alt.hn

4/26/2026 at 7:42:59 PM

Chernobyl wildlife forty years on

 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260424-chernobyl-wildlife-forty-years-on

by reconnecting

4/27/2026 at 2:10:54 AM

What's amazing to me is how little space is required to have a completely self-sustaining ecosystem. A 60km diameter circle just doesn't seem like a very big space to have enough plants to support "flourishing" numbers of multiple types of large herbivores, without migration, as well as all the different prey species required to keep things in balance.

Regardless of the arguments about radiation, it seems pretty clear that lack of humans is really the most important thing for animals to flourish.

by lemming

4/27/2026 at 9:43:08 AM

Just to put things in perspective; a square kilometre can support nearly 250 cows in ideal conditions. The exclusion zone is 2827 square kilometres. Forest supports fewer animals, but on the other hand most of them are a lot smaller than cows. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many thousands of animals of all types living in the area.

With our planes, trains and automobiles 60km doesn’t seem like a long way, but try walking that distance through untracked forest. It would take days. We’re totally cut off from nature in most of our daily lives.

by mr_toad

4/27/2026 at 9:15:06 PM

Sure, but the article talks about flourishing populations of deer, elk, and bison. I assume that means we’re talking about herds of each, all in the same space. And they have to survive over winter, which sounds pretty cold there - presumably they don’t migrate, which I guess they usually would? It’s definitely not ideal conditions.

Obviously it’s possible, but I was surprised.

by lemming

4/27/2026 at 8:59:38 AM

Chernobyl exclusion zone is not same as it was 40 years ago. For example in 2019 research was done on growing crop in the exclusion zone. You could even buy Atomik vodka, made with grain and water from the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49251471

In 2022 the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) in cooperation with State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management has published the initial results of the radiological remapping of the exclusion zone. The data can be used to assess which areas of the exclusion zone could be reopened for use. The start of Russian invasion halted all this activities and research.

https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/BfS/EN/2022...

by leonidasrup

4/27/2026 at 10:21:21 AM

Actually some lands were returned back to commercial usage. The land is extremely beautiful and rich. They have even created new resorts on the former land of the Exclusion Zone. [1]

I have been a part of the working group researching possible commercial usage of contaminated land, which should not be returned into agriculture or cannot be made livable BUT is perfectly suitable for things like prison, recycling plant or launch pad for space.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/JU3HHsz1hHyGak9U6

by egorfine

4/27/2026 at 10:43:49 AM

"cannot be made livable BUT is perfectly suitable for things like prison"

That sounds a bit dark.

by lukan

4/27/2026 at 2:44:41 PM

My dream project for the Chernobyl Zone was a Norwegian style prison combined with college and completely and totally isolated from legacy soviet penitentiary system.

So that we can take younger first offenders and rehabilitate them and give them purpose in life.

Unfortunately, no one in the government we did discuss that gave any shit about the future of younger generation of Ukrainians.

by egorfine

4/27/2026 at 3:26:27 PM

Well, that sounds a bit nicer.

(I assume what makes it acceptable for a prison, but not "livable" is that prison inmates do not roam around, but are enclosed in a artificial compound?)

And for whether government is interested, I suppose also depends on how much more expensive it would have been?

by lukan

4/27/2026 at 3:49:14 PM

> what makes it acceptable for a prison, but not "livable" is that

Much simpler. The main concerns are digging (radioactive fallout is about 30cm deep into the ground at this point) and unmapped hot spots. Basically, there could be a patch of the land with radioactivity high enough that it has to be either deactivated or tagged out.

> government is interested

One of the cultural gaps between us, russian [1] people and western world is the vast depth is misunderstanding of the function of government. Our governments is only interested in personal enrichment and the well being of people is never a factor. Literally.

[1] as in "slavic people", not "citizens of russian federation".

by egorfine

4/27/2026 at 6:04:07 PM

Origin and history of English word slave

https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave

slave(n.)

c. 1300, sclave, esclave, "person who is the chattel or property of another," from Old French esclave (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin Sclavus "slave" (source also of Italian schiavo, French esclave, Spanish esclavo), originally "Slav" (see Slav); so used in this secondary sense because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples.

by leonidasrup

4/27/2026 at 7:40:35 AM

The European green belt is an even starker example, it’s thousands of miles long but just a few tens to hundreds meters wide in most locations, yet its stability and continuity have made it a huge wildlife conservation area.

by masklinn

4/27/2026 at 8:29:01 AM

thank you. TIL. Hiking the Green Belt sounds like an interesting long-term hiking project

by solstice

4/27/2026 at 9:59:55 AM

At a glance the part of it that goes along the Polish coastline is largely forests growing on the sand dunes at the coast.

