In the exclusion zone around the burned out, melted hulk of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, wildlife over several generations has adapted to the high radiation environment.
No intelligent super beasts yet, but intriguing implications for medicine.
In the exclusion zone around the burned out, melted hulk of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, wildlife over several generations has adapted to the high radiation environment.
No intelligent super beasts yet, but intriguing implications for medicine.
I’ve a copy of The World Without Us right here (somewhere) on my desk, of which the chapter on Chernobyl is probably the most read
Not at all surprising that wildlife is thriving around Chornobyl. Radiation is a fairly weak mutagen, or you’d find higher cancer rates in places with naturally high radiation. Finland, for example, has about 3x the average European background radiation, as do many areas round the Great Lakes. Glaciation during the Ice Ages scraped the overlying soil off the granite base rock, which contains a few parts per million of uranium. Uranium 238 naturally decays to radon, which seeps into the air, gets into peoples lungs and bloodstream, and fairly rapidly decays to polonium and lead, emitting heavy alpha particles in the process. Ramsar in Iran has exceptionally high background levels, about 100x the world average – but still doesn’t show an increase in cancer levels. The body’s immune system is extraordinarily efficient at repairing DNA damage, and where it can’t be repaired, the cell usually just commits suicide – aptosis. Beta radiation-producing Cesium 137 is the only significant radionuclide left from Chornobyl (or Fukushima). Beta radiation is an energetic electron, slightly more penetrating than an alpha, but causing far less cell mayhem, and less concentrated, so more easily repaired. 90% of radiation impacts are on water molecules, with each particle leaving a trail of hydroxyl ions till it runs out of energy. The same ions are created all the time by highly reactive molecular oxygen, so the immune system system can take a little extra work in its stride.
“Not at all surprising that wildlife is thriving around Chornobyl. ”
Not to someone who understands evolution. The wildlife there today has survived several generations of culling. If the offspring are defective enough, they just die without reproducing.
Good luck convincing people to accept that mortality rate.
Laboratory studies in animals show you’d need far higher rad levels to effect a ‘cull’- you’re looking for much more subtle effects, and usually not finding them.
Danish researcher Anders Moller has published dozens of studies supposedly showing mutations (eg asymmetrical tail feathers), and reduced numbers, in various species in the exclusion zone, but there is considerable scepticism about his results – he was inconclusively charged with scientific fraud at one point. Increased disease in the human population of the area is also hard to show – the event coincided with the economic collapse of the Soviet Union, with effects such as widespread poverty, alcoholism, and despair. Apart from thyroid tumours from iodine 129 – a very short-lived isotope – and a slight increase in blood cancers among the thousands of very heavily exposed ‘liquidators’, there is very little evidence of continuing harm.
Bringing facts and science to a ideological fight really creates negative reactions.