25 years on: Chernobyl still leaking radiation

[spanone]

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — Ukraine marked the 25th anniversary on Tuesday of the world's worst nuclear accident at its Chernobyl power plant as Japan pressed on with efforts to control the crisis at its Fukushima plant.

On April 26 1986, the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl plant, then in the Soviet Union, exploded and caught fire after a safety test experiment went badly wrong.

Story: Chernobyl widows mourn as bell tolls 25 times

The blast sent radiation billowing across Europe.

A total of 31 people died immediately but many more died of radiation-related sicknesses such as cancer, many of them in what is today Belarus.
Tens of thousands were evacuated, never to return, from Prypyat, the town closest to the site which then had a population of 50,000.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42760861/ns/world_news-europe/

[KharmaTrain]

1. They Still Detect Radiation at Bikini Atoll...

25 years after all those blasts they thought they could let the indigenous people of the Island return but the radiation levels in the cocoanuts were so high (their main food) they had to be evacuated again. Tests were conducted again around 2000 and the rates were still found to be above acceptable levels. The irony is there were many tests conducted in the Nevada desert and it appears no one has ever tested the long range affects of that fallout. Half lives are a wicked thing...but then so is evolution.

Not long ago I saw a special about the areas around Chernobyl where there's been a boom in wildlife in the absence of humans. Wolves are back in that area for the first time in centuries and nature has come back in a strong but radioactive way. The animals have adjusted...developing immunities and adaptations to the toxin over a couple generations.

[bananas]

2. It will be leaking radiation for millions of years

They'll have to continually rebuild the sarcophagus.

[marions ghost]

3. 25 years --

Good pix and vids of Chernobyl today (4/26/2011)--at this site:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/04/26/ukraine.chernobyl.anniversary/

Many protests happening in Europe marking the anniversary.