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NATURE

Chernobyl’s Red Forest: An Environmental Perspective on Technological Innovation and Destruction

Walking across a dead pine tree along one of the tributary streams of the Pripyat River, a pack of wolves searches the forest for their next meal. Mice and foxes hear the pack rustling through the woods and flee, diving into pine burrows and damp wooden walls to avoid detection. Eventually, the group stumbles upon a house and slinks through a glassless window, eager to devour its inhabitants. The wolves tread softly, moving room by room in search of a victim. But nobody’s home. This house, and all the others in this area, haven’t been inhabited in over 40 years––these wolves live in Chernobyl’s Red Forest, one of the most irradiated locations on the planet. Here, animals have reclaimed what people have destroyed, and nature not only persists, but it thrives, free from human interference. 

What created the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone? 

In the late 1970s, Soviet Union (USSR) officials were dissatisfied with Chernobyl’s nuclear power generation, so they decided to build the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This feat of engineering could hold thousands of megawatts of thermal energy and encouraged a mass labor migration to Pripyat, Ukraine. 

In 1982, the plant malfunctioned – one of the reactors experienced a partial meltdown, and although no people were harmed, radioactive particles spewed out from the core and impacted plant and animal life. Then, in 1984, several non-descript incidents occurred in reactors three and four that led Moscow to dub the site “one of the most dangerous nuclear power plants in the USSR,” according to recently declassified KGB documents. At this point, the USSR knew how dangerous it would be if the plant exploded, yet implemented no new safety measures, opting to cover up their mistakes rather than prevent them in the future. The Kremlin pressed on, hoping the plant had seen the worst of its mechanical failures. 

It hadn’t. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced a catastrophic failure which became one of the Cold War’s largest environmental, technological, and political disasters. The same improper safety procedures that caused previous incidents led to the overheating and explosion of reactor 4, sending radioactive materials like plutonium and cesium into the atmosphere. The elements spread across about 150,000 square kilometers, creating almost 187 football fields worth of carcinogen-laced air. This fallout cloud eventually moved toward Sweden, where scientists noticed the influx in radiation over Scandinavia and sounded the international alarm. Only after these researchers caught the USSR did officials announce that the plant had experienced a “disaster” several days prior. The country did not admit to the plant’s total meltdown in that statement. 

Political strategists treated the explosion as a public relations fiasco, more concerned about the USSR’s reputation than the consequences for their citizens. In Pripyat and nearby cities, the rate of thyroid cancer immediately skyrocketed compared to other Soviet states, especially among women and children. Economic consequences were similarly dire––the cost to clean up the explosion may have been as high as $700 billion over 30 years. People lost their jobs, homes, and families during forced evacuations of nearby regions. Entire cities remain empty to this day. Nevertheless, the USSR managed to keep the crisis under relative control, maintaining its political status and only attributing 30 deaths to the incident. 

Human deaths, that is. If the government’s response to the consequences facing people was inadequate, its response to the environmental horrors caused by its carelessness was nonexistent. The environmental toll was severe––leaves morphed unexpectedly, animals developed crippling physical deformities, and innumerable plants and animals perished after absorbing excessive radiation. 

What is the Red Forest? 

One such place, the Red Forest, stands (or rather, lies) as an organic graveyard commemorating the toll of the disaster on the environment. Pine trees litter the ground, their ginger-brown color a reminder of Chernobyl’s nuclear meltdown; these trees turned red after waves upon waves of intense radiation, a phenomenon to which the forest owes its name. In some of the more heavily impacted areas, the blast-exposed trees to upwards of 60 Gy, or Gray. For scale, experts recommend that adults limit their exposure to radioactivity at a maximum of 0.05 Gy, meaning Chernobyl’s reactor meltdown exposed the Red Forest’s trees to more than 1,200 times that amount in an instant. No pine trees regenerated in the area until 1994 at the earliest. 

Yet, in this irradiated zone, life flourishes. The presence of radioactive material culled certain species in the immediate aftermath but also opened niches in which new life currently thrives. One biologist noted that “[m]any species show no significant relationship between contamination and abundance and a few species even increased with rising radiation levels.” Though the radiation killed organisms like pine trees, butterflies, and birds, populations of some creatures, such as spiders, actually increased. Counterintuitively, small mammals––the group zoologists predicted would be most impacted by the disaster––have not decreased significantly in population size nor genetic diversity. Radioactivity may have killed the Red Forest’s pines and threatened a mass extinction event, but nature refused to give in.

What makes the Red Forest thrive? 

