April 5, 2017 Comments Off on Radioactive cities: from Chernobyl to Fukushima Views: 3444 Urban Trekker

Cities without a bright future

Some cities are naturally exposed to higher radiation levels as they are in the proximity of unfavorable resources that cause radioactivity. Such is the case of the Iranian city of Ramsar, situated on the coast of the Caspian Sea. One of its neighborhood is considered to be the world’s most naturally radioactive residential areas.

Aberdeen of Scotland is an intriguing case as well, where radium-rich rocks are well present in the area, and even by some this city is called “radioactive city”. The town of Tularosa of New Mexico undoubtedly suffered from humans. Just a few weeks before the bombing of Hiroshima, the US military reportedly carried out nuclear testings and the consequences in this urban area can be felt today as well.

Apart from the nuclear hazardous events of the WWII, what remains freshly embedded in human memory and what is the immediate association of radioactivity today is when somebody mentions Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Cities in the Fukushima proximity

The Japanese suffered from a really hazardous event in March 2011 when the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster occurred following a severe earthquake and tsunami. Victims were all the people who used to live in the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima. Futaba is one of the cities that was immediately evacuated “en mass” on the morning of March 12 as the city is well within the 20 km exclusion radius around the damaged nuclear power plant.

By March 2013, the Japanese authorities rezoned Futaba into two areas according to the level of radiation. Residents were permitted to return to one of the zones for daytime visits. For at least until the end of 2017, the other zone of the city will remain prohibited due to the extreme levels of radiations. The residents of Futaba are just part of the 120,000 residents evacuated from the affected region. Residents of another city in the area, Tomioka, have been allowed to return home, but so far only during daytime. Almost half of this city’s residents have decided never to return.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster has eventually turned out more massive and serious than initially though. It remains to see how the nuclear waste management from the reactors will progress in the forthcoming years and what will be the final outcome of this disaster to the world’s oceans in particular. At the same time, the 2011 disaster is a reminder that nature is an unpredictable force and that in such instances, our ability of resilience is key to our survival.

Cities in the Chernobyl proximity

A catastrophic nuclear power incident in then Soviet Union (today Ukraine) occurred on April 26, 1986, in the No.4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, which is today a ghost town. Just 50 km away from the reactor there is yet another city about which rarely who has heard a word about today. Its name is Slavutych.

Reportedly, cancer and thyroid gland diseases, as well as depression has rapidly jumped and reached large scales in Slavutych following the years after the nuclear plant disaster. Being a ghost town might have been a better option for this city, but unlike Pripyat, the city remained inhabited.

The nature of radiation is that it always penetrates deep into the soil, so in times, it effects the ecosystem and the food chains. Even though levels of radiation on the ground might have dropped long ago in Slavutych, radioactivity is still there in the vegetables, the fruits, the plants or the mushrooms.

At least 8,000 of Slavutych’s residents were children at the time the 1986 nuclear meltdown occurred at Chernobyl. Some people from this city have started to work as guards around the exclusion zone of the reactor. The zone itself counts as one of the world’s most contaminated places. To be all more ironic, the area is also one of the largest nature preserves in Europe, a home to species such as bisons, wolves, brown bears, and the lynx.

Until 2001, staff was still working on the shutdown of the last active reactor at the nuclear plant. Employees took off to Chernobyl from the nearby Slavutych train station.

It is not needed to compare which of Chernobyl or Fukushima made the worst nuclear power plant hazard in history. Both have been severe enough to deeply affect the ecosystems in its surrounding areas and beyond.

When it comes to Fukushima though, huge amounts of radioactive materials were borne out to the sea by winds and waves. Marine biologists on the West Coast of the States have reported increased levels of radioactivity in the marine life already a few years ago. Though at the other end of the Pacific, the increased levels of radioactivity can be attributed to the nuclear plant fallout. It will take many years to clear the nuclear waste from Fukushima, maybe much more time that was needed for Chernobyl. This time, the price that humanity will need to pay may be much higher, especially, if it turns out there is no edible fish left in the oceans.

Tags: Chernobyl, Fukishima, Futaba, Japan, Pripyat, radioactive cities, Slavutych, Tomioka