up i def wouldnt vote for him

deecom

now lets be honest, iodine tablets are the least of your worries in a mass nuclear fallout. best your going to do is choke on them!

solice

its the principle of the matter. once again that govt totally fcuked up. what they get away with is ridiculous

Sparks

There would be ample time to pack everything up and drive west of the wicklow hills before the environment got dangerous. The problem would be the way property prices would plummet in the pale and spike in the west. So it'd be more a medium-to-long-term problem, rather than a bright flash of light and a sudden end to all your troubles.

Mind you, the odds of Sellafield being targeted are not high, realistically speaking. There are far more "interesting" targets for your average al quaeda terrorist in both Ireland and the UK, and none of them would be nuclear in nature.

Repli

I dunno what id to ***.. we watched a video in physics in 6th year on what to do if it happened.. apparently a lot of people in the UK have shelters built.. there was some other stuff i vaguely remember.. painting your windows black..

WHY DIDNT I LISTEN IN PHYSICS CLASS

solice

i should have listened in bio and chem. dam govt not giving me iodine, i am so angry now

MrPinK

Point and say "we told you so"

solice

they never listen to us, ever

Lemming

the degree of "how f*cked are we??!!" goes as follows in the event of some nut doing something nasty to Sellafield

hitting a low-grade plutonium storage "shed" will knock out a nice area reaching down as far as Dundalk (or was it Drogheda - can't rightly recall).

hitting a medimu-grade plutonium storage shed would result in the entire of Ireland, the UK, and part of the western seaboard of mainland Europe glowing green after the resultant blast has crushed and/or incinerated everything.

hitting a high-grade plutonium storage shed (ie. weapons grade material) would result in Western Europe being wiped off the face of the earth

or something to that effect.

In any case, we're boned.

Mossy Monk

i would probably be asleep and wouldnt notice anything until i got to St. Peter at the gates

AL][EN

Pretty much what lemming says if they hit a high-grade plutonium storage or a medium-grade plutonium storage shed were pretty buggered we dont have to worry as none of us will survive!


there isnt really anything anyone can do as FF idea of nuclear prevention is a joke, in fact the whole damn gov is a joke if you ask me (but that doesnt belong here) as for what id do well I'd probably drive to dublin (knowing that its certian death) and spend the last remaining hours of my life with the woman im in mad about (aaawww isnt that sickenly cute)

monument

Well what was it… duck and cover?

I’d go mad and steal everyone’s iodine prophylaxis tablets (or Potassium Iodate Tablets) for no real reason.

shinobi

Originally posted by Tusky
**** furiously....and if that fails...furiously ****

LOL
also drink lots of alcohol.:D

joseph brand

I'd have a pretty good excuse not to go to work.

I've always wanted to do my mates ma, damn she is hot and has been since first I saw her(kinda Spanish looks).

Make good use of the bedlem, i.e looting, raping and pillaging, he he he he. :cool:

It's not all bad, might find myself an abandoned radioactive porsche 911 in Blackrock or thereabouts, grow another head and talk to myself en route to see my mates Ma.:D

Bring it on Osama.

neGev

I'd run to the nearest phonebox to change into my Superman costume to save the worl.....
I've said too much.

stormkeeper

Originally posted by passive
pray my last few hours away to ensure a good seat in heaven...

i'm sure god would ignore the rest of my life and my outspoken atheism :rolleyes:

...or possibly just eat my entire familys supply of iodine tablets, thus making me completely immune to all types of radiation....

Only problem there is you'd be impotent as ^&%!... I seriously doubt that someone taking that amount of iodine could be that immune... If the radiation doesn't do something, I'd say the iodine will, though I dunno what.

joseph brand

I think I heard Ray Darcy on the Radio the other day(Today FM).

He's 'radio-active'.



