Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Stories
podcast.
I'm Andrew Glaeser. And in today's episode, we're
exploring a story that sits at the intersection
of nuclear physics,
environmental recovery,
and apple brandy. On 04/26/1986,
the world changed. A disaster at the Chernobyl
Nuclear Power Plant released a plume of radioactive
isotopes
across Europe. A thousand square mile exclusion zone
was created that many assumed would be a
dead wasteland for centuries.
Fast forward to 2011,
and the Fukushima accident in Japan
reignited global fears about how radiation interacts with
our food, our water, and our wilderness.
But my guest today sees a different story
within the data.
Professor Jim Smith is a physicist who spent
nearly forty years studying these areas, and he's
discovered that while humans fled, nature staged a
takeover
with wolves, bison, and boar thriving in the
absence of people. But it didn't stop at
observation.
He's the driving force between the atomic spirits
project, a social enterprise that takes crops grown
within the exclusion zones around Chernobyl in Ukraine
through the science of fractional distillation
turns them into safe, high quality apple brandy
and apple schnapps.
It's a project which challenges our deepest fears
about radioactive land and asks, if the physics
says it's safe,
why are we still afraid?
At the end of this podcast, you'll find
whether I'm convinced to drink some of the
apple brandy. Here's professor Jim Smith. I'm professor
of environmental science at the University of Portsmouth.
I'm originally
I was trained in astrophysics
and applied maths,
but I study the nuclear
accidents and radiation in the environment, in particular,
the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine and the Fukushima
accident in Japan. Why did you move from
astrophysics into that? I think I wanted to
do something which at the time I perceived
as more useful.
And that probably it was a probably a
naive,
move, but,
I wanted to do something at the time.
You know, the Kyoto protocol was coming out.
We were worried about climate change. I was
I was in the student green party at
my university,
and I wanted to do something to help
the environment.
And I don't regret the move. I've really
loved every minute of it. Well, perhaps not
every minute, but I've loved the move from
physics to environmental science because, basically,
you know, the environment, you can treat as
a physical system as well. Because the environment
is quite a big topic. Right? There's lots
of different aspects of it. Did you immediately
go into this sort of,
nuclear disaster side of things? No. I didn't.
I,
I did a master's. I wanted to convert,
so I did a master's in soil and
water engineering.
Originally thinking I was going to
dig wells in irrigation systems in Africa. That
was my idea.
And then I saw a PhD advertised for,
mathematical modeling of radioactivity
in the English Lake District.
So, of course,
there was some fallout from the Chernobyl accident
in parts of
Northern England,
Scotland, and and Wales where it rained
when the plume of
radioactive
particles and gases was passing The UK.
And there was a PhD on mathematical
modeling of that, and I thought that sounds
right up my
my street. And I I've kind of it's
been my career, really, looking at where radioactivity
goes in the environment and how to deal
with the recovery from nuclear accident.
So,
I and most of the people
who I've spoken to
about the fact that I'm going to be
doing this interview, there's a mixture, really.
I saw most. There is a mixture. It's
probably fifty fifty of people either going, that's
terrifying
or that's really fascinating.
How is it for you? What do people
say when you tell them what you research?
Well, I I think the truth is that
it's both.
And you do get mixed mixed reactions.
I think thing perceptions have changed, obviously, over
the decades since the accident. For people as
old as me,
we have vivid kind of memories even of
that time when nobody quite knew what had
happened, and it came out that there'd been
this terrible accident. And there was all sorts
of speculation about how many people had
accident. And there was all sorts of speculation
about how many people had died and how
many people were going to die from the
radiation releases and the things that the Soviet
Union did and didn't do to to help
people after the accident. And so,
it was a horrifying event,
but we we've learned a lot from it.
And one of the things we've learned is
that
the the reaction of people and the reaction
of systems and
politicians
to the accident has
caused
perhaps more problems than the direct radiation itself.
You know, the
the the problems the psychological and social problems
of moving. So
300,000
people were permanently evacuated from their homes. The
Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was created, which is about
the size of Hampshire. It's a giant area
of land.
And that social disruption
together with the kind of
collapse of health services, collapse of employment when
the Soviet Union collapsed
caused real
economic hardship.
The loss of land which was abandoned due
to contamination
caused real economic hardship and and real
fear amongst people about what the consequences of
the radiation was. And in indeed,
I was involved twenty years after,
after Chernobyl
back in 2006
in the UN report on the accident. And
one of the conclusions of that was that
the the social and psychological
impacts of the accident were greater
than the direct radiation
impacts.
And we've sort of been working. You know,
I've spent a lot of time on outreach,
on public communication
about the risks because
people are over in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia,
in those affected areas tend to overestimate
the real risk of radiation to their health,
and that in itself has significant
consequences on communities.