The experience is mixed, as while you can find amazing places like Słowiński Park Narodowy, where due to proximity to the lake and sea light pollution is low enough to behold the Milky Way, most of that section is interrupted by footpaths for beachgoers and really busy in season.

by Tade0

4/27/2026 at 3:14:03 AM

They write all this `scientificy` stuff then put stuff like "Recent research has found that the combination of heat emitted from radioactive contamination ..."

The energy released by these environmental isotopes is microscopic. By the time that energy dissipates into the surroundings, the macroscopic thermal output is practically zero. It cannot alter local temperatures, it cannot warm a microclimate, and it certainly cannot cause "heat" stress to wildlife.

I wonder if the editors added this bit in a bout of 'whatboutism' to get some global warming agenda in there?

by mianos

4/27/2026 at 4:45:54 AM

[dead]

by aaron695

4/27/2026 at 6:53:05 AM

It’s embarrassing for humanity that we cause an almighty ecological disaster and then one of the biggest factors in the recovery of local ecosystems is our absence.

by jl6

4/27/2026 at 9:09:00 AM

Nice one! Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

by contingencies

4/27/2026 at 1:58:35 PM

What does that project have to do with the above comment?

by titaniumtown

4/27/2026 at 5:23:34 PM

Did you read the page? It's a long-running manual project to document interesting quotes a good portion of which are from HN, with a vague focus on philosophy of design and the modern human condition. You can run it as a fortune-like program at login: brain food upon opening a terminal is a unix tradition dating from 1979. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_(Unix)

Here's a few randoms to give you a sense:

In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. - J.C.R. Licklider and R. W. Taylor (1968)

Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it. - Eric S. Raymond, The Art of Unix Programming (2003)

The benefit of using [a formal specification language] is that it teaches you to think rigorously, to think precisely, and the important point is the precise thinking. So what you need to avoid at all costs is any language that's all syntax and no semantics. - Leslie Lamport

The only function of what we do, of art or of anything, is to give voice to the unspoken: to give it a form that it's never been perceived in before. We can't change the evolution of history or gentrification, you can't stop it but at least you can say "look what you're losing". All we can do is give an image to an idea. - Chris Doyle

The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it. - Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid

by contingencies

4/27/2026 at 10:45:50 AM

This is the rewilding narrative. It's essentially misanthropic and benefits the rich and government agencies. In response, people are supposed to be shoved into cities and out of the countryside. We should be looking at ways that cities and suburban areas can be made more friendly to wildlife (other than the likes of pigeon, mice and rats etc) Humanity's future is co-operation with nature, not creating massive safari parks for rich people and quangos. Even at somewhere like the Chernobyl exclusion zone it is obvious that nature has not fully reverted to its previous state, since it contends with human artefacts and contamination at every step.

by nephihaha

4/27/2026 at 11:32:30 AM

> In response, people are supposed to be shoved into cities and out of the countryside.

Both Ukraine and Russia have plenty of rural landscape. Neither government is trying to shove people into cities against their own will. Occasionally villages try to attract younger people, but those dont really wanna.

(But in both countries, urban people rarely move to villages due to lack of employment opportunities and do move to cities to get jobs.)

by watwut

4/28/2026 at 7:57:27 AM

Most of Russia is actually uninhabitable due to climate — cold or aridity. Outside Europe Russians are mostly found along the Trans-Siberian corridor and a few other pockets such as Norilsk, Lake Baikal and some river basins. Norilsk itself is an anomaly and is harsh even today.

by nephihaha

4/27/2026 at 1:34:34 PM

Have to push back on the "people shoved into cities" narrative. It just sounds like the conspiracy theories around "15 minutes cities" all over again.

An example of rewilding on its wikipedia page is "wildlife-friendly overpasses and underpasses". That's literally going the "making areas more friendly to wildlife" route.

When it comes to 15-minute cities there's all these conspiracies, but then you look behind it and it's just about allowing economic liberty to build taller and allow more commercial uses like doctors, daycares, and corner stores in residential neighborhoods, and restrict free government subsidized street parking.

It's good to be viligant, okay? And if any policies come up that are shoving people into cities, feel free to protest. But until then, a lot of the policies are actually exactly the "being more friendly to wildlife" that you're asking for and not shoving people into cities.

by kjshsh123

4/28/2026 at 7:49:50 AM

We've already had "rewilding" here. It was called the Highland Clearances. Thousands of people kicked off their ancestral land to be replaced by sheep, grouse moors and deer.

