Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

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Entrance to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Dytjatky
Radiation exposure map in 1996

In the Chernobyl exclusion zone ( Ukrainian Зона відчуження Чорнобильської АЕС Sona widtschuschennja Tschornobylskoji AES , Russian Зона отчуждения Чернобыльской АЭС Sona ottschuschdenija Tschernobylskoj AES ; literally "zone of the alienation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant") is, to a restricted area , which in 1986 with a radius of 30 km around the damaged reactor block 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in what is now Ukraine .

On the Belarusian side, the Polish State Radio-Ecological Protected Area has been part of it since 1988 .

The exclusion zone serves to protect residents in the adjacent areas, especially from radioactive fallout . The establishment of the exclusion zone was accompanied by the evacuation of the cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl as well as Kopachi and other villages that were located within this area.

Access to this restricted area is controlled by the Ukrainian militia and is only permitted with permission.

Establishment of the restricted area

Extent and start of the resettlement

Perimeter of the exclusion zone

After the first of the 44,000 inhabitants of Pripyat had been evacuated from the city 37 hours after the accident, the then Union government decided on May 2, 1986 to evacuate the area with a radius of around 30 km around the reactor, based on dose rate measurements. Initially, about 116,000 people were brought from an area of ​​about 3500 km²; the evacuation was completed on May 6th. In the following years this number rose to around 350,000 people.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union , the areas of Homelskaya Woblasz in Belarus and the Bryansk Oblast in Russia , which were part of the restricted area at that time, have been under their own administration.

Contamination check when leaving the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Abandoned settlements

The following settlements in Ukraine, besides Prypiat and Kopachi , were evacuated after the nuclear disaster:

  • Denyssowytschi ( Денисовичі ⊙ )
  • Rudky ( Рудьки ⊙ )
  • Ritschyzja ( Річиця ⊙ )
  • Towstyj Lis ( Товстий Ліс ⊙ )
  • Buryakivka ( Буряківка ⊙ )
  • Chystohalivka ( Чистогалівка ⊙ )
  • Lubyanka ( Луб'янка ⊙ )
  • Stechanka ( Стечанка ⊙ )
  • Varovychi ( Варовичі ⊙ )
  • Martynowytschi ( Мартиновичі ⊙ )

In the first few years, a total of around 200 villages were evacuated.

Released radionuclides

Of 190.3 t of radioactive material that was in the reactor core, 6.7 t escaped into the environment in the first ten days, from April 26 to May 5, 1986. Later, more precise measurements and calculations showed that, among other things, the following nuclides that are particularly relevant in terms of radiotoxicity were released:

  • Strontium-90 ( half-life : 28.8 years; β - radiators; replaces calcium in the body, for example in the bones)
  • Iodine-131 (half-life: 8 days; β - emitters ; accumulates strongly in the thyroid gland )
  • Cesium-137 (half-life of 30.1 years, β - emitters, disintegrates in 95% of cases barium-137m , which after 2.5 min half to barium-137 has decayed and thus decisive for the γ-radiation responsible is; cesium accumulates particularly in soil and fungi, but also in animal and human tissues)
  • Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years; alpha emitters ; accumulation in advance in the lungs , liver and skeleton (also of vertebrates ), with long retention times (biological half-lives). Due to its comparably high atomic weight, like americium, it is almost exclusively deposited in the exclusion zone)
  • Plutonium-241 (half-life: 14.4 years; β - emitters; regenerates americium-241; plutonium-241 binds to proteins and is deposited in the kidneys and liver )
  • Americium-241 (half-life: 432 years; α-emitter; accumulates in bones ( biological half-life : 50 years) and liver (biological half-life: 20 years) and the gonads (permanently)).

Radiation exposure as a result of the reactor accident

As a result of the reactor accident, there were three different phases in which radiation exposure occurred:

  • Phase I is characterized by the first 20 days after the accident, in which it becomes acute due to short-lived radionuclides ( molybdenum-99 , tellurium-132 / iodine-132, xenon-133 , iodine-131, barium-140 / lanthanum-140 ) Radiation damage has occurred. Most of these nuclides were deposited on plants and the soil, where they led to dose rates of up to 20 Gy / d in the first days after the accident. Released radioiodine nuclides, v. a. Iodine, caused by radiation before evacuation to thyroid cancer in children, which had very high incidences in the exclusion zone , and to thyroid damage in many vertebrates .
  • Phase II describes the period from summer to autumn 1986, in which many of the short-lived radionuclides decayed and long-lived radionuclides were deposited, converted and transported in the environment by biological, chemical or physical means. The total dose rate of the radioactive substances released in the accident fell to a tenth of the initial value during this time. - Approx. 80 percent of the radiation dose that accumulated in plants and animals was absorbed within the first three months after the accident.
  • Phase III is the ongoing phase in which the radiation exposure still corresponds to one percent of the initial value and which is mainly caused by the cesium-137 contamination. The spread of plants and the immigration of new animals into the restricted area ensure that the remaining radionuclides bioaccumulate greatly differently .
Checkpoint Dytjatky
in the 30 km zone
Checkpoint Leliw in the 10 km zone

Forest fire 2020

At the beginning of April 2020, a forest fire broke out, which also affects the exclusion zone. On April 5, 2020, the Ukrainian environmental inspection service announced that it had released radioactivity in the exclusion zone over an area of ​​around 100 hectares. The cause of the forest fire is believed to be that residents started the fire on April 4, 2020 by illegally burning garbage. Two weeks after the eruption, according to evaluations of satellite images, an estimated 11,500 hectares had burned down. In addition, the fires caused persistent and dense smog in Kiev . The fires destroyed 38 homes in the Zhytomyr Oblast near the Belarusian border after the fires spread to villages. The fires were fought by more than 1,400 people (including at least 700 firefighters) who also used helicopters. In order to contain the fires, they built more than 400 kilometers of fire protection aisles in the surrounding forests. To support and contain and extinguish the fires, the Federal Republic of Germany provided 80 dosimeters for radioactivity measurement and a fire truck .

