Russian forces just captured Chernobyl. What are the radioactive risks?

“The dispersed material has had more than thirty years to decay, so the only hazardous radionuclides left are Cs-137 and Sr-90,” tweeted Cheryl Rofer, a retired nuclear scientist who used to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Explosions would further disperse them, making them less dangerous.”

 Coronavirus and the Chernobyl Analogy

Edward Luttwak wrote the book on regime change, and he sees parallels between China’s pandemic response and the Soviet Union’s late years.

 Dramatizing the Chernobyl Disaster, for Its Survivors

Unlike the recent HBO series, the Russian-language feature film “Chernobyl 1986” explores the human toll of the power plant explosion.

 The Real Chernobyl: Q&A With a Radiation Exposure Expert

The Emmy-winning HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” which is a dramatized account of the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster, has rekindled conversation about the accident, its subsequent cleanup and the long-term impacts on people living near the power plant.

 The tragedy of Chernobyl

In the Zone the fallout from human activity is embedded in the ground. The topsoil is thick with leaves that have turned a morbid, corpse-like grey (as Ms Brown recounts, radiation impedes the natural process of decomposition).

 The True Cost of the Chernobyl Disaster Has Been Greater Than It Seems

The world has already been overwhelmed by one Chernobyl and one exclusion zone. It cannot afford any more. It must learn its lessons from what happened in and around Chernobyl on April 26, 1986.

 The world stopped another Chernobyl by working together. Coronavirus demands the same

The pandemic reminds me of a different invisible enemy. Once again, coordinated action is the only effective response.

 Why would Russia want to take Chernobyl?

The Kremlin may not consider the nuclear power plant itself a military asset, but the site of the 1986 disaster is strategically located between Belarus and Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

Chernobyl: A Vacation Hotspot Unlike Any Other

Tourists and urban explorers are going crazy over haunting tours of the radioactive site.

Chernobyl Should Make Humanity Count Its Blessings

The HBO miniseries peers into an insane system and reveals how lucky the world is that the Soviet Union collapsed.

Chernobyl: 33 Years On, Radioactive Fallout Still Impacts Scandinavian Farmers

The smash-hit HBO series Chernobyl has introduced an entire new generation to the nuclear disaster that shook the world in 1986. Initially covered up by Soviet authorities, the disaster only came to light when nuclear power stations in Sweden—hundreds of miles away—detected high levels of radiation and began to ask questions. 33 years later, radiation remains a problem in both Sweden and Norway, especially for farmers.

Chernobyl: bumblebees still at risk from radiation nearly 35 years on

Many imagine Chernobyl to be a nuclear wasteland, where wildlife is struggling to survive or is severely mutated. But this is not the case. Much of the exclusion zone is relatively uncontaminated (with radiation levels close to that of unexposed places) and wildlife is thriving in the absence of humans – with some species having reappeared. However, some parts of the CEZ have radiation levels high enough to affect wildlife.

Chernobyl: Capping a Catastrophe

Against the decaying skyline here, a one-of-a-kind engineering project is rising near the remains of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster.

Chernobyl: new tomb will make site safe for 100 years

Thirty years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, there’s still a significant threat of radiation from the crumbling remains of Reactor 4. But an innovative, €1.5 billion super-structure is being built to prevent further releases, giving an elegant engineering solution to one of the ugliest disasters known to man.

HBO’s Chernobyl is a terrific miniseries. Its writer hopes you don’t think it’s the whole truth.

Craig Mazin on turning disaster into great TV and narrative poison.

How Many People Have Really Been Killed by Chernobyl?

Why estimates differ by tens of thousands of deaths.

I Lived in Chernobyl to See if Nuclear Fallout Makes Fungus Grow Better

It helped me to redefine Chernobyl as healthy. Not thriving, but a place with a community.

Photos From the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster

More than 50 reactor and emergency workers were killed in the immediate aftermath. The workers and emergency responders were not the only ones to risk their lives—a handful of photographers went to the scene as well, managing to capture images of some of the chaos and acts of heroism that took place in the weeks and months that followed.

The Creatures That Remember Chernobyl

Radioactive boars and bunnies won’t let us forget about the nuclear disaster.

The worst nuclear plant accident in history: Live from Chernobyl

Now, almost 25 years after the disaster, the Ukrainian government has officially opened the area up for tourism. But just how safe is the zone now?

Thirty Years Later, Chernobyl Is Still Deadly

We’re still trying to assess how many people may have been affected by the worst nuclear accident in history.

Top UCLA Doctor Denounces HBO's "Chernobyl" As Wrong And "Dangerous"

A top US medical doctor who treated radiation victims in Chernobyl has criticized HBO’s depiction of the accident and radiation’s health effects as inaccurate and “dangerous.”

Ultra-powerful X-rays are helping physicists understand Chernobyl

Researchers may soon be able to harness X-rays to analyze tiny grains of impenetrable nuclear waste.

What we learned from Chernobyl about how radiation affects our bodies

It was the first time in history that such a large population, particularly at a very young age, was exposed to radioactive isotopes, namely iodine-131 and cesium-137, not just through direct exposure, but through eating contaminated food as well.

Why HBO's "Chernobyl" Gets Nuclear So Wrong

But HBO “gets a basic truth right,” he writes, which is that Chernobyl was “more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than... whether nuclear power is inherently good or bad.”

‘It's like the embers in a barbecue pit.' Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl

Slow rise in neutrons stirs concerns about possible “criticality” accident.