Inside the Zone: Chernobyl

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Atop the list of phrases that strike fear into our collective psyche is nuclear meltdown. A nuclear meltdown is not complete without radioactive fallout, carried by the gentle breeze which sullies everything it blows by. The areas of land that are most contaminated by the radioactive fallout are referred to as exclusion zones. A person might image that exclusion zones are where luminescent people, animals with two heads, fish with arms, and land that glows fluorescent green reside. Thankfully, that is not the outcome of such a disaster. The real effects of radiation in exclusion zones are not at all akin to anything from a science fiction movie.
On a seemingly ordinary April night in 1986, the colorful town of Chernobyl, Ukraine and all that surrounded it, was about to be painted black. Something cataclysmic was about to happen, an experimental test at the Chernobyl nuclear power station was about to go severely wrong. Inexperienced plant operators circumvented security measures prior to the exercise, which made it possible for an unforeseen steam explosion to compromise the reactor vessel. The fire that resulted from the explosion burned for 10 days, discharging radioactive debris into the sky, which consequently contaminated nearly sixty square miles of land in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation)
Consequently, approximately 200,000 people were evacuated from their homes, and an exclusion zone with a radius of 19 miles was established. Shortly after evacuating the 33,000 citizens of Pripyat, Ukraine in 1986, nearly 1,200 of them illegally returned to their homes in the exclusion zone. Some not willing to start life over in the city, others refused to leave the pa...

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...le." International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. International Atomic Energy Agency, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. .
Landau, Elizabeth. "After Chernobyl, Complexity Surrounds Local Health Problems." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. .
Morris, Holly. "After Chernobyl, They Refused to Leave." CNN. Cable News Network, 07 Nov. 2013. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. .
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. "Assessments of the Chernobyl Accident." UNSCEAR Assessments of the Chernobyl Accident. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. .

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