The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone: Ukraine’s Nuclear Eden

today's video is sponsored by short form  you don't have time to read every book   ever written and that's where short form  comes in you guys can get a free five-day   trial to their time-saving book  guides more on them in just a bit in the early as of april 25th 1986 a botched  safety test caused reactor number four   at the chernobyl nuclear power plant to explode  the blast hurled radioactive debris far and wide   a fire ignited that burned for 10 days releasing  dangerous radionucleotides like plutonium-239   and caesium-137 into the atmosphere over northern  ukraine it was by any definition the worst nuclear   accident in history one that made even the triple  meltdown of fukushima looked like an explosion   of ice cream and candy floss but while the  chernobyl disaster remains ghoulishly fascinating   it's not the story we're telling today instead  we want to examine what came next what happened   after a nuclear meltdown poisoned an area larger  than greater london rendering it uninhabitable for   thousands of years the answer is far more complex  and far more interesting than anyone back in 1986   could have imagined established in the chaos  following the incident the chernobyl exclusion   zone is a rhode island-sized area of toxic land  that's off-limits devoid of humanity has instead   become a kind of ghostly eden populated  with animals that live among the abandoned   buildings dangerous beautiful or inspiring this  is the story of ukraine's radioactive paradise in the final book of the christian bible  the book known alternatively as revelation   or the apocalypse the prophet john records  a nightmarish vision of the end times amid   angels summoning mountains of fire and general  nastiness one image stands out above all others   the one contained in revelation chapter 8 verses  10 and 11. and the third angel sounded and there   fell a great star from heaven burning as it were a  lamp and it fell upon the third part of the rivers   and upon the fountains of waters and the name  of the star is called wormwood and the third   part of the waters became wormwood and many men  died of the waters because they were made bitter   for centuries this passage fantasy one more  apocalyptic vision from a religious text that   is filled with them it was only in 1986 that  it gained striking prominence quoted in awe by   ronald reagan and others wormwood you see is a  type of wild growing herb one that can be found   in abundance in the forests and marshlands on the  plains surrounding the pripyat river in northern   ukraine noted for its black branches or chonyi  in ukrainian it would eventually give its name   to the settlement that grew up there chernobyl and  it would be the number four reactor of chernobyl   burning at temperatures to rival the stars that  would one day cause ukraine's apocalypse the   recorded history of the area that would become  the chernobyl exclusion zone begins in 1193 when   a small settlement was reported among the wild  hunting lands used by the princes of kievan rus   really though it can be said to begin long before  humans intruded a dense cluster of wild forests   bogs and grassland that together made up what's  been called europe's largest swamp the chernobyl   region stood unchanged since time immemorial this  was europe at its most prime evil the sort of   impenetrable landscape where lost and hungry  children might stumble across creepy gingerbread   houses although people did try to live here  it was a tenuous existence floods would drown   this wild world for months at a time when it  was dry marauding armies would sweep through   dragging the few inhabitants back and forth  between warring kingdoms perhaps it's no   surprise that only outsiders and the oppressed  seemed inclined to permanently settle here   at one point the region was home to a thriving  hasidic jewish community but then the soviets   came and suddenly the region was transformed in  the 19th century many of the poorest surrounding   chernobyl had been chopped down as part of a  doomed drive to increase agricultural yields   now the ussr's agents replanted them all turning  the wild land into a great pine nursery that   could provide fuel and lumber to the soviet  union it's this altered landscape that we see   today not a remnant of europe's ancient past but a  man-made imitation designed to maximize ukraine's   usefulness it was in a similar spirit that the  forest was chosen for another soviet upgrade the   construction of the vladimir lenin nuclear power  plant ironically it would be this intrusion of   modern technology that would ultimately turn the  area around chernobyl back into empty wilderness if you're looking for a textbook definition of  irony you can't do much better than what happened   at chernobyl in the spring of 1986. shortly  after midnight on april 25th an ill-designed   safety test on an even illa designed rbmk reactor  resulted in a very unsafe spike in temperature   the runaway reaction saw the inside of the reactor  reach nearly 4650 degrees celsius far hotter than   molten lava and not much cooler than the surface  of the sun seconds later the building