We have the misanthropic billionaire Tetrapak heir buying swathes of countryside in the same region and wanting to kick the remaining people off it.

There are plenty of policies pushing people into cities. It is becoming dearer and dearer to run any kind of vehicle in the countryside here, while there is a near lack of public transport in most places.

The trouble with the fifteen minute city idea is that physical facilities are gone in many cases and replaced by online ones. We don't consider doctors to be "commercial usage" here yet.

by nephihaha

4/27/2026 at 12:02:10 PM

At this stage rewilding is a matter of establishing lifeboats for what little remains before it completely disappears, not wiping the landscape clean.

You can't put the full measure of ecological complexity into a small cage in a zoo.

by mapt

4/28/2026 at 7:54:21 AM

There are actually vast swathes of territory with very little human population. There is an entire continent which is almost completely inhabited apart from a few bases. Same with most of the Sahara and other such deserts. Or much of the larger mountain ranges. The world's population is not evenly distributed, and is mostly coastal even today. Even Asia, the most heavily populated continent has thousands of square miles with barely anyone in it.

We've already had some "rewilding" in Scotland and it was called the Highland Clearances. It resulted in the almost wholesale destruction of Gaelic culture, and most of the region's people losing their homes. Now we have billionaires and aristocrats who want to finish that process.

by nephihaha

5/1/2026 at 2:52:30 PM

As far as I can tell, that's such an insane take I can't even recognize it as propaganda. The Highland Clearances had nothing to do with rewilding and everything to do with committing to better economies of scale in agriculture based on new technology... on top of (reading between the lines) a probable political imperative to deliberately wipe out the clans as organizing bodies, no different than dekulakization or killing all the bison.

AFAICT the Highlands (like much of the rest of the unpopulated parts of the UK) aren't wild now, they're a sort of overgrazed brownfield site with damaged drainage patterns that have been reduced to a handful of species.

by mapt

4/27/2026 at 5:44:01 AM

Related, if you haven't seen the TV show Chernobyl, I could not recommend it highly enough!

by kwar13

4/27/2026 at 8:02:54 AM

For a TV series the TV show Chernobyl was pretty accurate. For those who watched the the TV show, I recommend to also see an interview with an actual Ukrainian medical responder and radiation expert who was working in Chernobyl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1GEPsSVpZY

Probably the best non-technical book on the Chernobyl disaster is the book "Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe" by Serhii Plokhy. It describes not only the accident, but also the whole soviet system and political, economical decisions which led to the resulting catastrophe.

The most comprehensive technical report is INSAG-7 The Chernobyl Accident - IAEA. https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.p...

by leonidasrup

4/27/2026 at 8:12:34 AM

No, the show is not accurate. The last episode repeats the lies that Legasov told at the IAEA meeting in 1986, that were published as INSAG-1, and the show completely ignores INSAG-7. There was no drama in the control room, no indications that anything was wrong with the reactor, no power spike before AZ-5 was pressed.

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 8:28:59 AM

It was a drama TV show, not a documentary. Whey compare it with TV shows, like Simpsons or movies like The China Syndrome, it was accurate.

"according to INSAG-1, the main cause of the accident was the operators' actions, but according to INSAG-7, the main cause was the reactor's design."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigations_into_the_Cherno...

by leonidasrup

4/27/2026 at 11:11:53 AM

The TV show pretends to be historically accurate, and many people believe that it is true. I would suspect that the majority of people have no other sources of information about Chernobyl other than this TV show.

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 11:01:28 AM

How does it make sense that the show ignores INSAG-7 when the whole plot point about the design of the control rods increasing the reactivity isn't from INSAG-1 but from INSAG-7? The same with the plotline about this defect being known, but kept from the operators. And Legasov lying about all this at the IAEA meeting? All-in-all INSAG-1 paints a picture of operator failure, INSAG-7 paints a picture of systemic failure and the show paints a picture of systemic failure.

And to nitpick: INSAG-7 doesn't disagree with INSAG-1 about the power rising just before AZ-5. From page 8 of INSAG-7: "When the turbine was tripped, the four pumps it was powering began to slow down as the turbine speed was reduced and the associated generator voltage fell. This reduced rate of core flow caused the void content of the core to rise and caused an initial positive feedback of reactivity which was at least in part the cause of the acci- dent." (page 8) This happens ~30 seconds before AZ-5 is pushed.

