...or the person who took the photograph, assuming that a 2nd person was there and an automatic camera was not used.
The referenced paper however, refers to "Mr. Vladimir Zirlin of the V.G. Khlopin Radium Institute" who is reported to have carried samples of the "elephant's foot" material. He was still alive in 2012.
It is interesting how many popular books and mini-series came out about Chernobyl. I've been through a few of them, although I feel that the focus on Chernobyl is, as stated, a "...but her emails..." statement. Probably my favorite popular book on the topic is Wormwood Forest, which was written by Mary Mycio, a Ukranian-American journalist. Unlike most journalists she did not macerate the reporting; she took nuclear advocates like myself and anti-nukes to task equally. One doesn't see much "fair and balanced" reporting like that anymore. It is very, very, very rare, especially on topics involving science.
When I was a kid, a pathologist in the hospital where I worked, would let young people on the staff attend autopsies on the weekend, I guess to inspire us to become physicians. I recall one autopsy where he dissected a lung carcinoma to show us the carbon particles inside it. I asked him if the deceased person was a smoker, and - I will never forget this - he said, "No, smoker's lungs look much worse. This man was a teacher in New York City." (This took place in the 1970's.) I did not pursue a career directly involved in medicine, but, again, I have never forgotten that pathologist's remark. In retrospect, I think it changed my life.
It would be interesting if people made mini-series called "Midnight in Lung Tissue," but that's not going to happen. We focus on the extreme at the expense of understanding the routine, which is tragic, since we are rapidly destroying the planetary atmosphere.
It is likely to my thinking that somewhere between 150,000,000 and 200,000,000 human beings have died from air pollution since Chernobyl.
If we do nothing more about the destroyed reactor at Chernobyl, the death toll from the event will be vanishingly small when compared to the death toll of the normal use of dangerous fossil fuels.
That's a fact. Facts matter.
Climate change will affect every human being who comes after us; in fact every living thing that comes after us.
It is a crime against the future that we think Chernobyl important and climate change as something that we could do something about if we get around it to it.
Thanks for your comment.
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