Chernobyl 28 Years Later

longknife · Apr 27, 2014

I encountered a story on Feedly Politics showing photos of the site this long after the nuclear meltdown. (Wild)Life In A Nuclear Wasteland: 28 Years After the Chernobyl Disaster @ http://www.ibtimes.com/wildlife-nuclear-wasteland-28-years-after-chernobyl-disaster-1576660 only showed drab and dreary photos like this:

But then, I got to thinking. If the humans are gone, what about the flora and fauna? How are they doing? Filled with three-eyed animals and strangely formed plant life?

So, here's but one result of a search:

And there are other sites @ wildlife around Chernobyl today on Bing.com

- - - Updated - - -

Then, there's this article:

Chernobyl's birds adapting to ionizing radiation

Date: April 24, 2014
Source: British Ecological Society (BES)
Summary:
Birds in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl are adapting to -- and may even be benefiting from -- long-term exposure to radiation, ecologists have found. The study is the first evidence that wild animals adapt to ionizing radiation, and the first to show that birds which produce most pheomelanin, a pigment in feathers, have greatest problems coping with radiation exposure.

Read @ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140424223057.htm

waltky · Apr 6, 2016

Wildlife thriving in Chernobyl zone with no humans around...

In Chernobyl nuclear zone, animals thrive without humans[/i]
Thursday 7th April, 2016 - What happens to the environment when humans disappear? Thirty years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, booming populations of wolf, elk and other wildlife in the vast contaminated zone in Belarus and Ukraine provide a clue.

On April 26, 1986, a botched test at the nuclear plant in Ukraine, then a Soviet republic, sent clouds of smouldering radioactive material across large swathes of Europe. Over 100,000 people had to abandon the area permanently, leaving native animals the sole occupants of a cross-border "exclusion zone" roughly the size of Luxembourg. In the Belarussian part of the zone, tumble-down villages marked with yellow and red radiation warning signs have become hunting grounds for predators such as wolves and hawks. Birds, including tawny owls and magpies, nest in the roofs and chimneys of abandoned buildings. "People can never live there - it's impossible - not even for the next 24,000 years," Ukrainian Ecology Minister Hanna Vronska said of the zone, which encompasses 2,600 sq km (1,000 square miles) of forest, marsh and open countryside.

The long-term impact of the radiation on animal populations is a subject of intense debate because scientists have struggled to untangle the positive effects of human absence from the negative effects of living in a poisoned environment. Despite the radiation, wolf numbers are over seven times higher in the Belarussian part of the zone compared with uncontaminated areas elsewhere, according to a study published in scientific journal Current Biology last October. Some wolves have taken to straying outside the zone to steal calves from nearby farms, prompting hunters to set traps or shoot them as a deterrent.

International donors have funded the building of a 30,000 tonne "safe confinement" arch to prevent more deadly particles spewing from the stricken nuclear reactor's site for the next 100 years. Nevertheless, nothing can be done to decontaminate trees and soil that suffered the worst of the nuclear fallout within a 30-km radius of the plant. In March, Vronska said authorities were considering turning the uninhabitable zone into a biosphere to protect and study its native animal populations in what would be the largest nature reserve in Europe. There are also plans to use parts of the area to store nuclear waste and for solar power.

Special government permits, usually valid for a few days, are required for anyone wishing to visit the exclusion zone from the Belarussian side. Roads going into the zone are guarded to prevent any unauthorised person entering. While the rules of access are also strict on the Ukrainian side, small tour groups can visit sites within the zone, including the "ghost town" of Pripyat.

Images of the wildlife can be seen at http://reut.rs/1M9EiFk

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/in-chernobyl-nuclear-zone/2671382.html
Click to expand...

Oxymoron · Apr 6, 2016

longknife said: ↑

I encountered a story on Feedly Politics showing photos of the site this long after the nuclear meltdown. (Wild)Life In A Nuclear Wasteland: 28 Years After the Chernobyl Disaster @ http://www.ibtimes.com/wildlife-nuclear-wasteland-28-years-after-chernobyl-disaster-1576660 only showed drab and dreary photos like this:

View attachment 26876

But then, I got to thinking. If the humans are gone, what about the flora and fauna? How are they doing? Filled with three-eyed animals and strangely formed plant life?

So, here's but one result of a search:

View attachment 26877

View attachment 26878

And there are other sites @ wildlife around Chernobyl today on Bing.com

- - - Updated - - -

Then, there's this article:

Chernobyl's birds adapting to ionizing radiation

Date: April 24, 2014
Source: British Ecological Society (BES)
Summary:
Birds in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl are adapting to -- and may even be benefiting from -- long-term exposure to radiation, ecologists have found. The study is the first evidence that wild animals adapt to ionizing radiation, and the first to show that birds which produce most pheomelanin, a pigment in feathers, have greatest problems coping with radiation exposure.

