WITNESS - Wildlife and radiation in evacuated Chernobyl zone

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/news/international/WITNESS_Wildlife_and_radiation_in_evacuated_Chernobyl_zone.html?siteSect=143&sid=10410852&cKey=1236214361000&ty=ti

(Vasily Fedosenko is a Reuters photographer based in the Belarussian capital, Minsk. Born in 1960 in the provincial town of Bobruisk, he initially trained as an engineer but late in the Soviet era started taking on jobs as photo correspondent with Belarussian newspapers and began working for Reuters in 1997. His assignments include Russia, Ukraine and Georgia as well as Afghanistan, Liberia and Poland. In the following story, he recounts one of his regular tours of the nature reserve that has grown up in the forest area contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion.)

By Vasily Fedosenko

BABCHIN, Belarus (Reuters) - We venture out at dawn from a dilapidated shack nestled in a forest to see the animals, although rising early is not always necessary.

Still inhospitable to humans, the Chernobyl "exclusion zone" -- a contaminated 30-km radius around the site of the nuclear reactor explosion of April 26, 1986 -- is now a nature reserve and teems with wolves, moose, bison, wild boars and bears. snip

Belarus, downwind from the blast, was the country worst affected by the world's worst civil nuclear accident. A quarter of its territory was contaminated and villages deserted on both sides of the border between what were then Soviet republics.

The human hardship is untold: dozens died putting out the blaze, there were mass evacuations of tens of thousands of people -- some twice as the authorities underestimated the extent of radiation -- thousands developed thyroid cancer.

It was amazing.

I went on a tour out of Kiev with about 10 other curious foreigners.

Visiting the school and apartment buildings that were deserted was pretty creepy, but fascinating.

I'm not surprised at all although the last paragraph in the article was pure and simple nonsense.

http://www.tourkiev.com/chernobyl.php

It was about $200 for the day.

There are people who still work and live there on a 15 day in, 15 day out schedule.

My group was tested twice prior to leaving the exclusion area to ensure we didn't pick up any residual radiation.

What you said is rather precisely true. You did not 'pick up' any residual radiation. In truth what you would have had to do is quite simply pick up some debris that contained, at least in part, some actual radioactive material. I believe that there are people who believe that if you are exposed to radiation you then become radioactive; to say this awkwardly, if you've been radiated on you become a radiator. That of course is not the truth. The problem is with dust mostly - as once again I'm sure you know. As far as the animals go, and all that were mentioned are mammals so we'll stick to mammal problems, the big problem is that strontium 90 (released at the reactor accident) is happy to replace a portion* of the calcium all the way up the food chain from plants to animals to animals milk. Not good.


* http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v191/n4789/abs/191713a0.html

How the lack of human population has led to a rise in the wildlife population...this is how the earth would be if we end up blowing ourselves to bits. I also recall a website that featured a couple that motorcycled through the area and had some facinating pictures.

The birds, the animals have no idea as to the radiation and the risks it entails. Sad on so many fronts.

Humans or Radiation?

Human activity has, by far, the most detrimental impact on the world's wildlife and environment. Take away the humans and leave the radiation and the wildlife are much better off.