housing the   reactor exploded over 28 tons of radioactive  material was vomited out scattering over the   landscape all of it lethal to touch this was just  the beginning of the nightmare as panic gripped   the plant's work as a gigantic fire began in the  core the fire which burned for 10 days carrying   radioactive particles up into the atmosphere where  the winds wafted them first over northern ukraine   and then over most of europe overall some  400 times more radiation was released than   by the bomb that hit hiroshima dangerous levels of  fallout were detected as far away as sweden as we   said in the opening though we're not going to dive  too deep into the chernobyl disaster itself if you   want the details you can actually check out our  video over on our sister channel biographics which   gives you all sorts of terrifying background  info on that for today's story all you need to   know is that it wasn't very long before even  the soviets realized that they couldn't keep   this covered up forever after a couple of days  of lying and obfuscating they abruptly evacuated   the nearby city of pripyat giving its 50 000  plus residents barely an hour's warning before   whisking them away that done the authorities  turned their attention to the surrounding farms   and villages with the reactor still burning with  deadly gases still being ejected into the air a 30   kilometer circle was drawn around the disaster  site every human inside that circle would be   evacuated every domestic animal would be shot it  was the beginning of the chernobyl exclusion zone   as nasty substances like iodine 131 rain  down more than 116 000 people were bust out   over the coming months that number would expand  by another 234 000 as the shape and extent of the   zone metastasized like some sort of toxic tumor  losing its circular borders and growing into   something far messier by the end of 1986 the area  deemed uninhabitable had expanded to 4 700 square   kilometers 2 600 square kilometers in northern  ukraine and another 2100 in southern belarus   altogether an area larger than yosemite park  was denuded of human life barring the essential   workers still struggling to contain the fallout  it's this extraordinary boundary that still today   defines the limits of the modern ce zed today the  frantic activity that marks the desperate time is   long gone instead the shattered area is returning  to the wilderness it once was in the days of the   heaven ruse a collection of dense forests and evil  smelling bogs that see very few humans yet if your   mental image of the zone is a desolate irradiated  wasteland only good for instagram ruined porn   then think again far from being a post-apocalyptic  hellscape the cuz ed is surprisingly and amazingly   alive now before we continue with today's video i  do want to give a shout out to today's fantastic   video sponsor short form look if you like my  channels then you probably like to learn about   stuff a lot of you i bet like to expose yourselves  to new ideas or new information by reading which   is great but the last two decades have seen  an exponential rise in the content that's   available for you to consume from youtube  content like mine to articles podcasts and   of course traditional books now if you're like me  you probably feel like there's never enough time   in the day to consume everything that you think is  interesting well that's where short form comes in   they hijack the central themes and need to know  ideas from hundreds of books making them available   to you in easily consumable packages and this  could be a really convenient tool for instance   you might know there's a massive 500 page tome  that you've been thinking about reading but you're   not sure if it's 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can get free  unlimited access to short form for five days plus   a discounted annual subscription at shortform.com  forward slash geographic so definitely go take   advantage of those five days and get yourself  some short form and now back to today's video when chernobyl erupted like a giant bottle of  radioactive soda it spewed out some unbelievably   nasty stuff cesium-137 joined plutonium-239  and other scary-sounding things that   are inimical to life so much so that  the international atomic energy agency   estimates most insects and rodents living  in the worst affected areas died off   nowhere in the newly established exclusion zone  symbolizes this more than the red forest a four   kilometer square patch of pines the forest had  the bad luck to be downwind of reactor number four   receiving the brunt of the fallout the entire  forest turned a bright orange red as the trees   died on mass although they were chopped down  and bulldozed over by cleanup crews the image   of such unnatural destruction became a handy  symbol of the disaster a disaster that's still   ongoing of the various radionucleotides released  in the meltdown summit a half-life of several   days meaning the time until they decayed away to  become safe while others had half-lives of several   years in plutonium-239's case that half-life was  24 000 years perhaps no surprise people thought   nothing would ever grow here again but they