Well, these simulation results don’t sound encouraging:
If the 8 megawatt research reactor and 5 megawatt test reactor at Yongbyon were destroyed by bombs while they were in operation, the simulation showed that radiation would affect people as far as 1,400 km away. Eighty to 100 percent of those living within a 10-15 km radius of the reactors would die within two months, and only 20 percent within a 30-80km radius were expected to survive. As Seoul is about 200 km away from Yongbyon, the capital would suffer direct radiation damage.
Areas 400-1,400 km away from Yongbyon would still experience 5 rem of radiation, about 10 times the recommended maximum annual exposure. Even five years after air strikes, the area within a 700 km radius of Yongbyon could be radioactive.
Read the rest of the piece on your own. Of course, it’s times like this that I fondly recall the Dong-A Ilbo’s report on simulated nuke strikes on Seoul and North Korea’s Bukchang Air Base.
3 Comments
Hmmm…It does not say if it was a nuke strike or a convential PGM strike. As a professional nuclear engineer, I found my eye brows going up…. I mean, this passage “If all of Yongbyon?€™s nuclear facilities besides the reactors such as the reprocessing facilities and nuclear waste storage facilities were destroyed, the devastation would be even greater. About a quarter of people living within 50 km of the facilities would die within hours, while the soil of the entire Korean Peninsula would be contaminated for five to 10 years” is suggestive of a nuke strike and even this I believe sounds a little fishy to say the least. I’d like to read their report to see how they came up with these answers. Sounds like their NSC asked for “the right answer” if you ask me.
I’m not a nuclear engineer and this sounds more than a little fishy…
A load of codswollop methinks. First of all, wind direction is key. You cannot say Seoul WILL BE affected. It depends on the wind direction. And all of those above-ground nuke tests in the Pacific and Nevada didn’t kill anyone outright, although you can certainly argue radioactive fallout increased rates of cancer for those downwind.
Anyway, I turn to “Repo Man” for guidance:
J. Frank Parnell: Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it’s bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was full to bursting. The next day - nothing. Swept away. But I’ll show them. I had a lobotomy in the end.