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UN: Consequences Remain Decades After Chernobyl Disaster:
The United Nations says persistent and serious long-term consequences remain more than 30 years after the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
The world body is marking International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day on April 26, the 34th anniversary of the accident that spread a radioactive cloud over large parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.
Chernobyl: How did the world's worst nuclear accident happen?:
Efforts to downplay the scale of the disaster began within government itself — infamously exemplified by the Soviet foreign affairs minister's attempt to allay a more senior official's concern for residents' health with the assertion that they were celebrating weddings, gardening, and "fishing in the Pripyat River".
Three days later, the alarm was raised by Sweden, where the radiation was picked up at a nuclear plant.
The Soviet Union denied that an incident had occurred, but with Denmark, Finland and Norway also voicing concerns shortly afterwards, it eventually became impossible to hide the accident from the international community.
However, Moscow continued to downplay the true scale of the catastrophe, failing to tell even its own citizens to stay indoors and allowing the capital's May Day parade to go ahead a week later. The ensuing secrecy surrounding the handling of the disaster in the years that followed, and the reluctance to warn citizens of the scale of the danger they continued to face, means the true toll is continually being revised.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday April 27 2020, @06:02PM (5 children)
Chernobyl was a tragedy for the families who used to live in the area, but every cloud has a silver lining.. By all accounts, wildlife in the area is flourishing. People have been driven out, the area is returning to nature.
It's called "leave it alone".
Fire is a part of nature. Why extinguish them? Let natural fires burn naturally.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2020, @07:01PM
radioactive smoke
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2020, @07:20PM
Because the soil and trees in the exclusion zone are radioactive. If they burn you get radioactive smoke.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:56AM (1 child)
My understanding is the wild life keeps getting replaced by wild life from further away as it dies off from radiation poisoning.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:10AM
Cool! My understanding is that radioactive mutants devour the weak and only the strong survive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @09:41AM
1. smoke with Cesium and Strontium is not the best - it spreads these things outside the zone like during actually Chernobyl fire
2. the fires are started by people