were  wrong since 1986 plant life has aggressively   returned to the sea's ed the area of the zone  covered by forests has gone from about 30 percent   on the day of the accident to over 70 percent  there are mushrooms berries mosses a whole world   just full of life in fact nature has been so quick  to take over the abandoned villages that many   including the ukrainian government now consider  the exclusion zone europe's largest wildlife   sanctuary you can catch a glimpse of this just by  looking at the ways that different countries refer   to it while ukrainians call it the cez the zone  of alienation the belarusian side is known as the   palsy state radiological reserve not not just to  the radiation but also the wild animals living   there all of which may have left you wondering  what happened how could a place so badly poisoned   continue to thrive and the answer lies in the  fickle nature of fallout if your knowledge of   radiation is limited to half forgotten action  movies you might expect a meltdown like chernobyl   to equally affect all nearby areas but the reality  is that those nasty particles we mentioned settled   unevenly carried by the wind radioactive fallout  spreads itself out barely touching some places   while creating extremely dangerous hot spots  in others this means there are parts of the sea   zed relatively near the reactor that were barely  affected while several kilometers away there could   be a patch of land that would be dangerous as hell  to linger on since the wind was blowing towards   belarus the ukrainian side actually has fewer hot  spots meaning that most of the zone is mostly safe   most of the time as the companies that run tours  to the abandoned villages are fond of saying the   radiation dose received visiting chernobyl is  lower than you'd get on a transatlantic flight   of course that's not to say the authorities could  reopen the zone while background radiation levels   are today over a thousand times lower than after  the explosion these hot spots still exist and they   occasionally move dangerous particles are shifted  around by wind and by rain while many more have   seeped into the ecosystem poisoning water  sources and wild growing food were humans   to come flooding back in the cancer rates a few  decades later would be stratospheric still the   fact that most of the zone is relatively safe  has been ideal for its non-human inhabitants   so it's time for us to meet the wildlife  that calls this inhospitable place home   in 1998 fans of przawalski's horse were in deep  manure likely the last remaining subspecies of   wild horse their favorite animal had long gone  extinct out in the wild and were now on the verge   of staggering into oblivion desperate to try  and reverse its decline experts hit on the idea   of releasing a handful into protected nature  reserves in an effort to get them breeding again   the headline act was mongolia's coustein nurem  national park where the horse had once roamed wild   but as back up it was decided that a few other  places should be tried so it was that between   1998 and 2004 36 were rehomed in the chernobyl  exclusion zone as hilariously bad ideas go   this should have been up there with new coke  or investing in aussie media sort of like hey   how about we introduce this extremely endangered  horse to one of the most toxic places on earth yes   but that just goes to show how little i  apparently know about horses and radiation by   2014 the chernobyl population of the horse had  grown to 65 come 2024 is thought there will be   over 150 living wild what's incredible is this  isn't an isolated story even as the normally   planes-dwelling horses are adapting to the forests  finding shelter and abandoned barns other animals   in chernobyl are staging their own comeback the  most famous of these are the wolves long ago   driven to the margins in most of europe wolves  have started creeping back into the zone since   1986. it's thought that at least 60 now call the  area home with some estimates putting the number   significantly higher although since wolves roam  over large distances it's hard to say for sure   what does seem true is that there are more wolves  in the zone than in other protected landscapes one   study found that the seas aired has seven times  more wolves than other reserves in belarus in   terms of wolf population density chernobyl is now  thought to rank ahead of yellowstone nor are they   the only once rare animals reappearing brown bears  moose european bison links while boar polecats   deer and mink are all on the increase in the heart  of a continent where big wild animals are mostly   fading away take beavers for example with each  passing year the number of beavers living in the   cz appears to be increasing as a result more trees  are being felled this in turn means boggy areas   are growing meaning the landscape is increasingly  starting to look like it did before humans arrived   maybe you've heard of rewilding the invogue  idea of returning tracts of land to nature   while chernobyl has already achieved this in  the 35 years since the disaster this unassuming   slice of northern ukraine has become a thriving  self-sustaining ecosystem not that there aren't   