I'm sure there's at least one person who's
listening to this and go, what are you
saying there shouldn't have been an exclusion zone
at all? It shouldn't have happened. That's a
really good question. That's a really good question.
Yes, there should.
Whether it should have been the extent it
was
or whether
it should have been
reduced in size in the years after the
accident. So at Fukushima, there's still an exclusion
zone at Fukushima and and a very large
one,
but gradually, that's been reduced in size over
the sort of fifteen years since since the
accident.
Certainly, there are parts of the current exclusion
zone which could be reinhabited
now,
safely.
But there are parts which you still wouldn't
want to live in by any means.
And so the the question is quite complex,
and it sort of depends on your risk
tolerance and
and so on. But what what I think
is clear is that particularly in Ukraine, the
the recovery
of land hasn't been as fast as it
should have been.
And so the the main exclusion zone has
been designated as a nature reserve. We did
a a lot of work about
ten years ago on the mammals in the
exclusion zone and found that the mammals in
in
the the Belarusian sector of the exclusion zone
so that the exclusion zone covers Ukraine and
Belarus because Chernobyl's on on the border more
or less.
The the mammal densities
were as high as you see in other
nature reserves in the region,
and that's not because
radiation is good for the the animals. In
fact, the the wolf population is seven times
higher in the exclusion zone than than in
other nature reserves. Not because the radiation is
good for the animals, but because the the
reduction of the human population, so no hunting,
no fishing,
no forestry,
and no agriculture. Just humans being in an
ecosystem
is worse for the environment than the world's
worst ever nuclear accident.
And that gives us an interesting perspective. So
it's not to say that that radiation's safe.
It's just that there are a lot of
other things that are that are less safe.
And what's what's really interesting, of course, you
know, we we we we we protect humans
much more than we do animals. So we're
worried about a very small, something like
one in ten thousand risk of a person
getting cancer in later life
from a radiation exposure.
But if we
abandon land and there's there's about 2,000 square
kilometers of land in Ukraine outside the main
exclusion zone
where there's still people living,
but there's no official use of agricultural land
allowed.
And myself and my Ukrainian
colleagues have been trying for a long time
to get that land reclassified.
But it's a very, very difficult political question
to do that.
But I think certainly,
in that area, outside the main exclusion zone,
the the impacts of the taking land out
of production
has been much worse than the radiation impacts
would be of using that land.
I'd I'd I think it's extraordinary. I thought
I'm gonna come back to that. But can
you just you've been to Chernobyl. Right? You've
been to Yeah. Yeah. So can to to
for those people who have never been there
and probably never will be. Well, so can
you talk us through what it's like? What's
it like compared to because I'm I'm fascinated
by that as somebody who's in interested in
environmental science. I'm fascinated
by what the planet would be like. And
I don't don't want people to take offense
at this. It's just a thought experiment.
What what the planet would be like without
people on it?
Well,
I mean, we we we are by far,
obviously, the biggest impact on the
planetary ecosystem of anything. And Chernobyl is, you
know, it's
it's now kind of
seen as amongst the ecological circles as a
as a iconic
rewilding,
albeit accidental
and under very terrible
circumstances
for many people.
But it it it does demonstrate very clearly
what we do just
inhabiting
a landscape.
When you go there now I I used
to visit the town of Pripyat. So Pripyat
is the town that was built for the
workers at Chernobyl. It's right next to the
plant. It's about a kilometer away.
And, you know, in the nineteen nineties, you
would start to go see,
you know, trees growing in roads and and
the the forest that there's a sports field,
which had a a small
a small wood in it.
When you when I was going in sort
of, you know, 2010,
2012,
you could barely see some of the huge
buildings. You know, it's a Soviet apartment blocks.
You could barely see them for for the
trees, and you weren't worried about
the radiation. You were worried about, you know,
a rock a piece of concrete falling on
your head or something like that. And
and and and but at the same time,
by the end of the sort of February,
the tourism was really taking off at Chernobyl.
So we we would we used to go
and we'd
for health and safety reasons, we would and
and protocol, we will be wearing kind of
contamination
suits.
Not that they really, you know, made a
difference or were really necessary, but that was
the protocol. And
we will be wandering around in contamination suits,
and there'd be tourists turning up in buses
taking
photographs, quite rightly, because it's not you know,
a short visit there isn't isn't really dangerous.
So it was beginning to open up to
tourism, but then, of course, first, there was
COVID, and then there was the terrible war
in Ukraine, which shut it all down again.
