Hello! While your post was largely an average, brief overview (as many are - and for very convenient reading!) there was a slight piece of misinformation that I’d really like to address. It’s very common and appears on most research anyway, but is a longstanding slight misconception.
While there were nineteen deaths following beyond that thirty (composing of on-sight staff and disaster relief workers at the scene post-failure), through almost any research, they were never directly tied to the incident. This is the Soviet Union we’re talking about, I will allow that, and information is… mottled. It’s hard to find reliable sources on every documented case simply because not every case was reliably documented. Still, there has yet to be a concrete link between many others dying as a direct result of this. Check out all the Thyroid Cancer cases and their background, it’s really interesting, but still unreliable as evidence, given that it’s safe to assume at least a portion of them were caused by the screening process or a false diagnosis.
Resettling was necessary, but recently Belorussians have been resettled in one of the former hazard areas and they’re working on continuing this well into the future and reclaiming their land. Scientists have done a lot of observation and research on Pripyat (I recommend watching this video to see how nature has reclaimed it!) and Chernobyl itself. A lot of what they’ve found is really interesting, as well, especially some of the semi-old findings on birds and fungus in the area.
Which brings us right into how this disaster affected Europe. “It is estimated that all of the xenon gas, about half of the iodine and caesium, and at least 5% of the remaining radioactive material in the Chernobyl 4 reactor core (which had 192 tonnes of fuel) was released in the accident. Most of the released material was deposited close by as dust and debris, but the lighter material was carried by wind over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and to some extent over Scandinavia and Europe.” (Iodine and caesium have a half life of about eight-ten days, after eighty-ninety days there is no longer a radioactive threat contained within the composite.) 137Cs, now that is something that has a thirty year lifespan, amplified further by the amount of it. (1 gram of 137Cs = 3.214 terabecquerels of radiation
A becquerel is the equivalent radiation of one neutron decaying per second.)
But. It also has a biological half life of seventy days, so the immediate threat from that became more quickly restricted to the direct hazard areas within Chornobyl. Even now, some of the debris around the reactor are solids from the incident (if anyone is interested in the solidifying process of certain radioactive material, throw an ask my way), but most of them have been appropriately collected and disposed of, thankfully.
The “lighter material” (gaseous and inactive fluids, mainly) was also caught in plant life, roof shingles, noxious smog, rain, so on and so forth. The real percentage of it that was on breathing level outside of the immediate hazard zones was quite small and largely inconspicuous. No reports of acidic rain, ashen clouds, or cancers that can be attributed to the incident in the rest of Europe have turned up in my research. I wouldn’t call that “radioactive smoke,” either, considering most of the radioactivity stayed behind in chunks and denser particles. There were still concerns and complications, but radioactivity works like that; ground zero and no man’s land are always the most aggressively contaminated, but beyond those areas the activity tends to gradually mellow. But what does it all mean?!
Well, friend, it means the tiniest bit of misinformation is still misinformation and builds into common misconceptions, which can be harnessed for worsening shock statements. Something so common and trivial hardly irks me, but providing further information on this disaster and following it is something I think matters. Especially with how hard it can be to get reliable sources. Citations:
http://ift.tt/1eN3Gv9 (And further articles on nuclear safety, Fukushima and other reactors, and the layout of Reactor Four)
http://ift.tt/1hqBaW6
http://chnpp.gov.ua/ru/ (You can find the site in English here)
http://ift.tt/1EunfHF
http://ift.tt/QPIrly
http://ift.tt/1hwPM0U
http://ift.tt/1EunfHJ
http://ift.tt/1Eunen9
Contact me for further research recommendations and information if desired! Thanks much.
-Матьё, Дзень чарнобыльскай трагедыі
Fascinating submission, thanks very much!
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