The same event described in Table I on page 21-22 of INSAG-1, with the part deprecated by INSAG-7 marked with {}:

01:23:04 {The personnel blocked the two-TG trip signal.} Emergency stop valve to the turbine was closed. The reactor continues operating at a power of 200 MW(th).

01:23:10 One group of automatic control rods start driving out

01:23:21 Two groups of automatic control rods begin reinsertion.

01:23:31 Net reactivity increasing with subsequent slow increase in reactor power.

01:23:40 Operator pushes AZ-5 button (reactor trip).

The textual description on page 25 of INSAG-1 isn't much different: "When the emergency stop valve to the turbine was closed, the steam pressure began to rise. The flow through the core started to drop because four of the main cooling pumps were running down with the generator. Increasing pressure, reduced feedwater flow and reduced flow through the reactor are competing factors which determine the volumetric steam quality and hence the power of the reactor. It should be emphasized that the reactor was then in such a state that small changes in power would have led to much larger changes in steam void, with consequent power increases. The combination of these factors ultimately led to a power increase begninning at about 01:23:30."

A scanned copy of INSAG-1: https://ilankelman.org/miscellany/chernobyl.pdf

The Soviet report to IAEA in 1986: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...

by sehansen

4/27/2026 at 11:16:34 AM

Quote from INSAG-7 https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.p...

> neither the reactor power nor the other parameters (pressure and water level in the steam separator drums, coolant and feedwater flow rates, etc.) required any intervention by the personnel or by the engineered safety features from the beginning of the tests until the EPS-5 button was pressed. The Commission did not detect any events or dynamic processes, such as hidden reactor runaway, which could have been the event which initiated the accident. “

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 12:09:27 PM

Sure, I'm just saying the power increase did happen, according to both INSAG-1 and INSAG-7. Neither INSAG-1, INSAG-7 nor Legasovs report claims there is a rapid increase in power before AZ-5 is pushed. The claim in INSAG-1 is that this power increase was the start of a positive-feedback loop that caused the explosion. The claim in INSAG-7 was that the power increase was not a safety problem, except to the extent it caused the operator to push AZ-5.

by sehansen

4/27/2026 at 12:13:43 PM

The AZ-5 button was pushed as normal shutdown procedure as the test had been completed, not as a reaction to some event.

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 1:16:57 PM

I can't find any description of the test across the three reports mentioning that that emergency stop button is supposed to be pressed as part of the test. AFAICT the test wasn't even completed when the button was pressed as the purpose of the test was to demonstrate that the emergency core cooling system could run for at least 40 s (INSAG-1 page 17) after closing the turbine emergency stop valve. That valve was closed at 01:23:04 and AZ-5 was pressed at 01:23:40.

by sehansen

4/27/2026 at 3:12:04 PM

For the rundown test, after the valve cut-off, it is irrelevant whether the reactor was shut down or not. The working plan for the test only specified that it was supposed to run before a planned maintenance period, so the shutdown was implied. During previous tests, the AZ-5 signal was wired to the valve cut-off signal and was sent automatically at the same moment. It is not clear why this changed in 1986, but the outcome would have been the same if AZ-5 had been pressed 35 seconds earlier.

by man8alexd

4/28/2026 at 12:01:59 PM

Can you point to anywhere in INSAG-7 where they talk explicitly about that? Because if not your point about the show ignoring INSAG-7 falls a bit flat.

by sehansen

4/28/2026 at 12:18:11 PM

This information is not discussed in INSAG-7. It is from trial testimonies sourced from the book by Nikolai Karpan (deputy chief engineer of Chernobyl NPP), who was present at the trial and made notes himself.

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 8:25:55 AM

It is silly how the show depicted Dyatlov as an arrogant sargeant behaving like a bully in American series about mid school kids.

This alone sets the tone of a TV show that needs to have clear goodies and baddies, and obviously life is never that simple.

by tdiff

4/27/2026 at 11:35:59 AM

I have seen real world adults behave that way. Including multiple managers. The real world Dyatlov being verbally abusive is something the show has taken from the real world.

And before someone goes on about cultural difference, there are several high profile examples of American leaders/directors/business men acting in openly abusive ways.

by watwut

4/27/2026 at 12:03:13 PM

"Verbal abuse" isn't a concept that existed in the Soviet Union. Giving or receiving instructions with as many "suka blyat" inserted between each word as possible wasn't abnormal.

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 3:46:07 PM

It was concept that existed in the Soviet Union. And yes, people complained about those, got rid of them first thing whenever they could and retaliated when they could.

