... Radiation will stay in the Chernobyl area for the next 48,000 years, but humans may begin repopulating the area in about 600 years - give or take three centuries. [Moving in the other direction of time, 600 years ago Christopher Columbus had not yet been born, and the New World was almost a century away from being discovered.]

... Usually, on this leg of the journey, a beeping geiger counter inspires to shift into high gear and streak through the area with great haste. The patch of trees in front of me is called red - or 'magic" wood. In 1986, this wood glowed red with radiation. They cut them down and buried them under 1 meter of earth. The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment. If I step 10 meters forward, geiger counter will run off the scale. If I walk a few hundred meters towards the reactor, the radiation is 3 roentgens per hour - which is 300,000 times normal. If I was to keep walking all the way to the reactor, I would glow in the dark tonight.

... At first glance, Ghost Town seems like a normal town. There is a taxi stop, a grocery store, someone's wash hangs from the balcony and the windows are open. But then I see a slogan on a building that says - "The Party of Lenin Will Lead Us To The Triumph Of Communism" and I realize that those windows were opened to the spring air of April of 1986 ... Perhaps future archeologists will compare this town to Pompeii. The Soviet era is forever preserved here -- in the radiation that will last for many centuries.

... This old man lives in the Chernobyl area. He is one of 3,500 people that either refused to leave or returned to their villages after the meltdown in 1986. I admire those people, because each of them is a philosopher in their own way. When you ask if they are afraid, they say that they would rather die at home from radiation, than die in an unfamiliar place of home-sickness. They eat food from their own gardens, drink the milk of their cows and claim that they are healthy.....but the old man is one of only 400 that have survived this long. He may soon join his 3,100 neighbors that rest eternally in the earth of their beloved homes. It appears that the people with the most courage were the first to die here. Maybe that is true everywhere.

said by P Ness :

said by vue666 :

Perhaps coal isn't a bad solution when you consider the risk of nuclear?

one accident causing death in what 60 years and you call that a serious risk?

do you know how many people die in refinery deaths?
do you know how many miners die in coal mines?
do you know how many people die on oil rigs?
do you know how many people die from polution caused by oil and oil products.

i would bet more then 10x this accident.

Power plants are a major source of air pollution, with coal-fired power plants spewing 59% of total U.S. sulfur dioxide pollution and 18% of total nitrogen oxides every year. Coal-fired power plants are also the largest polluter of toxic mercury pollution5, largest contributor of hazardous air toxics6, and release about 50% of particle pollution. Additionally, power plants release over 40% of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, a prime contributor to global warming.
»www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/fact···ower.asp

About 40 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution, concludes a Cornell researcher. Such environmental degradation, coupled with the growth in world population, are major causes behind the rapid increase in human diseases, which the World Health Organization has recently reported. Both factors contribute to the malnourishment and disease susceptibility of 3.7 billion people, he says.
»www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20···2438.htm

Air pollution is responsible for 310,000 premature deaths in Europe each year, research suggests.
»news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4283295.stm

Air pollution is a much bigger factor in death from heart disease or stroke than has previously been recognized, according to findings from one of the largest studies ever to examine the issue ... After adjusting for other risk factors for heart disease and stroke, they found that air quality was a strong predictor of heart disease and stroke risks -- and an even stronger predictor of death from heart disease or stroke.

Fine particulate air pollution -- caused primarily by vehicle exhausts, coal-fired power plants, and other industrial sources -- was the sole type of air pollution associated with increased risk.
»www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news···t-deaths

Air pollution – mainly from vehicles, industry, and power plants – raises the chances of lung cancer and heart disease in people exposed to it long term, according to a report in the March 6 Journal of the American Medical Association.
»www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/conte···ncer.asp

"Just to make things clear: we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won't be as bad as previously thought", explains Prof. Mojib Latif from IFM-GEOMAR. "What we are saying is that on top of the warming trend there is a long-periodic oscillation that will probably lead to a to a lower temperature increase than we would expect from the current trend during the next years", adds Latif. "That is like driving from the coast to a mountainous area and crossing some hills and valleys before you reach the top", explains Dr. Johann Jungclaus from the MPI for Meteorology.
»www.ifm-geomar.de/index.php?id=4192&L=1