Read @ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140424223057.htm
Click to expand...

Will be prime real estate in 200 years.

waltky · Apr 25, 2016

An Arch Rises to Seal Melted Reactor...

30 Years After Chernobyl Disaster, an Arch Rises to Seal Melted Reactor
25 Apr.`16 Enter the Chernobyl zone, and you might expect the worst: Security guards at a checkpoint 19 miles away from the site of the worlds worst nuclear accident scan departing vehicles for signs of radiation, as wolfish strays linger around the checkpoint.

But pass the derelict villages and collective farms evacuated after the disaster 30 years ago this month, and a new skyline emerges over the ill-fated nuclear plant. A workforce of around 2,500 people is finishing a massive steel enclosure that will cover Chernobyls reactor 4, where the radioactive innards of the nuclear plant are encased in a concrete sarcophagus hastily built after the disaster. The zone is now aglow with the reflective safety vests of construction workers. If all goes to plan, the new structurean arch more than 350 feet high and 500 feet longwill be slid into place late next year over the damaged reactor and its nuclear fuel, creating a leak-tight barrier designed to contain radioactive substances for at least the next 100 years.

The project, known as the New Safe Confinement, is a feat of engineering. It will take two or three days to slide the 36,000-ton structure into place. The arch, which looks something like a dirigible hangar, is large enough to cover a dozen football fields. You could put Wembley Stadium underneath here, with all the car parks, said David Driscoll, the chief safety officer for the French consortium running the construction site. Three decades ago, an army of workers scrambled to build a concrete sarcophagus around Chernobyl Reactor 4, which released a radioactive plume after a reactor fire and explosion on April 26, 1986.

Construction workers assist in the assembly of a gigantic steel arch to cover the remnants of the exploded reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine

At least 30 people died as an immediate result of the accident, which contaminated parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and sent radioactive dust and debris over Europe. Pripyat, the company town of 50,000, was completely evacuated. Emergency workers and evacuees received doses of radiation significantly above natural background levels, according to the World Health Organization. Researchers acknowledge high levels of thyroid cancer among people who were children at the time of the accident, from exposure to radioactive iodine. An exclusion zone remains around the Chernobyl plant, keeping it off limits to all but authorized workers, most of whom live in a town just outside the zone.

Today, working at heights, not exposure to radiation, is the main safety concern here, Mr. Driscoll said. Workers on scaffolding or tethered to ropes are installing the layers of steel and insulation that are supposed to keep heat and moisture outand radiation in. The steady construction is a contrast to the rushed emergency work back in 1986. It was like mobilization for war, said Lev Bocharov, one of the lead engineers at the time. Everyone ran. The slower you ran, the bigger the dose you received. Building the sarcophagus took seven months. Mr. Bocharov on four occasions was lowered into the blasted reactor inside a lead bathyscaphe-like tank with a window 12 inches thick to survey the damage. The concrete shelter was designed to last at least 30 years, Mr. Bocharov said. It was done as solidly as possible, he said. But the task was not to seal it hermetically.

MORE
Click to expand...

See also:

US Pledges $10 Million to Chernobyl Survivors
April 25, 2016 - The United States pledged $10 million to aid those affected by the fallout of the Chernobyl disaster, as Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of what is described as the world's worst nuclear accident.

An April 26, 1986, explosion at Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor forced the evacuation 350,000 residents working and living in the surrounding area. State Department spokesperson John Kirby said Monday the funds will "help ensure the safety of future generations who live in the affected area."

The pledge comes on top of more than $400 million the United States has committed to the international effort to help Ukraine restore the site of the accident to an environmentally safe and secure condition. About 40 nations have contributed to the $2.3 billion New Safe Confinement project, which is building a long-term shelter over the building containing Chernobyl's destroyed reactor.

Once the structure is in place, work will begin to remove the reactor and the lava-like radioactive waste. The official short-term death toll from the accident was 31, but thousands more people have died of radiation-related illnesses such as cancer. The total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.

http://www.voanews.com/content/united-states-pledges-ten-million-to-chernobyl-survivors/3301769.html
Click to expand...

ThirdTerm · Apr 25, 2016

[video=youtube;ra7YbBvbRYQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra7YbBvbRYQ[/video]

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Chernobyl 28 Years Later

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