The Chernobyl Radiation Myth
I've already read and watched plenty about the Chernobyl disaster. Not to mention the rumours that circulate among people. Everywhere all you hear is: "You'll glow when you get back! There are mutants living there!". Somehow I didn't take these tales too much to heart and set off on a long journey: Łódź -> Warsaw -> Kyiv -> Slavutych -> Chernobyl and Pripyat.
Standing at the foot of the reactor, I began to wonder where these rumours come from. I looked around. A few dozen people were running about with cameras in front of the wall. Behind the gate, guards were walking, a few workers in short sleeves were smoking cigarettes, some glanced at us in surprise. You could hear their thoughts: "There's nothing here, so what do you need those masks and counters for?"
Travelling from Slavutych on the workers' train, I took a measurement with a Geiger-Müller counter. It showed a dose rate of 0.21 µSv/h. In Warsaw it is about 0.27 µSv/h.
Looking at the building of Reactor No. 4 of the nuclear power plant, I felt no threat. Everything was normal. Another working day for the workers, another day of taking photos. It was time to compare the radiation dose rate. Standing near the reactor, it was a mere 2.78 µSv/h.
When I got closer to the wall surrounding the power plant, the dose rate rose to 5.67 µSv/h. After all, there are places on Earth where the dose is considerably higher and people live there normally. Examples include Ramsar in Iran and Guarapari beach.
Walking around the old abandoned Yanov railway station, the radiation dose was little more than that. As usual it was quiet and peaceful. Birds flew across the sky, and enormous trees towered overhead. Nature had defeated the radiation!
The largest radiation dose I managed to measure was 11.87 μSv/h. The counter showed that much when I was driving along the road through the famous Red Forest. Mutants and bloodthirsty beasts were nowhere to be seen. Quite the opposite. Nature gained a great deal from the evacuation of people from these areas. The gains significantly outweighed the hypothetical losses to the ecosystem resulting from the disaster itself.
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