A new study has come to the surprising conclusion that wildlife may actually be flourishing within the Chernobyl exclusion zone — an area that has been banned to humans for decades.
The Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 was the greatest nuclear disaster of all time, and it left radiation levels miles around the area so high that everyone had to be evacuated, and authorities estimate it won’t be safe for human habitation for another 20,000 years. But animals are under no such ban, and a new study has found that wildlife — and wolves in particular — are running wild and doing just fine, according to a Slashgear report.
All the remains of Chernobyl is an eerie ghost town surrounding the abandoned nuclear power plant that blew up during the latter days of the Cold War, spewing radiation into the air and killing untolds amount of people, most of them after the fact from things like cancer, scientists believe. Today, the area has been swallowed up by forests, and without humans to compete with, animals are flourishing in the area — perhaps at higher levels than before the disaster. The findings were published in the journal Current Biology, and are based on aerial observations of the exclusion zone, which spans about 4,200 square kilometers in present day Ukraine.
Scientists estimate that there are seven times as many wolves in the zone compared to nearby parks, showing that they actual prefer to be in Chernobyl. And other animals like elk, dear, and wild boars also appear to be thriving, with scientists estimating that they are at least back to pre-meltdown levels.
That suggests that radiation levels have decreased to the point that wildlife isn’t bothered too much by it.
It’s been three decades since the Chernobyl meltdown during the latter days of the Cold War. An explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant killed workers and scattered huge amounts of radiation into the open air, contaminating the whole region. It was the worst nuclear accident in history, both financially and in terms of casualties.
It is one of just two level 7 nuclear accident events, indicating the highest level. The only other one was the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
About 500,000 workers were needed to contain the damage, and 18 billion rubles were spent on it. A total of 31 were killed in the accident, and an untold number have died most likely due to higher cancer rates because of the radiation contaminated the surrounding environment.
As a result of the contamination, the Soviet Union set up an exclusion zone that exists to this day. Everyone was evacuated from the area except for a few hundred who refused to leave.
The accident happened while workers at the doomed plant were conducting an experiment. There was a massive explosion that blew open the reactor, scattering debris and resulting in a meltdown the released massive amounts of radiation. The Soviet Union attempted to keep it under wraps, but other nations detected the massive plume of radiation and demanded answers from the USSR.
Today, Chernobyl is nothing more than a ghost town, completely overgrown and now overrun by animals, with nary a human in sight.
In the meantime, workers are trying to rebuild the sarcophagus that was used to cover up the reactor and prevent the release of more radiation. There is still so much radiation in that area that workers are restricting to working five hours per day for a month, and then getting a couple of weeks of rest and recuperation.