Wild vines creep through the windows of a deserted house near the shuttered Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. After a Chernobyl reactor exploded 20 years ago, Soviet authorities created an “exclusion zone” with a radius of 19 miles (30 kilometers). More than 130,000 people in 76 towns and settlements were forced to leave their homes.
The exclusion zone still exists, and special permission is required to visit. But as many as 800 mostly elderly residents have illegally moved back to their villages there. www.nationalgeographic.com
20 years on: the horrors of Chernobyl still linger
ALLAN LAING April 27 2006
IT happened 20 years ago and 1500 miles away, yet the dark spectre of the Chernobyl disaster still hangs across the land. Even in Scotland, Some 10 farms remain under restrictions because of the lingering radioactive fall-out.The people of Ukraine yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of the nuclear power plant explosion which spewed clouds of radioactivity over huge swathes of Russia and Europe.
Viktor Yushchenko, the country's president, joined survivors and relatives of the victims at a ceremony of remembrance as close as safety would allow to the Chernobyl reactor, still covered by its ugly protective sarcophagus. Beneath the concrete cover is the deadly remains of human folly.
In Slavutych, the town created to house the "refugee" workforce and their families after the world's worst nuclear accident, hundreds filed slowly through the streets.
At precisely 1.23am local time – the very minute the explosion and fire occurred on April 26, 1986 – a respectful silence ensued, broken only by the eerie toll of a single bell and alarm sirens.In Scotland, meanwhile, the anniversary was not far from the thoughts of the farming community. The ill winds brought radioactivity east from Chernobyl and showered contaminated rain upon the land. The UK was not spared.
At the time, the public was assured that the effects would be negligible in a matter of a few weeks. Such assurances were far from the mark.
Ten farms in Scotland, most of them in Stirlingshire and East Ayrshire, remain under restrictions. It could still take several years before they are given the all-clear, according to the Food Standards Agency.
James Withers, deputy chief executive of the National Farmers' Union in Scotland, said yesterday: "It is incredible that a small number of Scottish farms are still under restriction, 20 years on. The initial advice was that the effects would be over in a few weeks, which seems laughable now.
"Around 2000 farms were originally placed under restriction and we're now down to a handful.
"But it is impossible to know when we will finally escape Chernobyl's legacy. It is extremely frustrating for the individual farmers still caught up in restrictions.
"Farmers do have access to a compensation scheme and the general view is that it is a fair reflection of the losses these businesses have faced.
"Under the restrictions, sheep and lambs at the farms are checked for radioactive caesium-137. If they exceed the safety limit the farmers have to mark them with indelible paint, move them to different pastures and wait until they fall below the limit. Only then can they be sent for slaughter and enter the food chain.
Back in Slavutych, a middle-aged man who bore witness to the events all those years ago wiped tears from his eyes and shook his head in disbelief as he stood alongside a group of teenage mourners, too young to remember the tragedy.
Ukraine has been left to deal with a legacy of ill health among its people and a reactor that, though entombed in its concrete coffin, will remain radioactive for centuries.
Soviet authorities took two days to inform the world about the accident, which was caused by human error. Firefighters and soldiers were sent in to extinguish the fire and clean up radioactive material, some equipped only with shovels.
Thousands of people suffered health problems from the radiation. The sarcophagus is leaking and is to be replaced – at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Nobody knows quite what is occurring under the concrete sarcophagus covering Chernobyl's fourth reactor, which exploded in 1986. There are widespread fears that the concrete shell may begin to crack and leak radiation. www.banthebomb.org
Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife Is Thriving
Kate Ravilious for National Geographic News - April 26, 2006
Twenty years ago today, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. The blast covered vast areas of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia with dangerous radioactive material.
The effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe are still being felt today—whole towns lie abandoned, and cancer rates in people living close to the affected areas are abnormally high.
But it turns out that the radioactive cloud may have a silver lining. Recent studies suggest that the 19-mile (30-kilometer) "exclusion zone" set up around the reactor has turned into a wildlife haven.
Roe deer bounce though the deserted houses while bats roost in the rafters.
Plants and trees have sprung back to life, and rare species, such as lynx, Przewalski's horses, and eagle owls, are thriving where most humans fear to tread.
The situation is a far cry from the way things looked just after the accident. Initially many animals died from the huge doses of radiation they received.
The red color of withered pine needles earned one large area near the reactor the name Red Forest.
"Now it is not the Red Forest but a real green forest, due to [growing] birch trees," said Sergey Gaschak from the International Radioecology Laboratory in Kiev, Ukraine.
And in the towns where humans have moved out, plants and animals seem to have moved in.
"Wild boar like to live in former villages, and I have found many birds' nests in the buildings," Gaschak said.
Even the site of the explosion seems to be bursting with life.
"I met a hare in the sarcophagus area, and birds nest there," said Gaschak, referring to the concrete and steel shell that encases the still smoldering reactor.
But while wildlife seems to be proliferating in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, not everyone is convinced that these plants and animals are healthy.
Anders Moller from the University of Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France, and Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina (USC) in Columbia have been studying Chernobyl's bird populations.
They have shown that certain species in the area have a higher rate of genetic abnormalities than normal.
"We find an elevated frequency of partial albinism in barn swallows, meaning they have tufts of white feathers," Mousseau said.
Late last year Moller and Mousseau published a paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology showing that reproductive rates and annual survival rates are much lower in the Chernobyl birds than in control populations.
"In Italy around 40 percent of the barn swallows return each year, whereas the annual survival rate is 15 percent or less for Chernobyl," Mousseau said.
Moller and Mousseau think that migratory species, such as the barn swallow, are particularly vulnerable to radioactive contaminants, because they arrive in the area exhausted and with depleted reserves of protective antioxidants due to their arduous journey.
The scientists are also concerned that the mutated birds will pass on their abnormal genes to the global population.
"In the worst case scenario these genetic mutations will spread out, and the species as a whole may experience enhanced levels of mutation," Mousseau said.
Mutation isn't the only adverse effect of the radiation. Working in the Red Forest area, James Morris, a USC biologist, has observed some trees with very strange twisted shapes.
The radiation, he says, is confusing the hormone signal that the trees use to determine which direction to grow.
"These trees are having a terrible time knowing which way is up," Morris said.
Gaschak, the Kiev ecologist, believes such radiation effects will diminish over time. He is celebrating the way that
Chernobyl has burst into life and hopes that the area will become a national park one day.
But Mousseau is less optimistic. "One of the great ironies of this particular tragedy is that many animals are doing considerably better than when the humans were there," he said.
"But it would be a mistake to conclude they are doing better than in a control area. We just don't know what is normal [for Chernobyl]. There just haven't been enough scientific studies done."
The World Health Organisation puts at 9000 the number of people expected to die due to radiation exposure from Chernobyl, while Greenpeace predicts an eventual death toll of 93,000.
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