The Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan remains the most radioactive place on Earth, even nine years after a tsunami caused reactor meltdowns, leading to discussions about dumping radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
The Exclusion Zone covers an area of approximately 2,600 km2 (1,000 sq mi) in Ukraine immediately surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant where radioactive contamination is highest and public access and habitation are restricted.
Portions of Marshall Islands have more radioactivity than Chernobyl, Fukushima, study shows. The U.S. tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958.
Chernobyl, Ukraine
Much of it spread to Belarus, Ukraine, and into the rest of Northern Europe. About 116,000 people were relocated as a result, including those from the nearby town of Pripyat. Today, you can visit Chernobyl, but pockets of radiation around the site remain.
The Fukushima event has been rated 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Even so, Japanese authorities estimate that radiation released at Fukushima is only 10 percent of the amount released from the Ukrainian plant.
Experts warn that the land surrounding Chernobyl is so toxic that the radiation will not decay for thousands of years. This area, called the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), is a 2,634 square-kilometer circle that is now hostile to the life it once fostered.
Chernobyl reactor 4 is no longer burning. The reactor was originally covered after the disaster, but it resulted in a leak of nuclear waste and needed to be replaced.
After working through tonnes of the pitchblende slag, the Curies identified two new elements in the remaining material - polonium and radium. They finally isolated radium in 1902 in its pure metal form. Radium was named for the Latin for a ray and proved to be the most radioactive natural substance ever discovered.
There is background radiation everywhere, but Cornwall is on average more radioactive than most other parts of the British Isles because it is built largely on granite, an igneous rock which produces radon more rapidly than most other rock types.
This, they dubbed the Elephant's Foot. Over the years, the Elephant's Foot cooled and cracked. Even today, though, it's still estimated to be slightly above the ambient temperature as the radioactive material decomposes.
Although it is technically forbidden for humans to live there, many other creatures have made it their home. Within the Chernobyl disaster region, grizzly bears, wolves, lynx, buffalo, deer, elk, beavers, foxes, beavers, wild boar, raccoons, dogs, and over 200 species of birds have developed their own ecosystem.
Hisashi Ouchi came to be known as the 'world's most radioactive man' after suffering the accident.
Po- 210 is considered to be one of the most hazardous radioactive materials known, but it must be breathed in or eaten to exert its toxic effects. Your skin or a piece of paper is enough to stop the radiation emitted by Po-210.
Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1 and most radioactive human ever, was a house painter from Ohio who was subjected to an involuntary human radiation experiment and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human.
More than 30 years on, scientists estimate the zone around the former plant will not be habitable for up to 20,000 years. The disaster took place near the city of Chernobyl in the former USSR, which invested heavily in nuclear power after World War II.
How Long Will It Take For Ground Radiation To Break Down? On average, the response to when Chernobyl and, by extension, Pripyat, will be habitable again is about 20,000 years.
Today, an area with a roughly 19-mile radius surrounding the plant is essentially uninhabited by humans—but it hosts hundreds of dogs.
Valery Khodemchuk was the first person to die in the Chernobyl disaster as it is thought he was killed instantly when the number 4 reactor exploded. Memorial to Khodemchuk in the reactor 4 building. His body was never found and it is presumed that he is entombed under the remains of the circulation pumps.
Long-Term Health Consequences
There has been a 200% increase in birth defects and a 250% increase in congenital birth deformities in children born in the Chernobyl fallout area since 1986. In Belarus, 85% of children are deemed to be Chernobyl victims with genetic changes.
The Fukushima accident was an accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi (“Number One”) nuclear power plant in Japan. It is the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power generation, behind the Chernobyl disaster.
"Compared with other nuclear events: The Chernobyl explosion put 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; atomic weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s all together are estimated to have put some 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material into ...
To date, the nuclear accidents at the Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima Daiichi (2011) nuclear power plants, are the only INES level 7 nuclear accidents.
On the morning of Sept. 30, 1999, at a nuclear fuel-processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan, 35-year-old Hisashi Ouchi and two other workers were purifying uranium oxide to make fuel rods for a research reactor.