![]() "Why? Because we were always dealing with animals that had survived and had won the fight for survival," he said. Vishnevsky and his colleagues have conducted research into thousands of animals in the exclusion zone, but have not found any unusual morphological alterations. Those animals that survive the womb sometimes have disabilities that prevent them from staying alive in the wild. "The influence of ionizing radiation may cause some restructuring in the body, but mostly it simply reduces an organism's viability," he explained, giving the example of high embryo fatalities in rodents due to genomic defects that prevented the organism from functioning. Animals living in the exclusion zone may have a lower life expectancy Image: Ralf Hirschberger/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild/picture alliance Computer games, horror films and books have propagated this notion, but it is misguided.ĭenis Vishnevsky, head of the department of ecology, flora and fauna of the Chernobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve, reassured DW that he had never seen any two-headed wolves or five-legged rodents. One of the most popular questions for tour guides in the exclusion zone, the area around the former nuclear reactor, is whether there are mutants. And these tests, she added, were by design - not due to an accident or human error. The Soviets and the Americans issued not 45 million curies, but 20 billion curies of radioactive iodine ," she said. "Chernobyl issued 45 million curies of radioactive iodine just in two years of testing, in 19. "Those just take one isotope, one radioactive iodine, which is harmful to human health because it's taken up by the human thyroid, causing thyroid cancer or thyroid disease. "Let's look at, even more dire, the issuance of radioactive fallout in the detonation of nuclear bombs during the periods of nuclear testing ground, which were located throughout the world, " she continued. Some parts of the exclusion zone will continue to be contaminated for some 24,000 years Image: Chen Junfeng/Photoshot/picture alliance "Those plants each issued as part of the normal working everyday order at least 350 million curies into the surrounding environment. "Let's take the production of plutonium," she told DW, referring to the American and Soviet plants that produced plutonium at the center of a nuclear bomb. If the term nuclear disaster is not only used to describe events, or accidents, in nuclear reactors but also radioactive emissions caused by humans then there are many occasions when human-caused nuclear contamination has been greater than that of the Chernobyl disaster, explained Kate Brown, professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But INES does not allow for nuclear events to be classified within a level. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 videoīoth the Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima disaster have been categorized as such. Ukraine still dealing with Chernobyl aftermath
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