major controversies surrounding it the debate over  the effects of radiation on chernobyl wildlife is   surprisingly heated while no one's denying that  the animal population has spiked what it means   is still up for grabs on the one hand you have  guys like jim beasley who agree that sure maybe   radiation is still hurting individual animals but  on a species-wide level they're thriving better in   the aftermath of a nuclear accident than they  would be in a regular landscape that was home   to humans on the other hand you have dudes like  timothy mousseau who says he's documented signs   of genetic mutations or deformities in a huge  percentage of chernobyl's animals in this view the   hot spots are still causing damage a few backed  up by a 2020 study that found way fewer animals   living in these hot zones than elsewhere so sadly  it's not quite as clear as saying humans are   worse for the environment than a nuclear meltdown  delightful as that soundbite might be yeah there's   one member of the animal kingdom we haven't  covered yet one that's actively chosen to return   to the exclusion zone despite the ever-present  danger we're talking of course about homo sapiens in terms of offers do you want to live in a  radioactive exclusion zone well most people   would probably rank that up there with do you  fancy a porcupine enema but the samicelli aren't   most of us ukrainian for self-settlers their name  refers to the people who were evacuated in 1986   only to return years later to restart their lives  in chernobyl's radioactive shadow to date almost   1 200 evacuees are thought to have come back  sparsely repopulating the villagers that their   ancestors called home some came for ideological  reasons refusing to leave their home soil others   because since radiation is invisible they didn't  believe they had anything to fear most though   simply found life as evacuees too miserable to  handle from subsistence farmers the chernobyl   zone has transformed them into city dwellers  crammed into hastily constructed apartment   blocks and forced to fit in many were shunned  by their neighbors who were scared of catching   radiation sickness and to that the confusion  of city life and the trauma of relocation   and well maybe it's not so surprising they wanted  to go back these days very few samicelli remain   almost all of them women the ukrainian government  has forced most younger people to leave the zone   only those old enough for the cancer risk not to  matter were allowed to stay as a result most of   the returnees have died off the 2021 estimate but  their current population is no more than 130. some   live in little clusters in otherwise abandoned  villages others are now the only ones left in the   area marking their time in this forbidden zone  until death comes for them when that happens   the last living link between the decaying villages  and the outside world will be broken and already   it's badly strained none of the samicelli have  access to running water or shops most grow their   own food or pick it from the forest where fruits  and mushrooms have absorbed dangerous amounts of   cesium-137 winters too are harsh semi-alone in  the wilderness the self-settlers burn trees to   ward off the biting cold since chernobyl trees  are affected by radiation each fire sends yet   more radionuclides back into the atmosphere from  where they fall to earth in many reenactments of   the 1986 meltdown yet for the samuseli this danger  doesn't really matter the brutal fact is that   old age will kill them before radiation-induced  cancers possibly can but they're not the only ones   in the zone stalkers are both the ce's biggest  nuisance and it's great as publicist taking   their name from the andre tarakovsky film stalker  about a dangerous forbidden zone and the men who   infiltrate it they are mostly young thrill-seekers  who break in under darkness to explore the ruins   you know those haunting chernobyl photos that  appear on your instagram the stalkers were the   guys who started that trend unlike the daytime  tourists taking similar photos though stalkers   actually live those images they sleep in abandoned  houses they climb onto the rooftops of decaying   apartment blocks to watch the sun come up on  a dead post-human world unfortunately they   also do insane stuff like drinking unfiltered  water and eating potentially contaminated food   insane because one of the contaminants is  strontium-90 which the body absorbs like calcium   creating a future risk of bone cancer not an issue  for the elderly ellie but an acute one for young   20-something stalkers still the stalkers occupy  the more benign end of the seas-ed's illegal   activity there are reports of secret logging  taking place at night and thieves are known to   break in to steal abandoned scrap metal there's  even a long-standing rumor that ukrainian mafia   bosses bury bodies in the red forest since the  ground is so highly contaminated that trying   to dig them back up would guarantee future ill  health but we don't want to dwell too long on   these clandestine groups instead we want to finish  this chapter talking about its last residence the   refugees just as chernobyl in the distant past was  