Chernobyl animals worse affected than thought: study, page 1

posted on Jun, 25 2009 @ 04:24 PM

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This isn't exactly news, as it was published in March;but I couldn't find a thread about this study, so here it is. I posted it in the Science board to accentuate it's scientific significance, although I picture it would fit in Fragile Earth as well.

LONDON (Reuters) - Radiation has affected animals living near the site of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear disaster far more than was previously thought, a study showed Wednesday, challenging beliefs that local wildlife was on the rebound.

The study showed that numbers of bumble-bees, butterflies, spiders, grasshoppers and other invertebrates were lower in contaminated sites than other areas because of high levels of radiation left over from the blast more than 20 years ago.

The findings challenge earlier research that suggested animal populations were rebounding around the site of the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine, which forced thousands to abandon their homes and evacuate the area.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

From Reuters

I've been wondering how life has been treating the creatures at Chernobyl - it occurred to me that I had no idea at all. The article states that there has been a lack of studies on this subject as well: this particular study was lead by Anders Moller, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in France. At any rate, seems life over there is not too bright (unless you observe it through a radiation detector).

The article I initially read contained a photo from 1989, property of corbis.com, of a deformed calf. A small warning is in order, it's not too pretty - but to me it gave at least some illustration of what's going on, even though the photo appears to be 20 years old. Couldn't find other photos though..

from article on MosNews

[edit on 25-6-2009 by scraze]

ravenshadow13

posted on Jun, 25 2009 @ 04:43 PM

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Thanks! Very interesting.

I've read articles about this before, but you're right about the lack of information on ATS.

It helps us learn about the effects of radiation on animals when it would be cruel to do experiments on them to learn about the same effects.

Zosynspiracy

posted on Jun, 25 2009 @ 04:51 PM

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Yes and I love how the simple minded people of this site claim we can just launch a few nukes at NK and all our problems will be solved. This is exactly WHY America is treading so lightly on the NK issue. Nuclear weapons are no joke. As we are more globally reliant on other countries and vice versa even in that part of the world with China in NKs back yard we don't want to start lobbing nuclear weapons into our trading partners area of the world.

ravenshadow13

posted on Jun, 25 2009 @ 04:53 PM

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reply to post by Zosynspiracy

They're awful. They are our ice-nine. (Vonnegut reference anyone?)

We use them to threaten others, and others use them to threaten us. But no one really wants to use them, or they would have already.

DaMod

posted on Jun, 26 2009 @ 12:53 PM

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Ah yes, the world will become the embodiment of 2009 Gaming hit, Fallout 3. Personally I don't want to see that happen, but NK is getting bolder, and I'm not sure if they understand the severity of the situation. I don't think they understand that launching or detonating one nuke on another nation's soil will cause their as well as our end.