Gingko: the Atomic Bomb Proof Tree

[Broomstick]

Well, OK, not entirely atomic bomb proof, a direct hit will, of course, vaporize them, but I learned today that 6 gingkos survived the August 1945 atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima. One was only 1130m from the center of the blast. Damn! That's one tough tree.

Apparently, after the apocalypse we'll have gingkos along with cockroaches.

Of course, all of the trees took extremely heavy damage in the blast, and they still bear marks from it. Some pictures follow of these trees, which are still alive today. In many instance buildings/stairways have been either built or remodeled around these trees.



This website has a documentary video about these trees. It is in French, but even if you don't speak that language you can see the trees and in some views the blast scars that are still on the trunks.

Gingkos are also living fossils, with species dating back 270 million years to the Permian Era.

[Shroom Man 777]

They remodeled it with several kilotons' worth of construction material.

That's awesome, though. Thinking about how the flora in the Chernobyl area seems to have recuperated nicely, I wonder what effects nuclear radiation has on plant life - as opposed to its well documented detrimental effect to animal life?

In the Philippines, lots of people are also reluctant to cut down big old trees despite ongoing construction in the area. They believe there are tree spirits that would get upset if their tree-homes are desecrated. Filipinos are a superstitious, cowardly lot!

[Mayabird]

The gingkos will only survive in the long term if someone's dumb enough to plant a female tree near the males. Smart landscapers don't do this because the fruits smell awful and they produce a lot, so one tree stinks up the entire area for weeks (a college story of mine - there was a building where a lot of freshman classes met, and some asshole had planted a female gingko there. Yes, weeks of people going, 'why does this building stink so much?' with me going, 'it's the goddamn tree!' And no one listening.)

Fun fact: they're also rather pest- and disease-free. Since gingkos had died back to one species living in one small area of China (IIRC all the ones we have today are descendants of a few that had been maintained in a monastery in China) all the species-specific pests and so forth had gone extinct. If we ever bring the American chestnut back with blight resistance, it'll be similar for them.

[Broomstick]

The gingkos will only survive in the long term if someone's dumb enough to plant a female tree near the males.

Gingkos have a very strong ability to clone themselves as well, which is one of the reasons they are believed to have survived this long.

And folks ARE planting males and females together, but not as landscaping. They're doing it as breeding operations, and to produce seeds which are eaten in some Asian cuisines. However, even when properly prepared the seeds are mildly toxic and should be consumed only in moderation, and probably only by adults. That, combined with the fact that the "fruit" (it's not really fruit, as they aren't angiosperms) has the same irritating oils as poison ivy on top of smelling like vomit/rotten meat, does make the females less than desirable for planting near human habitations.

[starslayer]

I wonder what effects nuclear radiation has on plant life - as opposed to its well documented detrimental effect to animal life?

It usually just tends to kill them, IIRC, probably through destruction of chlorophyll and DNA (SWAG warning). The Red Forest in Chernobyl is an example of what happens when you dump a lot of radiation on plants.

[Sea Skimmer]

They remodeled it with several kilotons' worth of construction material.

That's awesome, though. Thinking about how the flora in the Chernobyl area seems to have recuperated nicely, I wonder what effects nuclear radiation has on plant life - as opposed to its well documented detrimental effect to animal life?

At Chernobyl some tree species were completely wiped out by radioactive effects while others on the plant grounds survived just fine, and certain pines turned mutant for a while. Resistance to radiation is highly dependent on individual species; the LD50 for different mammals alone can vary by order of magnitudes.

The ability of trees to survive the blast and thermal effects of nukes is not very surprising, as many trees have evolved to be highly resistance to forest fires scorching them externally. They naturally must survive high wings and icing effects, which means by default they’ll standup to a major air blast.

[Broomstick]

Keep in mind two things

1) The Chernobyl disaster released about 20 times the radiation of the Hiroshima bomb, and

2) While the gingkos mentioned here survived, ALL the other plants around them died off.

Also remember that radiation effects are dependent on dosage over time, and that faster growing cells are more affected than slower growing ones. Thus, an elderly couple stubbornly remaining in the worst contaminated zone around Chernobyl, eating vegetables from a contaminated garden and perhaps even wild game that is also contaminated, may not live long enough to get cancer from the radiation exposure and they won't be passing mutations on to offspring, being past the age of reproduction.

As for wildlife, remember that in the wild it's very much and eat-or-be-eaten world. Most mutations are harmful, which will either prompt animals parents to cast out/abandon the young (at which point they become food for something else) or disabled animals will quickly succumb to predation once out on their own. You shouldn't expect mutant deer and birds and foxes to be prowling the Red Forest, but there may well be a drop or inefficiency of reproduction, that is, a reduction in the percentage of offspring that live long enough to reproduce in their own turn.

