Comment by buildsjets
4 hours ago
Reminds me of the Gamma Forest at Brookhaven National Labs. From 1961 thru 1978 they irradiated a section of the pine barrens forest with a cesium-137 source just to see what would happen. It sterilized the soil and hardly anything grows there, almost 50 years later.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/pJYr6qiZnMdVwLJS6
> hardly anything grows there, almost 50 years later.
that seems pretty major exaggeration
https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3732/ajb.0800...
That's a bit odd - why wouldn't wind blown non-sterile organic matter from the surrounding forest re-colonize the area?
That is probably why you can see some low scrubby undergrowth in the Google Earth view, but nothing that needs to put down deep roots has yet returned.
There's nothing unusual there. Typically natural forests grow out in stages, with different generations of trees replacing each other.
Because they actually killed off everything, the "older" trees are not propagating there because they are not adapted for that. That's also why natural forests have clearings that can last for a while.
If there's enough radioactive material and it is mobile enough (due to ground water or wind driven mixing) to stay near the surface it could sterilize any organic material that comes in faster than it can accumulate.
"An area of oak-pine wood was selected East of Upton, and a tower was constructed that could raise and lower a canister from underground that contained radioactive source material, allowing for controlled dosage levels that emanated in a radius from the tower. The canister contained Cesium-137, which would emit ionizing gamma radiation without making the surrounding area radioactive itself."
They said specifically that it were a cesium-137 source. I think the commentator is fair in pointing out that this finding is ultimately quite odd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza
I'm guessing the distinct lack of Google Streetview on that circular bit of road nearby and the tracks implies a certain amount of resistance to access if you get off that dual carriageway to the west?
That "circular bit of road" is the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the second highest-powered particle accelerator on the planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Heavy_Ion_Collide...
"Was" It shut down earlier this year.
Awesome! I had a good nose about the LHC when I was there a few years ago. I'm guessing that site isn't quite so enthusiastic about visitors?
The dump load for one of my wind turbines is a pair of 22Ω resistors recovered from one of CERN's "free for all" scrap piles :-)