a place for outsiders so too has it become a home   for the displaced now in particular recent years  have seen those fleeing the war in donbass settle   on the fringes of the sea zed where houses can go  for as little as a few hundred dollars although   technically just outside the zone the soil here  can still be contaminated but that's a step up   from life on the front lines as one donbest  refugee memorably put it to the bbc radiation   may kill us slowly but it doesn't shoot or bomb us  it's better to live with radiation than with war   by now you might be thinking so what's the big  deal with this exclusion zone it can't be that   dangerous with all those people and animals  about and you wouldn't be alone once a niche   proposition tours to the seas and have exploded in  recent years if your pardon is a terrible pun with   nearly 125 000 visitors in 2019 yet even now these  tours only account for five percent of the zone's   daily foot traffic there are 7000 people working  in and around the decommissioned nuclear plant   spending shifts of 15 days in the zone then 15  outside these are the conservationists studying   the forests the people who clear the trees those  running the infrastructure like the daily train   then there's the guards which have been monitoring  the zone's borders so long that they've started to   befriend its feral dogs descendants of those that  escaped the soviet order to kill pripyat's pets   in case they carried contamination with so many  people coming and going it's easy to get lulled   into a false sense of security to start feeling  like chernobyl today is just some big fancy theme   park another item to tick off the bucket list  but while visiting chernobyl is broadly safe   the idea that it's another regular place is an  illusion the danger in the czed is very real   and recently one natural phenomenon has begun  to really worry scientists that's wild fires   back in 1986 all that contamination that got  blasted out of the burning reactor eventually   fell to earth and some 90 percent of it settled  in the canopies of chernobyl's pines when those   pine needles died and fell to the forest floor the  radiant nucleotides fell with them contaminating   the topsoil since many of them mimic non-harmful  elements the trees of the forest eventually   sucked them back up this time absorbing them into  their bodies for ukraine in general this has been   great the trees act as a kind of holding tank  keeping the radioactive elements within the zone   take the trees out of the equation and the decades  of shifting winds and flooding rivers would have   carried these particles far and wide the bad  side when those same trees burn they release   all those radionucleotides following a 1992  wildfire that ignited over 12 000 acres of trees   scientist vasily yashenko decided to find out  just how dangerous this could be in a controlled   experiment he burned a section of chernobyl  pines for 90 minutes to monitor what came out   the answer a whole ton of plutonium cesium and  strontium before an hour had passed duchenko   had received more than three times the maximum  allowed yearly dose for chernobyl workers and   unfortunately wildfires in the czed are happening  with more and more regularity in 2015 a 37 000   acre farce and radiation levels skyrocketing even  worse was a series of 2020 wildfires all told 165   000 acres of trees burned flames nearly engulfed  the ruins of pripyat at one point the wall of fire   got within 4.5 kilometers of the ruined reactor  itself the result was radiation levels 16 times   higher than normal the smoke was so thick that it  blew all the way to kiev each lungful potentially   dangerous as far away as norway cesium levels  increased in the atmosphere and this was just   the biggest fire to date it's been estimated that  where a california-style wildfire to hit chernobyl   burning up the entire exclusion zone everything  in a 150 kilometer radius could be contaminated   including kiev while you wouldn't see  people dying in the street that's still   three million people who could see their cancer  risks skyrocket all thanks to a simple wildfire   with climate change the likelihood of such an  apocalypse only grows every year and don't forget   some of the radio nucleotides in chernobyl will  remain dangerous for millennia these days it's   easy to forget the reality of the seas ed to  only focus on the images we see online and   not the history but make no mistake this  remains a place with teeth not just a wild   memorial to the worst nuclear disaster in  history but an ongoing ecological concern   that will potentially impact our descendants  for generations the artificial star that was   wormwood's burning reactor may not have caused  the apocalypse but it did leave behind traces that   will shape this corner of europe for better and  for worse for tens of thousands of years to come so i really hope you found that video  interesting if you did please do hit   that thumbs up button below don't forget  to subscribe and thank you for watching

Channel: Geographics

Views: 292,006

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Id: wmo4O_uNA8U

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 02 2021