The Chernobyl Catastrophe and its Impact on the Environment
Imagine New York City, a city bustling with life; busy streets, people flooding the sidewalks, flashing lights, and never ending noise. Now imagine a post-apocalyptic city; deserted streets, empty buildings, shattered windows, doors hanging from their hinges, weeds and overgrowth climbing up walls, and unsettling silence. This is how one may describe Pripyat, Ukraine. What was once a city filled with great activity and energy is now a ghost town due to the impact radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident had on the surrounding environment.
April 26, 1986, also known as the date of the worst nuclear accident in history. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was located in what was …show more content…
Besides Chernobyl, there is only one other event that matches the level 7 classification, that event would be Fukushima. Although they both have the same classification, Chernobyl was far more grave. Georg Steinhauser and the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences of Colorado State University state that the amount of radiation emitted during the Chernobyl disaster was “approximately four orders of magnitude higher” than that of Fukushima. Thus, demonstrating how severe Chernobyl was, for the accident was responsible for releasing more radiation than the deliberate dropping of a nuclear …show more content…
Similar to the farm animals, radiation is transferred to the forest animals when they ingest contaminated vegetation. Yablokov, Nesterenko, V.B., and Nesterenko, A.V. (2009) explain that the effects of the radiation range from “changes in population vitality to abnormal reproductive and genetic disorders” (chp. 10). Yablokov, Nesterenko, V.B., and Nesterenko, A.V. explain an example of genetic mutations, “Abnormal spermatozoa (head deviations, two heads, two tails, etc.) in barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) occurred at significantly higher frequencies in heavily contaminated areas” (chp. 10.2 n.
Imagine New York City, a city bustling with life; busy streets, people flooding the sidewalks, flashing lights, and never ending noise. Now imagine a post-apocalyptic city; deserted streets, empty buildings, shattered windows, doors hanging from their hinges, weeds and overgrowth climbing up walls, and unsettling silence. This is how one may describe Pripyat, Ukraine. What was once a city filled with great activity and energy is now a ghost town due to the impact radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident had on the surrounding environment.
April 26, 1986, also known as the date of the worst nuclear accident in history. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was located in what was …show more content…
Besides Chernobyl, there is only one other event that matches the level 7 classification, that event would be Fukushima. Although they both have the same classification, Chernobyl was far more grave. Georg Steinhauser and the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences of Colorado State University state that the amount of radiation emitted during the Chernobyl disaster was “approximately four orders of magnitude higher” than that of Fukushima. Thus, demonstrating how severe Chernobyl was, for the accident was responsible for releasing more radiation than the deliberate dropping of a nuclear …show more content…
Similar to the farm animals, radiation is transferred to the forest animals when they ingest contaminated vegetation. Yablokov, Nesterenko, V.B., and Nesterenko, A.V. (2009) explain that the effects of the radiation range from “changes in population vitality to abnormal reproductive and genetic disorders” (chp. 10). Yablokov, Nesterenko, V.B., and Nesterenko, A.V. explain an example of genetic mutations, “Abnormal spermatozoa (head deviations, two heads, two tails, etc.) in barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) occurred at significantly higher frequencies in heavily contaminated areas” (chp. 10.2 n.