![]() But it’s still a mystery exactly when and how harm starts to accrue for different species as radiation levels increase. Normal background radiation levels aren’t usually harmful, because living things have biological mechanisms in place to prevent and repair small levels of damage, explains Kathryn Higley, a health physicist specializing in radioecology at Oregon State University. ![]() Today, radiation levels are generally below what would induce acute radiation sickness and range from 0.4 millisieverts per hour in the Red Forest - thousands of times higher than background levels and dangerous to live in - to levels even lower than typical background radiation. The radionuclide iodine-131, for instance, vanished by the summer of 1986, leaving slower-decaying ones like cesium-137 and strontium-90 scattered unevenly across and within the zone’s soils, vegetation, fungi, and animals. The 1,600-square mile exclusion zone around the plant has remained largely devoid of people since the accident.Īs time passed and the most dangerous radionuclides decayed, the zone became less inhospitable. ![]() The area with the trees’ skeletal remains is now called the Red Forest. A 600-hectare patch of pine trees died, along with many resident mammals and invertebrates in the area. Over subsequent decades, thousands of children and adolescents who likely absorbed somewhat lower doses developed thyroid cancer, a cancer type that, fortunately, most tend to survive.įlora and fauna also suffered in the initial aftermath. More than two dozen first responders died within months after rapidly absorbing doses of up to 13,400 millisieverts (a sievert is a unit of radiation absorption normal background radiation levels are usually around 1.5 to 3.5 millisieverts a year.) When a safety system test at one of the Chernobyl power plant’s reactors went badly wrong in April 1986, explosions unleashed a fiery plume of debris and radioactive atoms, or radionuclides, into the air that, over several days, may have emitted several hundred times more radiations than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images Immediate falloutĬhernobyl’s “Elephant’s Foot” is still radioactive today - after the initial meltdown, a few minutes of being near it would have been fatal. Examining why scientists reach different conclusions, and how recent research shines new light on the debate, gets us closer to the answer. Radiation levels around Chernobyl have plummeted since the initial accident, but creatures that have reclaimed the area remain chronically exposed to low levels.įiguring out whether this radiation causes harm - and if so, how and how much - is critical to understanding not just how the largest nuclear accident in history changed the environment, but also how chronic, low-level radiation affects living things generally. At the heart of the debate is not so much whether chronic radiation has any effect on living things, but at what dose the effects become significant. Ultimately, “there’s a grain of truth in all of these studies,” says David Copplestone, a radioecologyst at the University of Stirling in Scotland. This controversy has only sharpened in recent years. But other scientists have found mostly negative effects of radiation on the health and abundance of creatures, from birds to mammals, with many populations smaller in more heavily contaminated areas. Some scientists have documented thriving wildlife now that people have left, suggesting that lingering radioactive contamination doesn’t pose a significant threat. In fact, a debate roils in the scientific literature about the health of the microbes, fungi, plants, and animals that live around Chernobyl. But to some scientists, nature isn’t doing as well as it seems. Photos show foxes roaming the buildings of abandoned towns and bison and wild horses flourishing after people were permanently evacuated. Thirty-five years after the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine reports often portray the area as a paradise for wildlife.
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