Soviet Union people knew the concept of "non-asshole boss" and could distinguish it from "asshole boss". They would use those terms. Where they could vote for boss (and yes they could vote for boss in some institutions) they would avoid voting for assholes (unless they expected them to be assholes to external people).

This concept existed also in literature, movies, music and general entertainment. It shown up there and the "good boss" always won (else it could be constructed as a critique of the system). Asshole boss was typically foreign ennemy in disguise.

by watwut

4/27/2026 at 4:20:12 PM

Internet at its best - explaining how it was in the USSR to a former soviet citizen.

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 12:19:15 PM

>, there are several high profile examples of American leaders/directors/business men acting in openly abusive ways.

What an out of touch statement.

Have you ever worked in a restaurant or on a construction site?

Nothing the ruling class or their useful idiot cronies does publicly even approaches what's not considered abuse in those contexts.

by cucumber3732842

4/27/2026 at 3:49:14 PM

I actually worked in a restaurant, two different restaurants to be clear. I liked that job actually. Both were good place, but pay was not all that great.

Nothing even approached the high profile behavior I have in mind.

Your restaurant or construction site just sucked, plainly.

by watwut

4/27/2026 at 10:46:54 AM

Most modern television tends towards caricatures and melodrama.

by nephihaha

4/27/2026 at 12:18:00 PM

I am not sure what your comment is getting at. Bullying is only American?

by kwar13

4/27/2026 at 5:50:22 AM

This. Also, Higginbotham's "Midnight in Chernobyl" is brilliant prose about the disaster, from the run-up through to the aftermath. At times, it reads more like a thriller (and a fast-paced one at that!) than prose.

by lb1lf

4/27/2026 at 9:19:31 AM

Higginbotham uses Medvedev's book as a source. Medvedev worked in the Ministry of Energy and he was their special representative in Chernobyl after the incident. His task was to cover the asses of the ministry and the reactor designers, so this book invented a lot of "facts" to put the blame on the operators, Dyatlov and Fomin.

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 6:29:58 AM

Same goes for his other book Challenger.

by ffritz

4/27/2026 at 7:59:09 AM

I also recommend Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, some of people the characters from the book are even present in the TV series.

by Klaster_1

4/27/2026 at 7:23:09 AM

Yes it is very good cinematic. Unfortunately it is far from the truth.

by sebazzz

4/27/2026 at 6:33:00 AM

I thought the show was horrible. It was moralistic, quite on the nose, and the dialogue was pretty corny. There were a lot of obvious appeals to your average NYT and Atlantic type viewer, which is surely the main factor behind its critical acclaim.

by materiallie

4/27/2026 at 6:48:05 AM

I found the dialog fairly realistic. Maybe because I grew up in a similar country - it sounded like real world people talk.

Also, events and actions were close to how reality unfolded with simplified cast of characters, basically.

by watwut

4/27/2026 at 10:49:13 AM

Simplified characters and strongly amplified and invented extra drama and events.

by lukan

4/27/2026 at 12:06:29 PM

I worked in the soviet nuclear industry (Sredmash) in the 1980s.

The dialogs and characters are completely unrealistic and made me cringe. Everyone looks overemotional and infantile.

The hierarchical interactions are comical - a minister would never go to talk to miners, he would just phone a subordinate and tell them to organize people, they don't need armed soldiers present to enforce something, it is not the Wild West. The authors have no clue about the soviet mentality and how soviet society operated.

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 12:30:59 PM

Well, how else would you show a minister giving a command to n layers of people before going to the miners on a drama show?

by gf000

4/27/2026 at 12:52:15 PM

Easy but boring. Realistically, the workers would be gathered in a hall and their immediate boss would give a speech: "The party and the government want you to serve the Motherland at this heroic moment and volunteer for a hard job. Whoever goes gets apartments ahead of the waiting list".

by man8alexd

4/27/2026 at 4:37:56 AM

For a deep dive into the state of life in the exclusion zone about a decade and a half after the disaster, I highly recommend reading Wormwood Forest, by Mary Mycio, published in 2005.

by cratermoon

4/27/2026 at 10:42:44 AM

I am going to the funeral of a woman tomorrow who was in her forties and from the Ukraine. Her parents think it is likely her cancer may be a result of Chernobyl. I don't know, but its shadow is still with us, way after the fall of the USSR and deep into a new century.

by nephihaha

4/27/2026 at 8:46:32 AM

> During the 40 years since the disaster, it has become clear that many species are living quite happily within the 37-mile-wide (60km) exclusion zone set up around the ruined power plant. But that's not to say nature hasn't changed here – sometimes for the worse.

