Chernobyl is a human disaster, but good news for animals here

There is no hunting pressure, the number of animals in the Red Forest grows steadily .

The story of this famous atomic disaster took place on April 26, 1986. The nuclear reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located on the borders of Ukraine and Belarus, exploded after a test. safety inspection, creating a huge uncontrollable electric fire that causes a large amount of radioactivity to enter the atmosphere causing serious air pollution.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's No. 4 nuclear reactor exploded.

Chernobyl was a devastating disaster due to its enormous influence on humans: at least 237 people died from radioactive contamination, while the World Health Organization expects about 4,000 people to die. because of exposure to radiation. Not only that, the circumference of the evacuation zone is 30km (18 miles) long, making more than 130,000 people never allowed to return to their homeland. Although this is one of the worst disasters people have suffered, there is another part that suddenly benefits: it is a wild animal.

The aftermath of this explosion continued to spread along many kilometers of radius around it. Immediately, all residents within a 10km radius had to evacuate, while the radioactive streams kept falling evenly, and the reactor continued to leak radioactive materials within 10 consecutive days. . Few people care about the impact of the Chernobyl disaster on the wild world, because humans are the biggest priority at that time. And now, when the environment around Chernobyl is gradually surveyed, people can see clearly the impact that this disaster brings. The effect is called the Red Forest.

The number of wolves in the radioactive area is 7 times higher than the normal area.

'The Red Forest has a relatively small area, only about 4 to 6 km ² , but possesses a tremendous amount of radiation in just a few days after the disaster. Unlike the atomic disaster in Fukushima, the Chernobyl explosion is a hot dust disaster, so the pieces of micro-nuclear fuel material are discharged within 10km around the plant, and the Red Forest is the inspiration the largest amount of atomic dust, 'said John Smith, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth.

In fact, this amount of radioactivity is so great that this fallout has blown away the whole family of coniferous trees in the area. The hot radioactive dust particles that just came out of a nearby reactor are the main agents that burn them down. Even at this time, the Red Forest is home to the highest radioactive activity in the entire area.

Red Forest is also home to the highest radioactive activity in the entire area.

It seems that the conifers are more sensitive to fallout than the deciduous trees. The reason is that these plants only need to shed their leaves to remove most of the radioactive residues on their bodies.

It is difficult to confirm what happened to the animal species in the Red Forest. The iron curtain still existed at that time, and only Soviet scientists were allowed to study the area. They conducted geological surveys from above, they counted the number of animals in some very limited areas. These figures do not show much, except that the number of mammals still grows steadily every year.

This suggests that it seems that the radioactive effects from the Chernobyl accident to the wild world are not much, and it seems that some species also benefit from this.

Smith's research once again supports this argument. He conducted surveys on hundreds of kilometers of snow roads, counting the number of live species of many different animals, thereby estimating the density of mammals in the area.

The number of deer and wild boars is not much different.

Next, they redesigned the radioactive residue on each of these travel routes, then established a correlation between the radiation dose and the density of species on the route.

While the number of deer and wild boars does not appear to be much different, the amount of radiation in the radioactive area is 7 times higher than in the normal area. This is probably due to the absence of humans and hunting guns here for many years, because radioactive residues are still many times higher than the allowable threshold. Hunting pressure decreases, and the study concludes that, perhaps, this is the reason why the species here benefit, not because radioactivity affects animals. Unknowingly, the Chernobyl disaster turned the Red Forest into a nature reserve, because no one dared to come here.

However it is a story of the past. Radioactive residues have fallen to extremely low levels over the years, and the Ukrainian government is considering reopening some areas here. This means that, perhaps, humanity is about to see the place once a horrifying memory, a forgotten part of its history.