But it is a very strange place. I
haven't been in the in the Unit 4,
the reactor that exploded, but I've been in
Unit 3, the next door one, and the
control room, which is a kind of mirror
image of the unit,
4 Control Room. And it it for me,
especially having spent really my life studying this
accident, it's a
very emotional place to be to think that
that that was the place where
so many things changed in the world.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former,
president of the Soviet Union,
attributed in in large part, not in totally,
but in in part, the the collapse of
the Soviet Union to the Chernobyl accident.
Because it was so very clearly demonstrated
to people,
you know, the the the the thing that
the Soviet Union did for people was it
that it it made them feel that they
were being looked after.
Not looked after particularly well, but the communist
system people had jobs.
They were poor,
but they felt safe. And and it made
it kind of exposed
the huge flaws
in the Soviet system. And and and I
I believe Gorbachev when he says that Chernobyl
was one of the catalysts for the for
the break of the Soviet Union.
So this terrible accident had
far reaching effects
all over the world. And
to to
to stand in the control room
next door to Unit 4, which exploded, is
quite
a quite an emotional and and fascinating experience.
So I I you talk about the risk.
You talk about, you know, you've not been
in Unit 4.
A short visit is fine. So what what
is it? What what is the risk of
going there? Right.
That's a that's a good question. I mean,
it obviously depends how long you stay there.
So we would typically so we we did
a lot of work on on on the
lakes around Chernobyl, so including the the cooling
pond that that provided the cooling water for
the for the reactors,
and some other lakes that they're even more
contaminated.
So we would spend sort of ten days
visit visiting areas of varying levels of contamination,
and we would get so we measure radiation
dose in what's called millisieverts.
So millisievert is a nice physics unit that
we physicists like because it measures how much
radiation has been absorbed by your body, and
you can measure it.
But it also allows you and this is
where it gets into biology and statistics of
working out cancer risk,
but it also allows you to calculate your
risk of cancer
based on all the epidemiological
studies that have been done of radiation and
cancer, particularly the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb
survivors.
And so so I go I go for
about oh, yeah. I used to before the
war. I used to go for about ten
days doing field work in the zone and
other areas, and
and I would get about 0.1
millisieverts
of radiation.
And what does that mean? Well, in The
UK, we get about
2.7
millisieverts
per year. So 27 times higher
from natural radiate from cosmic radiation, from,
radon gas that's in the rocks and in
our houses, from,
from natural radiation in the earth and in
our bodies.
So 27 times higher.
So that's you know, I feel that my
ten days in Chernobyl isn't really a worry,
and I indeed, I get almost the same
dose on the airplane.
And certainly,
in in many areas in the exclusion zone,
the radiation dose rate is less than what
you would get on an air aircraft.
And and then we can do statistic you
know, if we believe the statistics, we can
then say, well, that that one point one
millisieva of radiation,
that translates to about a one in a
hundred thousand chance of me getting cancer in
later life, so my life being shortened by
cancer.
And and I accept that as a risk.
You know, it's much lower than the natural
radiation
risk. In theory, it's much lower than the
risk you get of other illnesses from air
pollution
in cities.
And so it's an acceptable risk. But it
it the the the kind of physics and
the radio biology
is very powerful because it allows us to
say what's the risk,
is that an acceptable risk for people,
and do do we, for example, do we
evacuate an area,
do we stop
crop production and so on? So it's very
powerful.
But the decisions finally are made by politicians
and not by physicists so that the physicists
and radio biologists
can provide the risk estimates, but the decisions
about what you do after a nuclear accident
end up being taken by politicians.
Do you feel like the lessons are being
learned though? Do you feel like I mean,
let's let's really hope that it doesn't happen
again. But if it did happen
somewhere else,
that's really hard to say, isn't it? Because
it depends on who the politicians are. Well,
I mean, it
It it has happened at Fukushima,
of course. And Fukushima wasn't wasn't as bad
as Chernobyl in the sense that it wasn't
a explosion in the reactor core. So in
Chernobyl, there were actually bits of nuclear fuel,
tiny
particles of nuclear fuels spread around the exclusion
zone. So that carried
much more
a much wider range of radioactive elements into
the environment.
But in many ways, it was similar because
you had radioisotopes
like radioactive iodine
and radioactive caesium, which were particular problems at
Chernobyl as well
in Japan. But the Japanese
dealt with the aftermath much better than the
Soviets did.
And so one thing that they did the
the one cancer that's been
unequivocally,
attributed to
Chernobyl
in Ukraine and Belarus and and Russia is
thyroid cancer. So
that comes from our listeners might know about
half life of radioactive elements. So
so, iodine one three one has a eight
day half life. So every eight days, half
of it's gone from the environment. So it
was only around for a few weeks after
the accident
in significant quantities,
but it,
the Soviets failed to stop people and particularly
children from
eating contaminated
produce and drinking contaminated milk.
