Hi - do you really belive what you write?
because i am - well, can´t explain it, deeply troubled that you belive this.
Chernobyl is not a healthy place, genetic mutations are no good idea - people can´t live there without getting ill, really ill - and they die.
and we do not talk about one chernobyl, but we talk about thermonuclear hits and with them you have huge fallout, maybe 10-20 times the fallout of chernobyl - for each powerplant.... now add the numbers of all powerplants...
your last comment is insulting - i do critzise the plot and ask questions about such things like the nuclear radiation from destroyed powerplants... and your answer is "don´t read it" - do you the same? do you never critizie plots?
funny - i like the idea of the story - it is just to harmless - make it 100 times more evil and it looks good - at last this is my opinion...
And myself I am deeply troubled by the fact that you don't seem to understand the basics of nuclear science.
The wildlife is thriving around Chernobyl that's a proven fact. Mutations have happened the extent of which is still unknown, but these mutations have not been crippling. There are not sixe legged boars living around Chernobyl, neither there are giants lombrics as per Godzilla or human eating mutants.
I have explained many times over in this thread why the radiation from a thermonuclear weapon is less potent and less numerous than the one from a nuclear power plant. The fallout from Chernobyl was full of heavy isotopes like americium, curium and most importantly plutonium. These isotopes are fission products, the result of Uranium 238 absorbing neutrons and not splitting (the neutrons are too slow). All these heavy isotopes would split during an uncontrolled nuclear reaction ie when the bomb explodes. The resulting fission products would be radioactive but not as much as the heavy isotopes. Most of the energ in a thermonuclear explosion comes from hydrogen atoms ungoing fuysion with other hydrogen atoms, the same thing happens at the centre of the sun and releases a tremendous amount of energy. The "atom" core is only there as a trigger and its size kept going down as weapon design improved, crucially the size of this core does not need to be increased by much if the weapon designers are after a bigger yield. The biggest H bomb ever made the Tsar Bomba (58MT) had a small fission core for its yield, to the extent than relative to its siez it was one of the cleanest nuclear weapon ever made.
I think that it is VERY CLEAR from the
list of targets that none of Britain nuclear power stations have been targeted. Even Sellafield has not been hit, let alone Dunreay and Harwell. What likely happened is that once the alert was sounded, all the reactors in mainland Britain where immediately Scrammed and shutdown. When the power went down the diesel generators took the slack and kept the gas circulation pumps running in order to cool the reactors down. Due to the design of Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors a Chernobyl type accident is IMPOSSIBLE, as a steam explosion is impossible. A partial meltdown like in Fukushima has reduced changes of happening as well. There is no water running around in the core of an AGR reactor, what you have instead is carbon dioxide gas. The control rods and the reactor core will therefore never be "out in the air" as in Fukushima. I also think that even if the pumps are down, some of the CO2 will still circulate in the system by itself and because of thermal convection. I you want to I can have a look at diagrams in a textbook to confirm or infirm this.
If the power stations are hit directly then problems might happen, but don't forget that nuclear reactors are sturdy pieces of engineering. The Fukushima earthquake was a 9.0 on the Richter scale and it did not destroy the reactor. No craks appeard in the reactor vessel or in the pressure vessel. What happened instead was that the cooling systems went down and it is this which led to problems later on and nothing else. Radioactivity did go out, but this is because excess pressure was vented outn of the reactor vessel, thence flushing radioactive air and particles out. I order to completely destroy a reactor, you would likely need a direct hit on the reactor vessel itself , something unlikey to happen in the light of the poor accuracy of Soviet missiles. If this does happen then, a lot of radioactivity will be released but this will greatly depend on how damaged the reactor will be as a consequence of both the explosion and subsequent meltdown.
I personnaly doubt that nuclear power stations or even individual power stations where targetted during the exchange on a massive scale. For several reasons:
-The Soviets wanted to leave enough infrastructure intact so that it could be reused later on. Don't forget that according to Soviet doctrine, the Army would follow on after the nukes to control the terrain. Destroying too many targets which could be used to "rebuild the motherland" does not make sense according to this doctrine. The aim is to cripple but not to destroy.
-You would need sixteen weapons to destroy each nuclear power station in Britain. Two dozens would be needed in France, one dozen at least in Germany and nearly fifty in the United States. Add in the coal, gas and oil fire power stations and we are talking about hundreds if not thousands of weapons for the entire western alliance. That's a waste of nukes, as a tenth of that number could do more long term damage by crippling the power distribution network. The destrustion of cities also achieves mores strategic damage.
-Other targets have a higher overall priority, including airfields and weapon producing industries. A nuke on Port Talbot or Redcar steelworks would utterly cripple the entire British industrial apparatus. A nuke on the ICI chemicals works in the North would cripple key industries and factories crucial to the war effort. A nuke on a refinery would have an even bigger effect. If a power station is nuked, ok that's a loss of power capacity, but rolling blackouts, rationing and other energy saving measures would mitigate this greatly.
If I was the Soviets I would primarily target cities and command and communication centres. Losing command and control creates anarchy, massive civilan casulties creates even more anarchy and reduces the overall manpower potential. A few months down the line the country would be sufficiently weakened that an invasion would be a doodle and a return of order through a SSR of Great Britain led by Comrade Scargill welcomed!