So far the visible effects have been few. Albinism has been noted in swallows, but color changes in birds are less likely to be fatal than many other mutations. Some plants have shown abnormal growth patterns, such as branches that don't grow towards the sunlight, and cases of gigantism.

Radiation poisoning is problematic for humans because, first of all, we are aware of it. Animals only see human-free territory around Chernobyl, they have no idea why the people went away, and blissful consumed contaminated food and water because the effects are far too distant for them to connect with the food and water. Another reason is humans are abnormally long-lived mammals. We live twice as long as our nearest primate cousins, and we live long past reproductive age. Thus, any accumulating toxin has much more time in which to accumulate and cause damage. Finally, we eat right off the top of the food chain, which means any toxins and contaminants have been concentrated at least once and often more than once by passage through another entity, be it plant or animal.

It is interesting to note that the descendants of Chernobyl survivors don't seem to suffer birth defects or genetic disease at any greater rate than the general population. The worst affected were those exposed in the womb - when their cells were dividing very quickly. Otherwise, the species does seem to have some robust error containment methods. One is simple sterility. Many people who survived the bombings in Japan were either temporarily or permanently sterile afterwards. I don't have any information on it, but it wouldn't surprise me if survivors had higher rates of infertility or miscarriage or both. And let's not forget the cultural, technological, and education impact - many survivors either had pre-natal testing for all pregnancies or simply chose not to reproduce. The end result is a reproductive filter for those affected by the bombings such that for the most part only the healthy and normal got through it. Now, there could be some recessive defects that won't show up for generations, but simple techniques to avoid inbreeding should avoid the worst of that.

So, despite the B movies of the 1950's and 1960's the long term effects of the WWII atomic bombings and even of Chernobyl may not be that bad though certainly for those immediately affected they were horrific.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ah, I see. Broomstick, again your knowledge on a wide variety of topics up to and including mass radioactive contamination, is very enlightening and impressive. Thank you.

[Broomstick]

Erm... second paragraph from bottom that should be "Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors", not "Chernobyl survivors". Otherwise, carry on....

[Sky Captain]

How do the residual radiation level compared after Chernobyl accident vs Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings? I think there should be far less radioactive contaminants after the bombings because bombs were detonated above ground thus only source of radioactive particles were the bomb material. On the other hand Chernobyl graphite fire spewed multiple tons of highly radioactive reactor material in the air causing significant fallout even in Scandinavia.

[Broomstick]

I don't have the precise details on that, but you basically have the gist of it. The 1945 bombs were, by modern standards, relatively low yield and, being airbursts, considerably less "dirty" than a ground event. There was also a different composition to the radioisotopes and fallout created. Between that, and the fact that nearly 7 decades have passed, allowing for the radioactivity to decay, the Japanese bombsites are much less dangerous than the Chernobyl sites. That is why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt rapidly after the end of the war, whereas the inner zone of the Chernobyl disaster remains largely abandoned. A brief exposure is one thing, but over a human lifetime the accumulated burden of damage would be considerable, and if you visit Pripyat don't eat the local food or drink the water.

Which brings up an interesting point - in Hiroshima and Nagasaki there are no "untouchable" places, you can safely visit anywhere affected by the bombings. There are sites near Chernobyl, however, where even a brief exposure can potentially kill you just from radiation exposure alone. Some people have reported feeling odd sensations of touch or taste near these sites, but it's nothing to rely on. Bring a geiger counter and avoid any bare patches where grass/weeds don't grow.

[Shroom Man 777]

Doesn't the fact that the sarcophagus in Chernobyl still has radioactive substances entombed within not help?

[Broomstick]

Another place to look at is the Bikini atoll, used as a US bomb testing site. Although the current landscape is lush, the soil is still contaminated, two of the major ones being strontium-90 and cesium-137, both of which accumulate over time in the human body. The background radiation on the atoll is now is between normal levels and perhaps twice that in the worst contaminated spots, the latter comparable to living at high altitude or near natural deposits of uranium ore. The problem is the food chain. If you were shipwrecked on the atoll go ahead and eat the food for a week while awaiting rescue, but permanent resettlement of the natives is not a good idea because over several years the human body would build up unhealthy levels of radioactive isotopes. The only way to safely inhabit Bikini long term right now is to import all food and drinking water. It will probably be another half century before it would be healthy to move back to the atoll and rely on local resources. You can't just add up the radioisotopes and calculate based on half life because the plants and animals of the area consume, transport, and concentrate this stuff in ways that are not entirely understood or predictable. Even after Bikini becomes largely safe for long-term residence there will probably be "hot spots" for generations. Of note: one blast alone, the "Bravo" test, produced 1,000 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb, or 50 times the energy release of the Chernobyl accident, and there were multiple smaller tests conducted besides Bravo. However, again, the composition of hazards resulting were different as a bomb explosion yields different stuff than a graphite-moderated reactor explosion.

