Life after Chernobyl

Radiations are everywhere in our world, but they don’t have the same effect on our lives. Radiation includes pure energy, technological devices, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet and x-ray. But there’s another type of radiation which may be lethal or at least have a permanent trace in our lives… and this is nuclear radiation.

In general nuclear power is used to produce electricity, but it was the main character of the arms race between the USA and the Soviet Union, back in the 1950s; the era which is also known as the cold war.

I think Chernobyl is place we have all heard of. Chernobyl is a settlement in the former Soviet Union, on the North part of today’s Ukraine, near the border with Belarus, which gained its reputation due to an unfortunate disaster. In April 1986 a nuclear power plant, providing electricity for much of the country, exploded. It released radiation equivalent to 400 Hiroshima bombs, 5 times more than the Fukushima disaster. Thousands of people died and countless suffer from its heritage even today. As ionised radiation is able to change your DNA, it causes cancer or radiation sickness, with symptoms including blood vomiting, hair loss, dizziness, shrunk of internal organs and extremely small brains. Without a containment shell around the reactor, a cloud of radioactive material spewed into the air from the plant and spread out over the western Soviet Union and central Europe. In fact people in Sweden knew that something happened way before those who lived there. Even decades later, it is so dangerous to go there, that it’s still abandoned and sealed off. A 20 mile Exclusion Zone obstructs people from going there. Nothing was expected to survive here, but let’s see what 30 years of nuclear fallout has done to life here.

After the nuclear meltdown, the area was immediately evacuated but in the 1990s the Ukrainian government allowed people to move back to their villages nearby, and some 100 actually went home. They said that they would die anyway but at least they were going to be happy. These mostly elderly people were drawn back by a very deep connection to their motherland and home. It’s where they’ve been living for generations and as they don’t see or feel the radiation they don’t care about it. Others say they preferred living in a contaminated area rather than treated as outcasts outside Chernobyl. As there aren’t any shops there they mainly live on what they can grow on the land, what they can collect from the area and they have animals. Although, liquidators, also known as clean-up workers, declared the land clean enough for people to live, but it is impossible to eradicate the radiation completely, and even low level of radiation can be harmful. Having to live on what they grow or find in the zone can put these people in extremely big danger.

Stepping into the Exclusion Zone, after a radiation and passport control, you expect a blighted, post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, but what you see is kind of amazing. There are grasslands, trees and forest everywhere. The wildlife is rich, animals and nature against all odds appears to be making a comeback. Boars, deer and wolves live in the Zone, peacefully. Of course people don’t know that, there are tales of monster fish, living in the cooling pond, right at the foot of the reactor that exploded. It’s definitely true that it still contains lethal Plutonium and Uranium, radioactive elements. But despite its deadly content the pond is packed with life, strange life. Fish here are more than 2 meters long. Biologists say some fishes are able to protect themselves against radiation damage by repairing their own DNA. Probably they have a DNA damage restoring mechanism, that’s why they can cope, with the situation, such as the European catfish.

At first, many birds showed signs of severe radiation damage cancer, smaller brains, but a few don’t. For example Great Tits are adapting to the radiation. These little birds have evolved to produce antioxidants to protect them against the contamination. Birds are adapting to this nuclear environment at a rate that is really unbelievable for animal of this complexity. This is the first time it has been seen in the wild. And just think about it, what would happen if we could understand the mechanism that allows this change to happen…

Apparently scientists are working on the secret weapon against radiation damage. They are feeding with some kind of super food rodents living on highly contaminated areas. This food contains anti-oxidants that are supposed to help to mitigate in voles and mice oxidative stress caused by the radiation. So by eating these particles these animals are actually protecting themselves from the impact of the radioactivity.

This could work on any species including ourselves. If something as simple as adding a small ingredient to our diet can protect you from radiation, life would totally turn upside down. It may have a huge impact on the survivals of any nuclear meltdown, such as the Fukushima disaster or the one happened in Chernobyl we could save cancer patients, animals and lots of human lives.

There are signs that nature is fighting back, it recaptures its territories at the most radioactive site of the world, where the lethal damage caused by humans is indisputable and can cause problems for thousands of years. Nature claimed its space in the Exclusion Zone. Here, where man is not present, nature is adapting in ways we never expected.

Written by: Rebeka Oláh