Chernobyl's radiation legacy: Zombie reactors and an invisible enemy
ABCAs the Soviet Union grappled with the scale of the disaster unfolding at Chernobyl, radioactive material spewed into the environment. Closer to the site of the disaster, parts of the area still remain so heavily contaminated that a 2,600-square-kilometre "zone of alienation" remains in place around the reactor. Azby Brown, the lead researcher with Safecast, said many of the hardest-hit areas, like the abandoned town of Pripyat, will remain unsafe to live "for generations". So it's been through one half life, meaning naturally half of it has decayed, so anywhere you went 30 years ago in Chernobyl was twice as what it is today," he said. The official death toll from Chernobyl is disputed, but a UN report into the "true scale of the accident" found as many as 4,000 people could die as a result of radiation exposure.
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