Chernobyl 24 Years On: Nature Takes the Zone Back (Video)
We all remember the tragedy that shook the whole world – the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986. Twenty-four years have passed, but the scale of the accident and the radioactive fallout are still remembered.
Yet nature knows its business: like a living organism, it can heal and come back to life. Where people have left, moose, deer, wild boars and wolves now rule. That is the subject of the five-part documentary “Animals in Chernobyl. Life in the Dead Zone”. The narration is in Russian, but the footage speaks for itself.
Video: life in the dead zone
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
What happened to the land
After the accident, radioactive caesium-137 and strontium-90 fell over a huge area. According to the Chernobyl Forum (IAEA, WHO and other UN bodies, 2005), more than 200,000 km² of Europe were contaminated with caesium-137 above 37 kBq/m², and over 70% of that area lies in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
The half-life of caesium-137 is about 30 years, and of strontium-90 about 29 years. So in 24 years only a little more than 40% of these isotopes have decayed, and the zone will stay dangerous for people for a long time.
People were taken out fast: Pripyat, home to almost 50,000 people, was evacuated on April 27, 1986. A 30-kilometre exclusion zone remains around the plant, and on the Belarusian side the Polesie State Radioecological Reserve was set up, covering about 2,200 km².
How nature takes over
Time goes by: plants, trees and wild animals are settling in former villages and towns, the rivers are full of fish, and old buildings are crumbling and being swallowed by the forest. Without people, cars and factories, the area has turned into a nature reserve – a forbidden one.
Animals have not only come back, new ones have arrived too. In 1998–1999, 31 Przewalski’s horses were released into the Ukrainian part of the zone, and they have taken root. European bison were brought into the Polesie reserve.
But it is not all rosy. In 2009 biologists Anders Møller and Timothy Mousseau surveyed more than 700 sites and reported that where radiation is higher, there are fewer bumblebees, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies and spiders. It seems that for large animals the absence of people helps more than radiation hurts, but radiation does not pass without a trace.
Will the land be given back to people?
Belarus is preparing a state programme to deal with the aftermath of the disaster through 2020: after clean-up and testing, part of the abandoned land is to be returned to farming and forestry. The most contaminated places, though, will remain a reserve for a long time – for moose, wolves and bison.