So.. the radiations has had virtually no impact on the natural ecosystem's regrowth?

Not only... we've always been told about the disastrous consequences of nuclear radiation, but, according to the BBC article (by Chris Baraniuk), that's not the case.

I don't know... I'm quite perplexed.

by aledevv

4/27/2026 at 8:50:53 AM

Nobody's measuring cancer rates in wild animals.

Due to our long lifespan, humans are relatively vulnerable to radiation, radioactive materials, and other bioaccumulative poisons. A fish might not accumulate enough mercury to kill itself over its lifetime, but when you eat one every day it all adds up.

This was why the disaster was so bad for so many farmers across Europe: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-36112372 ; the caesium is not enough to kill a sheep, which has a life of one or two years before slaughter, but should not be consumed by humans.

by pjc50

4/27/2026 at 10:00:18 AM

The man-made radioactive isotope caesium-137 can be detected in the bodies of all living humans and it was there even before the Chernobyl accident. The first nuclear explosion in 1945 spread, for the first time, the isotope caesium-137 over the whole planet. We have so sensitive methods of detecting caesium-137 that we can use them to check if a bottle of wine was produces before 1945

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/03/318241738/ho...

Of-course there were radionuclides in our bodies even before the first nuclear test in 1945. For example Potassium-40 or Carbon-14. The presence of Carbon-14 in organic matter is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method to date archaeological, geological and hydrogeological samples.

The big question is how much radionuclides is safe and how much radionuclides is a health risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dose%E2%80%93response_relation...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_dose

by leonidasrup

4/27/2026 at 12:36:57 PM

In addition to that, if a quarter of animals die prematurely from some horrible disease, that’s just Tuesday. People tend to get upset when that happens among humans.

For a long time there was a serious debate over whether wild animals actually experienced aging or not, because they’d never live long enough to get noticeably aged.

by wat10000

4/27/2026 at 10:29:33 AM

Well.

There are dogs roaming around the Buryakovka nuclear waste storage facility. About ~10 years ago I have been told that their average lifespan was in a ballpark of three years. Make what you will from it.

OTOH Przewalski's horses are just thriving in the Zone!

by egorfine

4/27/2026 at 10:48:24 AM

That sounds quite accurate. The average lifespan of a feral cat in the wild is said to be a year or two. Much shorter than the domestic equivalent.

by nephihaha

4/27/2026 at 8:50:55 AM

He didn't say that though. He said many species are living quite happily, but nature has also changed, sometimes for the worse

by afro88

4/27/2026 at 8:20:25 AM

What surprises me is the constant attention to Chernobyl (TV series, books, articles, games) and the almost complete silence about Fukushima.

Yet these are quite comparable accidents.

I wonder what the reason is?

by vmxdev

4/27/2026 at 10:33:58 AM

They're incomparable.

In Fukushima four PWR type reactors (which is just a large metal pot) melted but stayed inside the containment vessels.

In Chernobyl, an RBMK reactor, which is a ginormous slab of graphite, exploded outwards and burned for ten days, releasing mind-boggling amounts of radioactive hot particles into the top layers of the atmosphere, thus contaminating the whole world.

Incomparable.

by egorfine

4/27/2026 at 10:49:53 AM

Contamination from Fukushima has been found thousands of miles away across the Pacific Ocean.

by nephihaha

4/27/2026 at 12:41:48 PM

That says a lot more about the sensitivity of the instruments than about the severity of the accident.

by wat10000

4/27/2026 at 12:06:57 PM

interesting, any sources? (looking for a personal recommendation)

by sauravmaheshkar

4/27/2026 at 11:02:26 AM

> They're incomparable.

They were different kinds of disasters, but not incomparable in terms of the scope and reach of damage done to the environment. Chernobyl didn't have the situation of dumping incalculable amounts of radioactive water into the Pacific.

by baranul

4/27/2026 at 2:16:38 PM

the ocean is a pretty fine place for radioactive water to be. the Pacific is really big and radiation danger is dose dependent.

by adgjlsfhk1

4/28/2026 at 6:46:36 AM

The ocean is very much not a fine place for perpetual dumping of large amounts of radioactive water, because of the long half lives of various radioactive contaminants. Humans eat the fish, that swim in the ocean. Dumping dangerous wastes into the ocean is not smart.

