![]() Also, many of the bigger lakes across Germany and the whole Scandinavia all showed an increase in radioactive strontium, which would not be a problem if the lakes had any outflowing streams.Europe's largest nuclear power plant in eastern Ukraine came under attack from Russian shelling early Friday, Ukrainian officials said, raising the stakes in Vladimir Putin's invasion as his forces bombarded cities across the nation.Įmergency services said a fire that broke out in a training complex at the Zaporizhzhia plant had been extinguished and there were no injuries. Wild animals suffered greatly, as their food was full of fallout material, which later affected their reproduction, and the milk their offsprings fed on.Įven in the sub-arctic areas like Finland and Norway, the reindeer meat was contaminated, and it was not safe to eat, because the contamination would easily transfer to humans when ingested. Although their effect on the environment is small compared to iodine, it will slowly decay there for the next millennia or so.Īll of these radioactive isotopes that flew around Europe, either carried by winds or brought down by rain or snow, contaminated the forests and all the life that was in them. ![]() Some isotopes like americium-241 have a half-life of more than a thousand years. Some other radioactive particles, like strontium or caesium, are still not decaying, meaning they are not losing their radioactive (thus harmful) potential. One thing good is that now, 30+years after the catastrophe, radioactive iodine is almost gone, as it has a relatively short half-life of only 30 years. The radioactive materials continued to spread over southeast Europe, and more than 77,000 square miles (200,000 square km) of land are contaminated in varying degrees. The impact of this accident was massive on the environment. After those particles were airborne, there was nothing that could stop them from spreading all over Europe. However, iodine-131 and caesium-137 have much lower boiling points, which enabled them to evaporate up in the air. Usually, they have rather high boiling points, which kept most of the radioactivity inside the reactor after it blew up. The problem lies in the fact that there are radioisotopes in the nuclear core. But, the spread of radioactive materials could not have been stopped. When the reactor exploded, it was an immediate threat that made the USSR officials decide on evacuating the whole city of Pripyat (around 50,000 people). One thing worth noting at the beginning is that even today, after almost 34 years have gone by, the negative effects of this accident are still changing the environment and the genetic structure of life forms, hundreds of miles around the city of Pripyat, where the Chernobyl power plant stood. How far-reaching was the Chernobyl catastrophe, and how far did the radiation travel across Europe? After The Explosion After a series of technical failures and poor human judgment in handling an unstable nuclear core, the RBMK reactor 4 exploded, facing the former USSR and the whole world with a problem that was new for everyone. On April 26, 1986, the most horrific nuclear disaster in history happened in the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine.
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