I visited about five years ago. Quite frankly it's pretty safe at this point. There were a few spots here and there that made the Geiger counter tick faster than usual, but for the most part the radiation level wasn't out of the ordinary. I definitely wouldn't think twice about going back. Actually, I'm pretty sure some wanderers live there these days.<p>Photos from my trip: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/127718378@N07/albums/72157648501650282" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/127718378@N07/albums/721576485...</a>
It was a horrible disaster. But, 30 years after the accident, this article is trying to get readers using punchy headlines, like "Children are still being born with severe birth defects". I would have expected a BBC article to be a bit more objective on such controversial conclusions [1].
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disaster#Controversy_over_human_health_effects" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disas...</a>
<i>Design flaws led to a power surge, causing massive explosions which blew the top off reactor four</i><p>Yes, admittedly the design was not great. But deliberate human actions lead to the power surge and subsequent explosion. They were running experiments on the reactor and continued dispite a series of events that were clearly not happening as planned.
The most interesting thing about the Chernobyl disaster is that it seems like human inhabitation is a more destructive force towards wildlife than the levels of radiation that are present - wildlife seems to flourish in this area.
Two years ago I was lucky enough to visit Chernobyl with an organized tour out of Kyev. Strange to think of part of this planet as a forbidden zone, even stranger that it's a tourist attraction.
Basically 30 years after it become more and more clear that only the USSR was capable of containing such events properly. In 1986 Soviet Army soldiers with impregnated coats and shovels in just 2 weeks ensured containment of the accident to the controllable level. Something Japanese government in the 21st century cannot achieve in Fukushima with nanotech and robotics in 5 years.
Well, looks like we're about 1.00011779755% of the way until it's safe again.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/chernobylstatus/status/724956664160509952" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/chernobylstatus/status/72495666416050995...</a>
Half of Europe got contaminated with the fallout for thousands of years, from the north down to the Alps many countries were and still are effected. The same idiotic disaster happened again in Japan (and could have been easily prevented by attaching generators, but fearing loosing the face, it was a cultural problem), and contaminated huge parts of the ocean, Hawaii and the west coast. Only a few countries stopped using or never used this very problematic technology. Hopefully, we don't have to see a third such disaster. Neither Soviet Union (USSR) nor Russia, Ukraine or Japan paid other countries money for the damage their action or non-action they did.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Effects" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Effects</a><p>Apparently the downvoters are either lobbiest of the atom lobby, from those named countries or should read more about the history. The true history isn't always nice.
Is news coverage of an old nuclear accident Britain's way of consoling Ukraine after failing to offer significant support in the fight against Putin's invasion?
>> Design flaws led to a power surge, causing massive explosions which blew the top off reactor four<p>Anybody else catch this wildly inaccurate representation of what caused the explosions? While there certainly were design flaws, it's well-known that this disaster was a direct result of the recklessness of the reactor's operators. I have to wonder if this mischaracterization is an attempt to further scare the public about nuclear power.