Radioactive Waste

[Elthbert]

Yeah I think that this would have all happened during the cataclysm, however, the occasional, radioactive waste site being still around and possibly problematic. Certianly there are irradiated areas.

[Natasha]

Yeah I think that this would have all happened during the cataclysm, however, the occasional, radioactive waste site being still around and possibly problematic. Certianly there are irradiated areas.

Doesn't Tarn mention such places?

[jaymz]

Actually I don't think she ever did......but such places may not be a problem as fast as Life without peopel since in 90 years those places may have multi decade powerplant running them etc....

[azazel1024]

If the places are powered solely on generators then that would be an issue, but if they can pull power from the grid and only use the generators as a backup things would be less dire. Most nuclear plants are pretty well automated. Odds are decent they'd keep puttering along on their own for months or years before a real problem came up, and a lot have auto shut down safe guards now (or are self limiting). So they'd be able to power their own cooling systems for the pools for months or even several years afterward. If the electrical draw on the nuke pant dropped a lot after an apocalyptic situation and the automated systems worked right the reactor load and reaction rate would drop a lot as well, so the nuclear fuel would last a lot longer as well. I have no idea how long, maybe several years or even several decades with minimum load on the reactors before stuff broke down or the reactors ran out of fuel. If say a 1,000mw reactor had a designed 6 month fuel supply before needing fuel rod replacement and the load drops to something like maybe 10mw because of the end of the world (only a few things left connect to the plants portion of the grid, powering the plant itself, etc) you might well get 100x more life out of the fuel, though I doubt the plant systems would last 50 years before break downs occured.

Just a few thoughts on it. I really don't know how all the systems are designed. Let alone the spent fuel pool cooling systems. If this gets moved over the DR thread, this is my opinion on why radiation hasn't become a big issue, the plants are running on auto pilot mostly disconnected from the grid or with minimal load on the grid (lots of downed power lines from weather, panicked drivers hitting power poles, stuff falling on power lines, lack of maitenance, no one to leave lights on, etc). So the nuclear power plants are kind of just idling a long for now. Things might get interesting in a few years or a decade or two though if humanity doesn't get their stuff together and start taking things back from the zombies.
-Matt

[Bood Samel]

A few times in various books over the years radioactive sites are mentioned. Isn't part of Utah radioactive if I recall correctly? And that area the Waste?

[Jeffrey W.]

Although most of the information below was extracted from wikipedia, and slightly altered for Rifts earth RPG game setting, the "Life After People" film premiered on January 21, 2008 on the History Channel. A similar program called "Aftermath: Population Zero" was a film that premiered on Sunday, March 9, 2008 on the National Geographic Channel. I have combined and condensed the information featured in those two programs which I believe might be helpful or useful for my fellow gamers.

After the first day of the Great Cataclysm, most power stations shut down, causing cascading black outs worldwide. Wind-driven turbines which have not already been destroyed, without proper maintenance, have their rotors will seize up over time. Solar power doesn't fair much better due to the ash in the atmosphere.

After two days, without steady power consumption, most nuclear power plants will shut down and enter an automatic safe mode to avert a possible meltdown.

After ten days, most food on supermarket shelves and inside home refrigerators has either rotted or been seized by looters. Pets still trapped inside houses die-off; those that can escape homes and yards will begin to scavenge for food, but many domestic dog breeds, especially small dogs and those bred for special qualities like stubby legs and short muzzles, will be unable to survive long in the wild. Meanwhile, household pests like rats and mice thrive on the remaining food supplies; once it runs out, they return back to the wild where their populations will quickly diminish as they become food for predators, and die from the cold.

After six months, without people to suppress them, wild animals will return to the urban landscape. Small predators such as coyotes and bobcats, which roamed on the outskirts of populated areas, will be the first new residents, followed next by larger species such as cougars, wolves and bears.

After one year, wild animals will have found shelter in the abandoned cities. Sparked by lightning and ley line storms, many wild fires will go unchecked without people to fight them. These fires can burn down entire towns and damage the largest cities.