And and when you
absorb in your body either nonradioactive
stable iodine
or iodine one three one, then almost all
of it goes into the small thyroid gland
gland in your neck because it's used for
thyroid hormone.
And
so children in the in The Soviet Union
were getting really, really high doses of
radioactive iodine to the thyroid,
and that has led to an increase in
thyroid cancer.
There's been,
since '20 up to 2015,
there were about five thousand extra cases
caused by the radiation. That's the best estimate.
Ironically,
thyroid cancer is treated by
radioactive iodine one three one. So the the
thyroid's injected with a huge dose to to
kill the cancer cells, and then people are
given for,
hormone replacement therapy for the rest of their
lives.
And so it's a serious disease, but in
ninety nine percent of cases, it's treatable.
And that's the one cancer that's been
been attributed to to Chernobyl unequivocally.
Others have been much more difficult to find.
Now in in Fukushima in Japan,
a lot of radioactive iodine was was
expelled into the environment,
but
the Japanese were very good at stopping
contaminated produce getting into the food chain.
And so so far, there hasn't been any
evidence of an increase
in thyroid cancer from Fukushima.
Okay. So, essentially, if it did happen again,
the lessons are there. We we wouldn't have
to do things
wrong this time. Yes. But it wouldn't necessarily
help so much. You know, a nuclear disaster
is a nuclear disaster, and it's a terrible
thing.
People would still be evacuated,
partly for reasons of clear risk,
but also partly for public perception. It's very
difficult
to ask people to stay in a contaminated
environment. And despite the huge efforts Japan has
done after Fukushima,
it's been very difficult to persuade people to
go back to their
homes even when they've cleaned up villages, they've
cleaned up houses, they've even cleaned up bits
of forest near villages and agricultural
land. It's been difficult
to get people. So there's always with nuclear
things, there's always that
that element of perception, and it's something that's
not always logical. You know, when I go
to the hot spots in the exclusion zone
and my Geiger counter goes off the scale,
I know that it's okay
because I've been studying for so long, and
I'm a physicist and all that logic and
everything. But there's something at the back of
my mind that says I I'm not really
too keen on this.
So there's not always a logical element to
it. And and so so no matter how
much we know, and we do know a
lot about radiation risk and and
how it behaves in the environment and up
the food chain and all these things, but
even so,
it's still an incredibly
expensive
and disruptive thing to deal with a nuclear
accident.
Good news is that, you know, Chernobyl was
about as bad as
it gets in terms of in terms of
the the the disastrous
things that the Soviet Union did in construction
of those plants, the safe nonsafety
culture,
how the plant was operated,
the hierarchical
nature of their
system.
All those things contributed to that terrible accident,
and
I don't see those elements in
properly run reactors.
Okay. Okay. Did you watch the Chernobyl series?
I did. I did. Yes. And I thought
it was I mean, I I show students
the trailer from it, and and I always
tell them after it that that I've counted
five or six things that are wrong
in the trailer. But, I mean, it was
amazing, and it was almost too good,
because you feel like it's a documentary
when we've got to remember that it's a
drama. And in fact, I did a I
did a article for The Conversation
on 10 things that are wrong with it,
and there certainly are things that are wrong.
But it certainly to give you a flavor
of
what I imagine it must have been like
on that night of
twenty six April nineteen eighty six,
it really is quite amazing. I mean, it
is an an amazing piece of drama.
And and even sort of, you know, they
go into the reactor physics and how the
accident happened.
So it's it's fantastic piece of science drama,
but we've got to remember that they they
were
they they
it's a drama. It's not a documentary. And
and
and sort of
making the viewer feel like there was a
chance that Chernobyl could have gone up as
a hydrogen bomb
somehow if the reactor core touched the water
in the basement,
isn't isn't really credible. You know, nuclear reactors
don't explode like nuclear bombs because they don't
have the
right type of fissile
uranium or the right amount of it.
So, you know, I don't I haven't spoken
to any,
nuclear physicists who've who've told me that they
could.
But so so there what it was exaggerated,
and the health some of the health effects
and health risks were exaggerated.
But but certainly, the the the night of
the accident and the what happened to those
very
brave people who were in the plant at
the time, the helicopter pilots, the firemen.
So those people who got radiation sickness. So
about a hundred and thirty four people got
radiation sickness from Chernobyl, and and and it
was very dramatically and and brilliantly portrayed.
So, and what about the kind of political
side of it? Is it is that accurate?
What the sort of why it happened and
and that fear of of everything going I
I think it I think it is.
