[ RadSafe ] Article: Chernobyl ecosystems 'remarkably healthy'

[Tom Mohaupt]

I remember reading in John Hersey's "Hiroshima" about the Hiroshima 
spring. Despite the vast devastation, plant life began again and prospered.
Tom

John Jacobus wrote:

>>From Nature:  
>Published online: 9 August 2005
>
>Chernobyl ecosystems 'remarkably healthy'
>Michael Hopkin
> 
>Despite high radioactivity, plants and animals seem to
>be thriving. 
> 
>Chernobyl's ecosystems seem to be bouncing back, 19
>years after the region was blasted with radiation from
>the ill-fated reactor. Researchers who have surveyed
>the land around the old nuclear power plant in
>present-day Ukraine say that biodiversity is actually
>higher than before the disaster.
>
>Some 100 species on the IUCN Red List of threatened
>species are now found in the evacuated zone, which
>covers more than 4,000 square kilometres in Ukraine,
>Belarus and Russia, says Viktor Dolin, who studies the
>environmental effects of radioactivity at the
>Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in Kiev. Around
>40 of these, including some species of bear and wolf,
>were not seen there before the accident.
>
>If animals at the top of the food chain are present,
>then the plants and animals they eat must also be
>thriving, says ecologist James Morris of the
>University of South Carolina in Columbia, who chaired
>a panel of scientists presenting the results at a
>meeting of the Ecological Society of America in
>Montreal, Canada, this week.
>
>"By any measure of ecological function these
>ecosystems seem to be operating normally," Morris told
>news at nature.com. "The biodiversity is higher there
>than before the accident."
>
>Mutant die-off
>
>How has this happened, given that radiation levels are
>still too high for humans to return safely? Morris
>thinks that many of the organisms mutated by the
>fallout have died, leaving behind those that have not
>suffered problems with growth and reproduction.
> 
>"It's evolution on steroids. There are a lot of
>deleterious mutations in species but these seem to be
>very quickly weeded out," Morris explains. Many young
>fish living in the reactor's cooling ponds are
>deformed, but adults tend to be healthy, implying that
>those harmed by radiation die young.
>
>Another factor in the ecosystem's apparent good health
>could be that the major radioactive elements in the
>region, such as caesium-137, tend to stay in the soil
>rather than accumulating in plants and animals,
>suggests Dolin. This means that contamination of the
>human food chain by radioactivity from Chernobyl might
>not be as severe as was feared.
>
>All this has led some people to propose that tourism
>to Chernobyl would help develop the area. In 2002, a
>United Nations report suggested that ecotourism could
>help plug the gap left by dwindling funds for
>regeneration. 
>
>A nice place to visit
>
>It is now possible to visit the area on holiday. But
>this doesn't mean that people can live there. Some 40
>different radioactive elements, including strontium-90
>and decay products of uranium and plutonium, were
>released into the exclusion zone, and it will be many
>hundreds of millennia before humans could move safely
>back, Dolin says.
>
>Humans spending long periods of time there would
>suffer a build-up of radiation that would shorten
>lives and raise newborn mortality. "It would be a
>disaster for humans," Morris says.
>
>Many birds are also showing the harmful effects of the
>fallout. Morris's colleague Timothy Mousseau found
>that barn swallows nesting around Chernobyl have lower
>survival rates, fewer eggs and are in generally worse
>condition than those living southeast of Kiev, away
>from the exclusion zone.
>
>It is difficult to say what will become of the
>region's plants and animals, admits Morris. One way to
>find out is to sample the genetics of populations to
>see whether diversity is likely to continue to
>increase. "What will happen here? That's the
>question," he says. "In a way it's a fantastic
>experiment."
>
>Story from news at nature.com:
>http://news.nature.com//news/2005/050808/050808-4.html
>
> 
>  © 2004 Nature Publishing Group | Privacy policy 
>
>+++++++++++++++++++
>"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea and never shrinks back to its original proportion." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
>
>-- John
>John Jacobus, MS
>Certified Health Physicist
>e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com
>
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-- 
Thomas Mohaupt, M.S., CHP
Radiation Safety Officer
Wright State University
937-775-2169
tom.mohaupt at wright.edu