Caesium-137 and Strontium-90 are examples. They can get into the seafood chain and very much do increase cancer risks.

by baranul

4/27/2026 at 2:41:21 PM

That's relative. People eat seafood. Which is why this was a concern for many of the neighboring countries.

by baranul

4/28/2026 at 3:06:26 AM

Unlike chemical contamination (e.g. mercury) radiation doesn't bio-accumulate. The seafood won't have higher radiation levels than the water (less than a banana).

by adgjlsfhk1

4/28/2026 at 6:42:13 AM

> Unlike chemical contamination (e.g. mercury) radiation doesn't bio-accumulate.

That is a very, very misinformed or misleading statement. Caesium-137 and Strontium-90 have half lives of around 30 years and do get into seafood. There are warnings given out often about radioactive contaminated seafood. That's why Fukushima's radioactive water dumping was such a problem and neighboring countries had issues with it.

Seafood can and does get radioactive contamination and this increases cancer risks in humans that consume it.

by baranul

4/27/2026 at 10:58:01 AM

> I wonder what the reason is?

Different reactions, by different types of governments and politicians. Chernobyl was also seen as an European problem, thus numerous other nations and organizations were more significantly involved.

With Fukushima, the government and companies involved had greater control over the flow of allowed information and reporting. For instance, Korea was greatly concerned about Fukushima, but could do little to intervene or interfere with internal Japanese affairs.

by baranul

4/27/2026 at 10:15:37 AM

We should have an movie or TV series about the most deadly accident related to production of energy. No, it not the Chernobyl accident.

It was 1975 Banqiao Dam failure in Henan province in Central China, which is still not much known in the West.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

by leonidasrup

4/27/2026 at 8:55:39 AM

Fukushima wasn't mishandled quite so badly, didn't kill significant numbers of rescue workers, didn't require emergency containment, and didn't contaminate half of Western Europe (most of it ended up in the Pacific).

However it was still enough to make Germany shut down its working reactors.

by pjc50

4/27/2026 at 9:22:44 AM

How many rescue workers did it kill?

by philipallstar

4/27/2026 at 9:51:16 AM

I had to go and look it up: none. There is a lot of discourse about the number of people killed directly or indirectly during or after the evacuation, however ..

by pjc50

4/27/2026 at 9:53:31 AM

Some people definitely died in the evacuation due to the tsunami. Were any additional evacuated due to the nuclear implication?

by philipallstar

4/27/2026 at 8:36:52 AM

First big disaster of its kind directly resulting in death, almost certain to get more attention. Plus it allowed for substantial propaganda points (probably well deserved) against the USSR during the Cold War, their opponents would have been stupid not to take advantage of the disaster to ridicule them for their incompetence.

by Revanche1367

4/27/2026 at 9:32:46 AM

its easy: - Udssr did something wrong its very useful to this day for the us. - Fukushima was done by an "western orientated" country. - The fact that people say that chernobyl was worse then Fukushima is them not thinking. Fukushima was build in a area were this kind of accidents happen all the time. - If Fukushima happened in China you would have more netflix tv shows about it how bad it was handled. - Remember western media is going through an American lens. Just watch any main stream holy wood movie about war and think of it as US propaganda and you will see it everywhere

by lampe3

4/27/2026 at 10:24:22 AM

The USSR made several key decisions which made Chernobyl a far more dangerous and deadly situation and it's important that the decision making process is studied and understood to stop it from being repeated. As far as I'm aware Fukushima was a series of unlikely events when brought together ended in a disaster. The decision making process was fairly open to the public and open to international scrutiny and criticism.

by venzaspa

4/27/2026 at 10:39:29 AM

How about a movie or more attention to the civilizational cataclysm that was burning coal near inhabited areas? Major cities during the coal burning area would seem post apocalyptic to us now.

by wffurr

4/27/2026 at 8:30:14 AM

They are not comparable accidents, Fukishima had no direct casualties and mostly very local effects and Chernobyl needs no introduction. I guess the cause / back story is more interesting for Chernobyl as well because of the human and political aspects.

by Neil44

4/27/2026 at 8:40:05 AM

There are regular reports on Fukushima progress from the Japanese media agency (whose initials escape me for now*). I'm guessing you're not seeing these.

These are not comparable accidents for a number of reasons, direct radiation deaths for one:

Chernobyl: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...

  The accident destroyed the Chernobyl 4 reactor, killing 30 operators and firemen within three months and several further deaths later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Another person is reported to have died at the time from a coronary thrombosisc. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was originally diagnosed in 237 people onsite and involved with the clean-up and it was later confirmed in 134 cases. Of these, 28 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident.
Fukushima: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...