And, you know, we can only speculate, and
there's still speculation
about the events that actually happened in the
control room
and the night of the accident. But it
feels very believable to me, and and it
was part of a a culture where
you weren't allowed to question your superiors.
And that is the worst thing for safety.
The story I've heard and there are many
stories about the accident. And but the story
I've heard is that the guy who was
operating the,
control rods, so the the the
the Chernobyl plant was doing an experiment on
the night of the accident, and
they'd got the reactor into a state that
it shouldn't have been in,
before they started this experiment. And and the
guy who was operating the control rod said
we need to shut shut it down now.
But the guy who was running the control
room, who wasn't
as expert as the actual operators were,
he said, just get on with it, basically,
or you're gonna lose your job.
That's the story that I heard.
And and it's believable in the Soviet system
at that time, and it and it sort
of shows you the vulnerability of those sort
of state controlled
systems where people aren't allowed to question hierarchy.
And then and then, of course, there are
multitude other reasons for the accident, improper training,
reactor design, all all those things,
safety systems which have been switched off to
conduct this experiment and so on.
But that's how these very fortunately, very, very
rare
accidents happen is that kind of
all these different elements coming together.
Okay.
But you haven't been to Unit 4. Is
that because you're not allowed or you don't
want to? I I missed out
because at some point, they were allowing people
in.
And then I I just missed it, and
then COVID came along. So, yeah, I I
would I would go in.
There is, you know, Unit 4, the control
room isn't,
the doses you get from being in the
control room of Unit 4 aren't that high.
But if you, you know, to go near
the what they call the elephant's fault, which
is the melted reactor core. So the reactor
core melted and,
fell down into the basement of the building.
To go near that,
you don't go for more than a few
seconds because it's still very,
very, very, very radioactive.
It takes a very big
dose of radiation
to give you
acute radiation sickness.
And the people that got it were the
people who were on
site
during the accident. The and the subsequent so
the fire
burned for ten days
after the accident. And so the people that
got radiation sickness
were
about there were about 134
plant operators,
firemen,
helicopter pilots who were sent up to drop
sand and boron on lead to try and
quench the fire and and put dampen the
nuclear reactions.
Outside of that,
there there have been reports of some people
in the exclusion zone
getting radiation sickness, but
it's it's questionable.
I don't think there's strong evidence of that.
The doses that some people got were very,
very significant,
but perhaps below
even the most
high doses were below that threshold for getting
radiation sickness.
Even if we look at the town of
Pripyat,
so the dose in in Pripyat
on average,
so it's a town next to the plant,
was about thirty millisieverts
because people were evacuated
about thirty six hours after the accident. And
and that's equivalent to three,
whole body CT scans.
And so it's not a huge dose. So
for for
and I'm not I'm not because we don't
know, but I suspect there weren't cases of
radiation sickness outside
the site itself.
But certainly,
the huge, huge majority of doses were in
that region where you've got an elevated
cancer risk and
perhaps not not as an insignificant one,
but
not immediate radiation sickness.
If we look at the so about 600,000
people, mainly soldiers,
were sent in. Some scientists as well. I've
got friends who were who were sent in
to help clean up after the accident, and
they got an average dose of a hundred
millisieverts.
And that gives if we believe the statistics,
and I I do generally believe the statistics,
they're not perfect.
If we believe the statistics, that's about a
one in a hundred extra chance of getting
cancer in later life.
And that's not insignificant.
But if we look at the air pollution
statistics,
if we live in somebody living in Central
London
has about a one in a hundred chance
of early death from air pollution.
And, of course,
annually, there are millions of early deaths worldwide
from air pollution.
So to understand risk, we have to look
at the
context and what other risks there are around
us. And certainly for people in those contaminated
areas,
that
especially outside the exclusion zone and even people
who are evacuated from the exclusion zone,
the radiation risk that they got is not
the biggest problem in their lives.
And certainly in that's true in a place
like Ukraine where there's no good health services,
or the health service isn't as good as
it should be. There's high unemployment.
All these risk factors are there's high
smoking. There's high alcoholism.
All those risk facts are much, much more
important than than the radiation.
Yeah. I'm just going back to the environment.
Right? So you wanted to sort of you
wanted to make a difference. Right?
Are you studying this because you want to
know
that nuclear energy is a good option. Well,
I I started out when I was a
student, I was anti nuclear.
And,
you know, it was quite fashionable at the
time, I suppose, and I was a bit
greeny.
And,
but the more I've learned, the more I've
realized that we have to be sensible about
what risks we take. It's not a question
of not taking risks because every decision we
make, whether it's to build warm more windmills,
more solar farms, more gas,
power stations, whatever. Everything we do involves a
risk.