Life in the zone

Returnees

As of 2012, 197 Samosely ( Russian : самосёлы, Ukrainian : самосели - resettlers ) lived in the restricted area of ​​Chernobyl . The returnees are mostly elderly people who returned illegally to their former home after the evacuation. Today they are tolerated by the state.

Flora and fauna

The influence of radioactive contamination on flora and fauna is controversial among scientists. Studies in birds in particular show albinism and smaller brain sizes, whereas the number of mammals that live directly on the floor of the restricted area is increasing.

plants

Since the accident occurred in late April, the damaging effects of radioactive fallout became apparent during a period of increased growth. Activities of 0.7–3.9 GBq / m² were measured within the restricted area  . This led, among other things, to short-term sterility , growth and development disorders. Leaf necrosis , weathered leaf tips, disruption of photosynthesis and genetic defects were observed. Forty percent of winter wheat was affected. Abnormalities were still evident a few years later. The high dose rates of over 20 Gy / d were particularly evident in the radio-sensitive conifers . In a coniferous forest 1.5 km to the west of the reactor, the radiation damage quickly turned the needles yellow, which then fell off. The remaining needleless tree trunks led to the name "Red Forest". In the meantime this forest has been leveled.

Animals

The time of the accident also coincided in the animals with a period of increased activity - reproduction and moulting . Within the 3 to 7 km zone around the reactor, the invertebrate population has been reduced to one-thirtieth. Energy doses of 3 Gy resulted in early offspring mortality and reproductive problems. Within a year, however, other invertebrates migrated from less contaminated areas into the restricted area, so that after two and a half years there was no longer any difference between the populations and control groups, although the species diversity remained significantly reduced. The complete recovery of the species diversity of invertebrates could only be ascertained again in 1995. The authorities' estimates from 2006 showed a population of around 7,000 wild boars, 150 wolves, 3,000 deer, 1,500 beavers, 1,200 foxes, 15 lynxes, several thousand elks and 280 species of birds, many of which are rare or endangered. In 2014 there were already three herds of bison (93 animals, as of 2012) that are slowly reproducing in the Belarusian part of the exclusion zone .

In 1998 and 1999, a total of 31 Przewalski horses were released into the exclusion zone, the number of which was over 100 in 2016. It is planned to release bison into the wild later .

tourism

Since the mid-2010s, day tourism has been increasingly noticeable in small guided groups, starting from the capital Kiev . The government of Ukraine has announced that it intends to increase the number of tourists from 60,000 to one million a year.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Заповедник / Main Page / About the Reserve. 2000, accessed November 23, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b c Jim T. Smith, Nicholas A. Beresford: Chernobyl - Catastrophe and Consequences . Praxis Publishing Ltd., Chichester 2005.
  3. ^ Abandoned Chernobyl Settlements .
  4. ↑ National Geographic , October 2014 Printed Edition, p. 128.
  5. ^ Website of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, subsection of Ecological Consequences .
  6. ↑ Ch. Küppers, M. Sailer: MOX or the civil use of plutonium .
  7. ^ Washington State Department of Health, Fact Sheet No. November 23, 2002; accessed April 14, 2013; facts ( Memento from November 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ a b c International Atomic Energy Agency, Radiological Assessment Report Series Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience, Vienna 2006. 2006, accessed in 2008 .
  9. ↑ A. Kofler et al. ( University of Bern ): Thyroid cancer after Chernobyl ; in: IPPNW Switzerland: Nuclear Power and Radiation Risk , March 1998.
  10. ↑ Fire brigade fighting flames in Chernobyl exclusion zone. 2020, accessed April 6, 2020 .
  11. ↑ High level of radioactivity due to forest fire near Chernobyl , FAZ.NET of April 5, 2020, accessed on April 6, 2020
  12. ↑ a b tagesschau.de: Chernobyl fires: German help for extinguishing work. Retrieved April 18, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Chernobyl fires - smog over Kiev - German help for extinguishing work. Retrieved on April 18, 2020 (German).
  14. ^ Dpa: German aid for Chernobyl fires. April 18, 2020, accessed on April 18, 2020 (German).
  15. ↑ Smog in Kiev after the Chernobyl fires. Retrieved April 18, 2020 .
  16. ↑ a b DER SPIEGEL: Chernobyl: Hardly any successes in the fight against fire near the ex-nuclear power station - DER SPIEGEL - Wissenschaft. Retrieved April 21, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Chernobylskuju zonu zakhvatyvajut samosely. URA-Inform, August 28, 2012, accessed in 2012 .
  18. ^ Geographical (April 2011). Archived copy ( Memento of July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ^ Andrew Osborne: 20 years after meltdown life returns to Chernobyl. Independent, April 5, 2006, accessed 2006 .
  20. ↑ Radioactive Wolves (German documentary). 3sat, 2014, accessed on April 26, 2014 (from minute 24:10).
  21. ^ Rewilding of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. In: Rewilding Europe / European Rewilding Network , undated. (English)
  22. ↑ Tourism in Chernobyl - with linen shoes to the death zone. Spiegel Online, accessed May 26, 2013 .

Web links

Commons : Chernobyl Exclusion Zone  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 23 '22.5 "  N , 30 ° 5' 56.6"  E