... . . . . . . . . . . .what have I said. . . .oh no!!

stormkeeper

According to my friend over here in The Netherlands (aka Holland, actually... 'Tis the region I'm in anyway), there's a massive oil refinery here, and there also are a few nuke generators to the south of here, so if the refinery goes boom (It's as big as the town I'm staying in, Zoetermeer), we're doomed... So if something is hit, lets hope it won't hit Rotterdam, or more than just west Europe will be gone... Some of East and South Europe too, via a nuke reactor chain reaction.... I think there are nuke reactors in France too, if I'm not mistaken. So anything that reaches either Rotterdam Oil refinery, or another high explosive source, we're pretty much screwed

Wook

at least it's cheap energy

BuffyBot

Go "Oops, that's not good" and then hope the wind is blowing from the West

Cabaal

Well I'm going to fall back on my safety training and I'm simple going to "duck & cover" it was good enough defense in the 50/60's its good enough defense today!

Bloody young people today...

daveg

Forget about travelling to the West of Ireland.... or for the matter the other side of Europe.

"If a plane crashed into ... Sellafield, it has been calculated that it would release 44 times as much radioactivity as the Chernobyl disaster, and could cause more than 2m cancers"

We don't just have Sellafield to worry about. Dont forget Cap de la Hague in Normandy France which also viewed as a possible Terrorits target.

Some interesting exerts from this interesting and scary article:

"Some years ago, General Buis declared that even before a shot was fired, a country with a civil nuclear power programme such as France would be impossible to defend. And, in 1991, General Etienne Copel wrote about the grave dangers of suicidal pilots or indeed of missiles being targeted against nuclear reactors. Those military minds were in no doubt that a civil nuclear power programme on the scale now existing in France had unquestionably created unsurpassed vulnerability in a world of suicidal terrorism"

"The idea of targeting a nuclear installation with a civil airliner is not new. In November 1972, hijackers in the US took over a plane with 27 passengers and 4 crew. The hijackers were armed with guns and a hand grenade and they demanded a $10 million ransom or they would cause the plane to crash on a nuclear reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They forced the pilot to make a steep dive towards the reactor, only letting him pull out when the airline agreed to the hijackers' demands"

"Four days after the terrorist attack against the World Trade Centre in 1993, the New York Times received a letter in which the Islamic Jihad group threatened an impending attack against nuclear installations. The group had trained the previous November just 15km from the Three Mile Island nuclear power station. Despite the UK Nuclear Forum's assurances, nuclear power stations and their support structures make for obvious civilian targets when the aim is terrorism on a massive scale"

"In recent years, some 140 arrests have been made, the latest in August when four people were arrested with 2kg of uranium-235 in their possession, almost enough for a nuclear bomb. And in Europe, between 1992 and 1998, 173 attempted thefts were reported, some involving potential bomb-making material. Meanwhile, the Italian mafia is now actively involved in the illicit transport of nuclear waste from Eastern Europe, and in 1997 was known to have imported more than 100 truckloads of radioactive scrap metal into the Province of Brescia alone. There, the risk is that the radioactive material is added to recycled metal, so dispersing radioactive material far and wide"

hedgetrimmer

With the radiation I would mutate and become radioactive DUDE.

Still, though, if it happened, I don't think I'd have much time to escape, so would probably phone the people I love and say goodbye

swiss

Thinking back on old physics classes (and I could of course be wrong) I don't think that flying a plane into a nuclear power plant necessarily has a very good chance of initiating a thermonuclear reaction.

Firstly, Sellafield is responsible for nuclear waste reprocessing. It does not handle weapons grade plutonium, instead dealing with spent plutonium fuel and converting it into MOX - or a mixed oxide plutonium. According to this source, the critical mass (i.e the mass of mixed oxide plutonium that is required for a chain reaction to take place) is 35 kilograms. Although an explosion at such a nuclear plant as sellafield might devastate the plant itself, if the nuclear material is properly housed and isolated, there should be no reason why the plutonium will acheive critical mass under any circumstance.