[Broomstick]

Doesn't the fact that the sarcophagus in Chernobyl still has radioactive substances entombed within not help?

Well, that's one of the major differences. The bomb sites never had anything contained like that. On the other hand, it would not be safe to leave something like what's in the sarcophagus exposed to the air as it would continue to shed highly nasty crap into the environment.

So, with the atomic bomb sites you had a big blast but the resulting debris was largely dust and dispersed fairly evenly within the environment. On the other hand, Chernobyl, while it did involve an explosion, was not an atomic blast and a large quantity of the resulting mess remains in large chunks that are hazardous to approach. At Chernobyl, a certain amount of very nasty debris was simply shoveled in the ruined reactor building before it was covered. This prevented further environmental contamination while concentrating the nasty stuff into one place. That's fine as long as the sarcophagus holds - if the building collapses (and it's not in wonderful shape anyhow) you basically have a second disaster on your hands as it would catapult more radioactive crap into the wind.

Pacific islanders downwind of the Bikini atoll tests DO suffer from a significantly increased rate of infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth. Europe did experience a spike in birth defects within a year of the Chernobyl accident. Again, the worst impact occurs to a baby in the womb, and nature seems to have a brutal if effective means of eliminating the worst damage from the genepool.

[FSTargetDrone]

Fascinating story. Nice find.

Speaking of Chernobyl:

Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Radioactive Longer Than Expected

By Alexis Madrigal Email Author
December 15, 2009
2:32 pm



SAN FRANCISCO — Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in history, created an inadvertent laboratory to study the impacts of radiation — and more than twenty years later, the site still holds surprises.

Reinhabiting the large dead zone around the accident site may have to wait longer than expected. Radioactive cesium isn’t disappearing from the environment as quickly as predicted, according to new research presented here Monday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Cesium 137’s half-life — the time it takes for half of a given amount of material to decay — is 30 years, but the amount of cesium in soil near Chernobyl isn’t decreasing nearly that fast. And scientists don’t know why.

It stands to reason that at some point the Ukrainian government would like to be able to use that land again, but the scientists have calculated that what they call cesium’s “ecological half-life” — the time for half the cesium to disappear from the local environment — is between 180 and 320 years.

“Normally you’d say that every 30 years, it’s half as bad as it was. But it’s not,” said Tim Jannick, nuclear scientist at Savannah River National Laboratory and a collaborator on the work. “It’s going to be longer before they repopulate the area.”

In 1986, after the Chernobyl accident, a series of test sites was established along paths that scientists expected the fallout to take. Soil samples were taken at different depths to gauge how the radioactive isotopes of strontium, cesium and plutonium migrated in the ground. They’ve been taking these measurements for more than 20 years, providing a unique experiment in the long-term environmental repercussions of a near worst-case nuclear accident.

In some ways, Chernobyl is easier to understand than DOE sites like Hanford, which have been contaminated by long-term processes. With Chernobyl, said Boris Faybishenko, a nuclear remediation expert at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, we have a definite date at which the contamination began and a series of measurements carried out from that time to today.

“I have been involved in Chernobyl studies for many years and this particular study could be of great importance to many [Department of Energy] researchers,” said Faybishenko.

The results of this study came as a surprise. Scientists expected the ecological half-lives of radioactive isotopes to be shorter than their physical half-life as natural dispersion helped reduce the amount of material in any given soil sample. For strontium, that idea has held up. But for cesium the the opposite appears to be true.

The physical properties of cesium haven’t changed, so scientists think there must be an environmental explanation. It could be that new cesium is blowing over the soil sites from closer to the Chernobyl site. Or perhaps cesium is migrating up through the soil from deeper in the ground. Jannik hopes more research will uncover the truth.

“There are a lot of unknowns that are probably causing this phenomenon,” he said.

Beyond the societal impacts of the study, the work also emphasizes the uncertainties associated with radioactive contamination. Thankfully, Chernobyl-scale accidents have been rare, but that also means there is a paucity of places to study how radioactive contamination really behaves in the wild.

“The data from Chernobyl can be used for validating models,” said Faybishenko. “This is the most value that we can gain from it.”

Image: flickr/StuckinCustoms

Citation: “Long-Term Dynamics of Radionuclides Vertical Migration in Soils of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone” by Yu.A. Ivanov, V.A. Kashparov, S.E. Levchuk, Yu.V. Khomutinin, M.D. Bondarkov, A.M. Maximenko, E.B. Farfan, G.T. Jannik, and J.C. Marra. AGU 2009 poster session.

[Thanas]

Nothing can beat the 1000-year old rose bush at Hildesheim, which survived numerous sacks and the americans firebombing the city.

[Broomstick]

Cesium lingering longer than expected is also a problem at Bikini atoll, and why the islanders can not go home this generation.