When Australia’s government and opposition argue over how to get to net zero emissions, nuclear power is the flashpoint. The argument against nuclear is stronger, but not for the obvious reason.
In this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly, we speak with three scientists who study the ways plants and animals evolve in a world dominated by humans.
The fire at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine understandably raised the spectre of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. But thankfully this time another nuclear catastrophe was avoided.
With Russian troops rolling through the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, a biologist who studies wildlife in the area describes the risks of disturbing this radioactive landscape.
Heavy military vehicles may have kicked up radioactive soil around Chornobyl, and with fighting nearby there’s a danger of harming the concrete shelter containing the radiation of the leaking reactor.
Ukraine was once known as the breadbasket of Europe, yet it suffered a devastating famine as a result of collectivist plans. That and other Soviet-era grievances have bred resentment toward Russia.
While long-term exposure of lower levels of radiation for wildlife around Chernobyl is still being debated, new research provides insight into the effects on bumblebee populations.
Literary responses to global lockdowns reveal haunting parallels with how people negotiated the invisible threat of radiation after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.
Wild horses native to the steppes of Asia live now in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Ukraine), with an expanding population, 34 years after the nuclear accident.
Most of the time, these operations were not urgent – unlike the one following this disaster that summoned some 600,000 people to the site of the worst nuclear accident of all time.