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.
Extremes of the colour gradient of the Eastern San Antonio frog (Hyla orientalis). On the left, a specimen captured in Chernobyl inside the high contamination zone; on the right, a specimen captured outside the Exclusion Zone.
Germán Orizaola/Pablo Burraco
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.
Much of the region around Chernobyl has been untouched by people since the nuclear disaster in 1986.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
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.
A fox roams the deserted town of Pripyat, three kilometres from the Chornobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, in 2016.
(AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)
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.
A statue commemorating the Ukrainian famine, in which millions died.
Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
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.
Chernobyl and COVID-19: when the threat is in the air you breathe.
Ondrej Bucek/Shutterstock
Literary responses to global lockdowns reveal haunting parallels with how people negotiated the invisible threat of radiation after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.
Herd of Przewalski horses inside Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Ukraine). September 2016.
Luke Massey (www.lmasseyimages.com)
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.
Miners were among the many people the USSR deployed after the disaster.
Liam Daniel/HBO
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.
An abandoned hotel building in Pripyat, a few miles from Chernobyl.
Fotokon/Shutterstock