The iodine tablets are of course a joke. They only provide a modicum of protection against one particular type of cancer (IIRC) of the thyroid. Again, a quick search through google threw up this.

Its tendency to collect in the thyroid gland makes iodine especially useful for diagnosing and treating thyroid problems. Iodine-123 is widely used in medical imaging, and I-124 is useful in immunotherapy.

Iodine appears to have few other preventative properties, seriously solice, I wouldn't worry about not getting one. In fact were the unthinkable to happen, I'm pretty sure that the last thing on my mind would be getting to that iodine tablet. I'd try to estimate the fallout first, and (assuming I'm not instantly vaporised) try to make it to a minimum 'safe' distance. Probably the western coast.

the Guru

Pee my pants

Paddy20

Listen to my favourite CD, while waiting for the inevitable to happen. Without any fear of passing away from this valley of tears.

P.

cournioni

Get laid.

Sleipnir

As long as the government are saved, It'll all be O.K.:rolleyes:

zAbbo

..try and beat that end game boss of donkey kong before i melt loike

Panda

put my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye.....

woosaysdan

i'll be on holidays that day!!!

K2

get laid repeatedly, then make up the spare room. I live on the west coats so will be expecting a few visitors!:D

Typedef

There has been a study conducted into this very scenario.

http://www.wise-paris.org/english/ourbriefings_pdf/011029AircraftCrashSellafield3.pdf

Even though a core melt down would be difficult to achieve there is a particular building in Sellafield (building B215) which if it was hit by (say a boeing 767) could potentially release enough radioactive material to have quote

"several dozen times the global and long term impact of the Chernobyl accident"

Or in other words, most of the UK, Ireland and parts of Western Europe would be rendered uninhabitable (due to high levels of radioactivity) for tens of generations and many, many people in the path of the released radioactive material would simply die from radiation poisoning.

Such an act, would probably be the single biggest mass murder in the history of the human species.

Interesting.

tba

they should have given us cyanide tablets not iodine

WhiteWashMan

hmm, i seriously doubt that crashing a plane into sellafield would have the immediate explosion that people are worried about.
for a start nuclear fission is only caused by shooting particles of uranium into iostopic nuclear material (ok, this is a simple version, ive forgotten most of my university physics. its not like i actually got my physics degree alright! )
i cant imagine that sellafield as a refining factory (do they even create energy there anymore? i dont think so) would not have either of these two materials near each other, let alone close enough for one material to react to the other.
its actually quiet hard to create a nuclear reaction like a bomb.
i would also hope that all the radio active material is kept below ground. god do i hope

on the other hand, if something like that did happen, i suspect there would be some serious contamination along the lines of a smaller chernobyl (that was producing energy i think, because if i recall the core metled. serious problem!)
a good film to watch is when the wind blows by raymond briggs (of the snowman fame). actually, its a bit bloody depressing.

either way, id be straight down to the euro star on my way to spain with shinji in my boot and many crates of larger.

The Sweeper

I'd steal the nearest small motorbike I could find and drive (can't drive a car) to the euro tunnel, then get to france, then travel around following the sound of singing and pedantic opinionated bollocks talking and I'd find the pedantic opinionated bollocks talkers and I'd beat the sh1t out of them and say...

"...you think it's funny to put that poofter in the boot, steal my lager and LEAVE ME BEHIND DO YOU???"

WhiteWashMan

Originally posted by Minesajackdaniels
I'd steal the nearest small motorbike I could find and drive (can't drive a car) to the euro tunnel, then get to france, then travel around following the sound of singing and pedantic opinionated bollocks talking and I'd find the pedantic opinionated bollocks talkers and I'd beat the sh1t out of them and say...

"...you think it's funny to put that poofter in the boot, steal my lager and LEAVE ME BEHIND DO YOU???"

do we know you?

The Sweeper

...I'm the one who's loosened the wheel nuts on your car.

WhiteWashMan

can someone please remove this person?