After five years, if they had escaped, it is possible that some zoo animals from exotic areas such as Asia or Africa such as lions, tigers, elephants and rhinos may still survive in the wild if they migrated to the southern climate of the United States.

After twenty years, despite innitial high radiation levels that killed the local flora and fauna near nuclear plants, plant and animal life has returned to the area, with much of it flourishing significantly if it can withstand the winters.

After twenty five years, concrete structures begin to crack and crumble, pried apart by freeze and thaw cycles. Without people to maintain levees, low lying cities will have flooded. As their metal frames corrode from rust, windows crack and fall from buildings, exposing the interiors to the elements. Birds can now take up residence inside these structures. The copper lightning rods on top of skyscrapers will have corroded, and a lightning strike could turn a building into a towering inferno. In cities, gutted buildings provide pigeons a new home. Cockroaches still survive after people, now thriving on rotting paper and cardboard. With no humans to control their numbers, the wolf population has exploded, and they follow the deer herds into formerly populated areas. Without road traffic, most wild life migration routes are restored and predators such as bears expand their feeding grounds.

After thirty years, deviated by solar winds, any surviving artificial satellites which have not already been destroyed will return to Earth in the form of shooting stars. Some of their pieces make it to the ground and start some fires.

After forty years, small wood structures, such as houses, crumble away as they are attacked by mold and termite infestations. Although they can stand for years, stone and masonry deteriorates quickly when exposed to salts, such as from bird droppings or exposure to seawater. With no one left to repair them, minor leaks in earthen dams will get worse and eventually cause them to break.

After fifty years, if not already destroyed by the cataclysm, the steel cables of the largest bridges have been weakened by corrosion and the structures threaten to collapse.

After seventy five years, most of the roughly 600 million automobiles in the world will have rusted away to barely recognizable skeletal heaps. The tires will have deflated within a few years after people, but the synthetic rubber and plastic components will last for centuries.

After eighty years, the long winter on Rifts earth has ended, and just twenty years after the thaw, the largest bridges have finally collapsed when their rusted cables snap and can no longer support the weight of the road deck. Within a controlled environment of a preservation vault, materials such as paper and film can last 200 to 300 years, but once exposed to moisture and unregulated temperatures, they will have deteriorated away in half the time. In a humid environment, most books will have been eaten away by mold. Digital media such as CDs and DVDs will take longer to degrade, but ironically, they will not last nearly as long as the information once recorded by primitive cultures on clay tablets.

After one hundred fifty years, the support columns of flooded subway tunnels fail, causing cave-ins and collapsing sections of the streets above. Vines have climbed up and into the gutted buildings where pools of water collect. Plants now grow throughout the floors, forming vertical ecosystems. Birds, rodents and snakes have moved in, followed by the descendants of house cats who find all they need to survive in one place. After generations of breeding with wolves, domestic dogs have returned to their pack hunting nature. Without the interference of man, the oceans recover from pollution and populations of sea life will have exploded. Seagulls, once dependent on human refuse for survival, would have a large die off decades ago, but the birds make a comeback once the fish populations return. Imperial Valley, once the biggest producer of fruits in the United States, returns back to a sandy desert.

After 200 years, in the midst of the "Era of Collapses", many of man's greatest structures, such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Tower Bridge in London and the Space Needle in Seattle, will have fallen, if they had not already done so during the Cataclysm. Once their iron structures succumb to corrosion, a strong wind would be enough to cause them to collapse. The collapse of the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower) in Chicago will soon follows.

All whale species have recovered to their pre-human populations. Without the interference of noisy naval alarms, they can hear the mating calls of other whales from 2000 miles away.

Remains of large ships continue to appear on beaches all over the world, after two centuries of errant journeys over (and under) the waves.

The excess of CO2 in the atmosphere is completely eliminated by plants and trees.

In the time of the Rifts game setting, many of the most reinforced concrete structures will have crumbled away once the iron rebar supports inside them succumb to moisture and the expansion of rust bursts them apart.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and it helps your games.

Jeffrey W.

[Mack]

Topic moved to new forum at the original poster's request.

[jaymz]

Life after peopleis an awesome show....