And when I when I look at the
you know, my understanding
of radiation risk and my understanding of the
risk to our electricity system
and climate change, I don't see
radiation
and nuclear
sites, well run nuclear sites, I don't see
them as a
significant risk in comparison
with risk from climate change.
You know, if we
regulated
our fossil fuels
in to the same standards as we regulate
nuclear power stations,
we would shut down every power station
tomorrow.
We would stop all
traffic
tomorrow
because the risk from carbon dioxide is way,
way higher than the risk from nuclear,
from radiation. You know, you can more or
less not measure the radiation that's emitted from
a well run
nuclear power station
or indeed a waste store if it's well
designed.
But every day, we're chucking out
tens of millions of tons of CO two.
The the German experience has been very interesting
because after the Fukushima accident,
the German politicians
finally sort of threw in the towel and
said, we're not gonna support nuclear anymore,
and we're going
to,
shut down our remaining nuclear
power plants early.
And that has been,
and what they didn't do, they didn't replace
it with with solar and wind. You know,
they did increase their solar and wind, but
what
the effect of shutting down the nuclear was
that they kept burning
brown coal, which is the worst, the most
polluting
form of electricity generation.
And that's been attributed
to,
36,000,000
extra tons a year of c o two
going in the atmosphere
as whether well as thousands of deaths from
air pollution.
And so if the risk balance,
the they could say, well, we've avoided all
risk of nuclear
power accidents
because we've shut down our power stations. But
they've Mhmm.
Avoiding that tiny what I think is a
tiny risk
has led to the definite
emission of lots and lots of carbon dioxide
and the definite
early death from
air pollution or as definite as certain as
we can be in terms of risk of
air pollution.
And these are the choices we have. So
why is it then
that
we don't
treat brown coal with the same kind of
regulations that we do then clear?
Because
we can't. Because politically, we can't. I think
I you know, energy is
fundamental
to our society.
And it's you know, we see the debate
in recent years about gas and electricity
prices
politically.
I think it would be very different. I
mean, certainly, Britain shut down its coal
power stations totally
brilliant.
And and in that way, cut down its
carbon dependency of of its electricity generation.
But
to actually
do the things
we need to do to reduce c o
two emissions enough,
we and I and I include myself in
this. Really, we don't
want to do the things that we would
need to do
to shut down
carbon dioxide emissions.
We don't want to stop having foreign holidays.
We don't
want to pay quite probably quite a lot
more for our electricity.
We're so dependent on fossil fuels that it's
a real struggle, and we see that politically
all over the world. It's a real struggle
to
to shut down
carbon dioxide emissions because we're so dependent on
them. And we've been pretty successful in The
UK, so we've cut our electricity
carbon dependence by about a half in in
thirty years,
which is fantastic.
But
that's just electricity, and electricity is only something
like
20 to 30% of our total energy use.
You know, all the rest, the gas that
heats our homes, the
the petrol and diesel that drives our cars
and lorries,
that's about three times our electricity generation.
And so it's it's it's a huge
it's a huge challenge, and it's one that
we certainly won't make by 2050
is to decarbonize
our whole
our whole economy because we're so dependent on
energy.
But we we could get that energy through
nuclear and renewables.
With with a massive expansion and a massive
investment, we could.
And that's, you know, I suppose that's that's
in a way what I've been advocating
for a long time.
But it would be a massive investment.
And
it not just in renewables, but in battery
storage,
hydro storage, and so on. Because the thing
about electricity is you can't store it or
or, you know, you have to store it.
And storage is very difficult for electricity
and very expensive.
So it would and and I don't think
there's any doubt that it would put our
electricity bills up quite a lot.
I have friends, very lovely people,
delightful human beings who are fervently
against nuclear energy. Just, you know, they say
it's
whatever you say, it's linked to nuclear
weapons. It's the same thing.
It's the people involved involved in those things.
If there was a terrorist attack on one
of these,
nuclear power stations, it would be terrible.
What do you say to those people? I
have a sympathy for those people because I
I was one of them for a for
a time. And and certainly,
you know, there are no
there are no
100%
clear answers
in this. I'm I'm not saying, and I
don't think anybody else is. I'm not saying,
like the Soviets did, that nuclear zero risk
of nuclear accidents. I'm not saying there's zero
risk of terrorism.
I'm not saying there's zero risk of nuclear
plants being targeted in in war.
But what we have to set the nuclear
risk against is
the 100%
or pretty much 100%
risk of climate change,
the very high risk from air pollution
of fossil fuels. And I
personally don't think it's,
feasible
to depend a 100%
on wind and solar
and hydro. I don't think it's achievable.
And
and nuclear provides
twenty four seven
reliable energy and has done in The UK
since
1958,
I think.