  There have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident, but over 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes as a preventative measure.
Both quotes from the same source: https://world-nuclear.org/our-association/who-we-are

* --- EDIT: NHK is Japan's public service broadcaster!(??) See: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/tag/8/

for those tagged "Fukishima" (I think) .. they have had something new every three to six months since it happened (more doco's then, fewer now)

by defrost

4/27/2026 at 9:57:05 AM

1. It was truly the first nuclear disaster of this scale that gave a huge boost to the green movements all over the world, at the time when they were already on the rise

2. Most of that attention actually came years later from the former USSR itself, where Chernobyl was massively influential. It had a nationwide cleanup campaign. Along with the other two major contemporary disasters (Spitak earthquake and Ufa disaster) it brought massive political change. Free press in the USSR, questioning the competency of the party and the scientific/engineering communities, fears of future man-made disasters on chemical plants and other industrial facilities, massive charity campaigns in USSR, creation of disaster relief agencies in post-Soviet republics etc. Even the post-Soviet wave of pulp fiction is partially the result of Chernobyl. Fukushima didn't bring even 1/10 of that change to Japan.

> games

However this one is largely unrelated. STALKER SoC that popularized Chernobyl isn't actually about the Chernobyl disaster at all, it just uses the exclusion zone as a decoration, after pivoting from the original, much more ambitious concept during the development. They famously overpromised and underdelivered, and the interest was mostly there due to the community deciding to mod this jank into the game they've been promised. So it's mostly a coincidence and a result of a great marketing campaign by the original GSC.

by orbital-decay

4/27/2026 at 8:29:15 AM

cynical take: propaganda value

by alexejb

4/27/2026 at 10:27:26 AM

Just like the Falkland's penguins who inhabit an area filled with landmines, keeping humans out is just as crucial to biodiversity as any measure to assist the wildlife within.

by Devasta

4/27/2026 at 1:09:01 AM

1) It is always interesting with nuclear articles to separate the language from the actual measure of harm. On the one hand we have the "abandoned, irradiated landscape of Chernobyl... not far from the ruins of the power plant at the centre of the world's worst nuclear disaster". On the other hand we have all these animals who, being unable to read and forced to rely on observable harm, think the situation is pretty good.

This article is much better than most because it links a study that talks about the actual levels of radiation around Chernobyl, but the amount of legwork these reporters make people do to try and figure out the "so what?" of the thing is remarkably lazy. It baffles me how fearful people get without being at all worried about whether there is an observable problem.

> For years, researchers have documented weird, twisted trees, swallows troubled by tumours and even an eerie black fungus that lives inside the radioactive ruins of the reactor building itself.

I mean, y'know, oh no! Outside the Chernobyl exclusion zone I can't imagine encountering a twisted tree or a cancerous swallow. How big an issue are we talking? Are they going to make me spend my afternoon reading papers? Are these swallows helpful enough to live only in the irradiated areas for us or are these swallows migratory? What's their air-speed velocity?

I won't even begin on the horrifying implications of black fungus. My poor bathroom needs a clean.

2) This is one of the few places on earth where these animals are safe from the #1 apex predator that is actively ... I don't know what the next one up from genocide is, lets say ... speciescidal. I'd expect wild mutations since the most important evolutionary pressure in the rest of the world isn't present. While evolution due to radiation is possible it is going to be quite challenging to tease that out. Evolution due to human irrationality creating an animal sanctuary seems more likely.

by roenxi

4/27/2026 at 7:50:03 AM

The longer you live, the more of a problem cancer is. Most animals have pretty short lifespans compared to humans. I think that must also be a factor.

by actionfromafar

4/27/2026 at 6:50:25 AM

The chernobyl radiation issue denial on HN runs strong.

by watwut

4/27/2026 at 9:24:33 AM

The opposite psychological symptom is Radiophobia. The psychological effects of radiation fear after Chernobyl accident were strong:

"As the increase in radiation in Denmark was so low that almost no increased risk of birth defects was expected, the public debate and anxiety among the pregnant women and their husbands "caused" more fetal deaths in Denmark than the accident. This underlines the importance of public debate, the role of the mass media and of the way in which National Health authorities participate in this debate."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia#Chernobyl_abortion...

by leonidasrup

4/27/2026 at 8:56:42 AM

Amateur nuclear propagandists desperately want to win one against the solarbros and windwakers.

by pjc50

4/27/2026 at 2:26:49 AM

Are we talking about an African or a European swallow?

by SoftTalker