

Brown bears return to Chernobyl after a century away - jackgavigan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30197341

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ChuckMcM
This is the interesting point that people miss:

 _" We have our models to predict radiation exposure but it does it in a very
crude way - an average over a very large area - but we know that animals
interact with the environment in different ways," observed Dr Wood."_

Our models for environmental exposure are crude because we are really really
good at getting people out of harms way. There are the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
data points, there is Chernobyl and Fukishima (3 mile island didn't have a
large enough foot print to be qualitatively change the models). We err on the
side of caution (nobody wants to be the one that said "ok move back in" and
have those people die later as a direct cause of that. Large mammals are an
excellent proxy for human habitation.

The bottom line is that we call an area 'uninhabitable' because we don't have
good models to reason about what would happen if people lived there. It is
possible people could live there just fine, but nobody is going to 'try it' to
find out, because the flip side is so dire.

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click170
My understanding is that wildlife has been returning in some form or another,
since shortly after the accident.

Someone, I could have sworn BBC but all that's coming up in searches now is
PBS, did a documentary about wildlife in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. I could
have sworn it was about the wolves in the exclusion zone but touched on many
topics.

If I recall correctly, the iron curtain itself actually helped wildlife
somewhat by creating a strip of land across many European countries (where the
fence itself was constructed) that wildlife was documented using as a highway
for travel now that the fence has been torn down and that strip is largely
left alone.

Fascinating stuff, both for the nuclear explosion, and the subsequent impact
on surrounding wildlife.

Edit: I think this is the one that I saw.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iap7wXlMFIQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iap7wXlMFIQ)

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wycx
I also suggest this BBC Horizon documentary[1]. It has a quite entertaining
segment where they test the radioactivity of small mammal specimens from
around Chernobyl.

[1] [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwy1o5_bbc-horizon-
nuclear-...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwy1o5_bbc-horizon-nuclear-
nightmares-2006_tech)

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davevil
Great, here come the Yao guai :(