And in many parts of Europe, you know,
in France,
it's it's been a major proportion of their
electricity generation for decades. And so
I think we have to balance our risk.
We don't we can't not take a risk.
We can't take make decisions which don't involve
some form of risk. And I think the
balance very strongly
is that we need
nuclear and we need renewables
going forward.
And we need to shut down the fossil
fuel plants as soon as we can.
At the start of this podcast, I did
promise you that I would possibly be tasting
the apple brandy made from crops within the
exclusion zone in Chernobyl.
So we did some work
in, Ukraine in a town called Naradichi, which
is one of the in one of the
semi abandoned areas. So there's still people. There's
still a school. There's,
shops and so on in Naradichi, but there's
no official use of agricultural land. And that's
had real big impact on the population, not
just in how they perceive their lives. You
know, they they feel like they're living in
a radioactively
contaminated
environment,
but economically as well because much of the
agricultural land can't be used.
And so we did a project. Main the
serious bit well, it's both serious, but the
main point of the project was to demonstrate
that land could be used. So we developed
a protocol to show that land could be
used. But at the same time, we took
products from that so called contaminated area,
and then we fermented and distilled them to
make
a kind of snaps.
And we found that the distillate,
the final product was completely free of Chernobyl
radioactivity.
And so we set up the Chernobyl Spirit
Community Interest Company,
which is a social enterprise. And so we
work with a distillery in Ukraine, and they
go to these semi abandoned areas and
collect apples. So they just buy apples from
people's gardens, from abandoned orchards, and so on.
And they ferment and distill them, and,
they make an apple schnapps
and an apple brandy,
which we can say is completely free of
Chernobyl radioactivity.
It still got natural carbon 14 in like
every other food product. Every everything else with
carbon in it, including our bodies, but we
can say it's completely free of Chernobyl radioactivity.
And so we sell this
online on our website, www.atomicvodka.com.
And,
and so far, we've sold about 8,000
bottles, and we've
raised about £50,000
for which we've donated to Ukraine to support
those
communities that were affected by the Chernobyl accident
and now by the terrible war. Brilliant. So
the distillation process
gets rid of the radiation?
Yes.
Because the elements, the caesium, the strontium,
the plut tiny amounts of plutonium,
the the elements that are in the original
product,
they in in the in the apples,
they
they're they're not super dangerous
at those levels, but there there there is
significant radiation there.
But when we ferment and distill them, the
the radioactive
element
stay in the waste product.
So the distillation is a kind of purifying
has a purifying effect, and the and the
product, the distillate,
is we haven't been able to measure any
Chernobyl radioactivity
in that final product.
You know, Ukrainians
really know what they're doing when it comes
to making alcohol.
And the the distillery we work with really
take a lot of care over this. And,
and it is it is a really nice
product. Yeah. It's beautifully packaged as well. I
mean Thank you. Thank you. I feel
persuaded to taste it. So let's do that
one here. And let's let's have one together.
Why not?
I'm gonna pour what I call a tasting
shot, which is about 10 mils.
But you
alright. You're being more generous.
Yeah.
I'm only going out for a curry. I
don't mind.
Oh, smells wonderful.
So this has been aged in Ukrainian oak
barrels for two years.
Okay. Amazing.
Amazing. That's,
to you, sir.
It's pretty good. No. It's good. That is
very good. We originally wanted to make a
vodka, but
we were told that the vodka
industry in Ukraine is very complicated
to say the least. And,
we were advised not to get get involved
yet.
Vodka has a history throughout,
even before the Soviet times,
of
being part of the government structure. So the
czars
controlled their people with vodka
in part.
The Soviet Union in part controlled their people
with vodka. And so vodka has been a
in that part of the world has
been a very complicated thing, and certainly private
production of vodka wasn't allowed
and and isn't really allowed in Ukraine
at the moment.
Although, hopefully, you know, when the war ends
and they move more towards Europe or Western
Europe,
then that will change. So
we were advised not to get involved in
the vodka business, but we would like to
We would like to, but it's a matter
of finding the right people to work with.
We decided to go for this apple schnapps
and apple brandy. But, actually,
if you compare you know, vodka's basically ethanol
and water.
So you
I never feel you're getting very good value
for money if you buy an expensive vodka.
But this actually so this is distilled. So
vodka's distilled to 92%
and then cut down to 40%
for sale,
by dilution.
This is distilled up to about 82%
alcohol
and then cut down to 42%,
by dilution.
And,
and that means that it keeps more of
the flavors.
So you actually can tell that it's kind
of from it's got more fruity flavors and
so on, where the vodka is basically
ethanol and water. Yeah. Okay. To to be
perfectly honest with you,
I thought you were sending me vodka. I
was very pleased when this arrived because I'm
not a big vodka fan. But I do
like it. This is much better. Yeah. Yeah.
No. It's brilliant. It's what what a lovely
thing that is. Did you think people are
buying it,
that there's there's two motivations there. Right? There's
there's one, it's quite fun.
Yeah. It's got a bit of, you know,
zing about it. It's certainly unique. Yeah. And
the other side is is supporting Ukraine.
Well, we're not really
strong on marketing. We it doesn't marketing is
not what what interests us really.
We don't have a real great idea of
who our customers are. I suspect
quite a few of them are physicists like
me who are interested in
nuclear things, but there are also a lot
of people
who who just wanna support Ukraine at this
time. And
and many of us are are really,
you know, we're shocked and horrified with what's
happening in Ukraine and want to do our
little bit
to support them.
Indeed, one of our, directors, Kyrilo, who
who distilled our first experimental bottle
of atomic,
he got he's a scientist, but he got
called up to the front line. You know,
he's got a family, but he's been
away from them for three and a half
years now.
And we're, you know, we're in awe of
these,
Ukrainians who are who are really fighting. Well,
I think they're fighting for for Europe and
and democracy. So
a lot of people want to support that,
and and and I I get that. And
we're doing our tiny little bit, but it
it makes you feel better in this
current climate to be doing something positive for
Ukraine.
Yeah. No. It's a lovely thing. I in
my research for this,
I found an article which people may well
have read
from the 05/08/2021
on the BBC by the wonderful Victoria Gill,
formerly of the MSC in science communication at
UAB Bristol, which is a great thing, saying
that,
the,
Chernobyl Spirit Company
said 1,500
bottles of atomic alcoholic drink were confiscated
and taken to the Kyiv prosecutor's office. Can
you tell me about that? Yes.
We've had
quite a few ups and downs
on this project, and
we don't re so what happened was it
it's taken a lot of effort to get
this off the ground. And
so we worked with, with our friends at
the Palynochka Distillery who specialize in fruit
alcohols. And they're
over in Uzhghorod, which is right in the
West Of Ukraine, which is why I've been
able to visit them since the war started.
And so they produced,
finally,
our first
thousand or so
bottles, 1,500,
I think it was, bottles,
of our atomic spirits. And they they had
them all loaded up. They were they would
arrange for them to come to The UK,
and they drove out of the factory gates
and
the Ukrainian
SBU, sometimes called the secret services, were there
waiting for them
and confiscated the law. And and we have
two theories of why they got con confiscated,
neither of which we really
know know whether either are true. One is
that
it's because there was something funny about them
coming from Chernobyl, and the Ukrainians weren't sure
about all that.
But the other one, which I think is
more probable, was that somebody was trying to,
steal our idea
and,
put a spanner in the works of what
we were trying to do for their own
reasons.
And so,
it was a very difficult time because my
Ukrainian colleagues were in, you know, in fear
of their freedom really because they they worried
that something was gonna happen to them.
And so they got their bottles got taken
to Kyiv, to the Kyiv Prosecutor's
Warehouse.
And, we got a lawyer.
So we got a lawyer in Kiev,
and,
and fortunately,
I'd I'd visited Chernobyl with Victoria Gill who
did a fantastic piece on our work at
Chernobyl. And so I I emailed her, and
she said, I'll do an article on it.
And she rang the prosecutor's office, and I
think that was
probably helped us get things sorted out in
Ukraine. I mean, Ukraine's
trying its very hardest to become a, you
know,
European democracy,
but there has been and still is a
lot of corruption there.
And they're fighting very hard against that, but
but they did the right thing in the
end,
perhaps with a nudge from the BBC.
Yeah. And the bottles got released,
and and and eventually ended up in The
UK after a lot of effort. So it
has been it was a difficult start to
the
to the project.
But since then, things have been going relatively
smoothly, and we're managing to so we've raised
£50,000,
which we've donated to the communities affected by
the accident and the and the war in
Ukraine.
One possibility is they just thought it was
really tasty and wanted some more of it,
which is the situation I'm in right now.
We
right. Thank you. We we counted the bottles
very carefully when they did arrive, and
They were they were mainly all there. I'd
like to thank Jim Smith not only for
sending me the apple brandy, which I highly
recommend, but also for joining me for this
episode of the Physics World Stories podcast. If
you'd like to get your hand on a
bottle, you don't have to join any kind
of police force. You can simply go to
to the physics world website where you'll find
a link to the atomic spirits company, and
it certainly is a talking point for the
end of any evening where you might be
thinking of reaching for a brandy. We'll be
back next month with something else from this
wonderful world of physics, and thank you very
much for listening.