As time progressed, many different animal and plant species returned to the Red Forest with one notable exception: humans. In some of her most resilient work, Mother Nature withstood a never-before-experienced, ecosystem-destabilizing nuclear disaster of epic proportions, watched her anthropic virus flee the “uninhabitable” area, and imbued the irradiated land with life, creating yet another thriving ecosystem. The key? No people. As researcher Jim Beasley said to National Geographic in 2016, 

“I would argue that [the effects of radiation] for many of those species, even if they’re there, probably aren’t enough to suppress populations to the point where they can’t sustain themselves…humans have been removed from the system and this greatly overshadows any of those potential radiation effects.” 

The article follows Beasley’s point with a dramatic yet true statement: “Essentially, this means that human populations have a bigger negative impact than radiation.” Another team concurs: 

“Long-term effects to biota in the Exclusion Zone have been confounded by nature’s overriding positive response to human abandonment of the area. Without a permanent human residency for 20 years, the ecosystems around the Chernobyl site are now flourishing in response to the wildlife sanctuary-type environment.” 

Ironically enough, the very spaces that humans bar themselves from entering based on health risks are actually havens, poacher-free preserves housing unforeseen floral and faunal revival. 

What can the Red Forest teach us about climate change? 

It is tempting to view Chernobyl as a wasteland and pity the environmental destruction caused by humans. Humans are unique, after all––no other species controls the ability to innovate life out of existence using inventions designed to make their own lives more convenient. But this view, an anthropocentric perspective on nature, fails to account for the multitude of non-human life on the planet. To people, Chernobyl’s story starts with the plant’s construction and ends with the plant’s destruction; to nature, Chernobyl’s story has been written, is being written, and will continue to be written long after humans forget their mistakes. People may have destroyed what already existed in the Red Forest, but the biome will continue to house life through the most inhospitable circumstances. 

Perhaps a new perspective, one grounded in ecocentrism rather than anthropocentrism, will allow people to examine the story of nature before and after their chapter. In this story, nature is the

main character, not people. If anthropocentrism blinds humans to their villainy, ecocentrism exposes humans to the collective interests of the natural world––and the consequences, both personal and universal, that would ensue if they choose innovation over sustainability. 

Technological innovations like the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and the climate disasters that follow those innovations, threaten to make Earth uninhabitable for millions of species, including humans. Even so, nature will persist without humans––in fact, it might even be better off without us. 

Sources 

Arkhipova, N. P., N. D. Kuchma, S. Askbrant, P. S. Pasternak, and V. V. Musica. “Acute and Long-Term Effects of Irradiation on Pine (Pinus Silvestris) Stands Post-Chernobyl.” Science of The Total Environment, 1994. https://doi.org/10.1016/0048-9697(94)90601-7. 

Boffey, Phillip M. “Soviet Reporting Atom Plant ‘Disaster,’ Seeks Help Abroad to Fight Reactor Fire” The New York Times, April 30, 1986. 

“Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impacts (2002).” Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), 2002. https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_13598 

“Evaluation of Data on Thyroid Cancer in Regions Affected by the Chernobyl Accident.” United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. The United Nations, 2018. https://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2017/Chernobyl_WP_2017.pdf. 

“Frequently Asked Chernobyl Questions.” International Atomic Energy Agency. Accessed October 27, 2022. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/chernobyl/faqs. Geras’kin, S A, S V Fesenko, and R M Alexakhin. “Effects of Non-Human Species Irradiation after the Chernobyl NPP Accident.” Environment International, August 2008. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412007002474. 

Higginbotham, Adam. Midnight in Chernobyl. Simon & Schuster, 2019.

Hinton, Thomas G, Rudolph Alexakhin, Mikhail Balonov, Norman Gentner, Jolyn Hendry, Boris Prister, Per Strand, and Dennis Woodhead. “Radiation-induced effects on plants and animals: Findings of the United Nations Chernobyl Forum.” Health Physics, November 2007. https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/FullText/2007/11000/RADIATION_INDUCED_ EFFECTS_ON_PLANTS_AND_ANIMALS_.8.aspx. 

Mousseau, Timothy A, and Anders P Møller. “Genetic and Ecological Studies of Animals in Chernobyl and Fukushima.” Journal of Heredity, September-October 2014. academic.oup.com/jhered/article/105/5/704/2961808. 

Samet, Jonathan M, and Joann Seo. “The Financial Costs of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster: A Review of the Literature,” April 21, 2016. https://globalhealth.usc.edu/2016/05/24/the-financial-costs-of-the-chernobyl-nuclear-pow er-plant-disaster-a-review-of-the-literature/. 

Wendle, John. “How Radiation Is Affecting Wildlife Thirty Years after the Chernobyl Disaster.” National Geographic, April 18, 2016. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-ye ar-anniversary-science. 

Williams, Matthias. “Unsealed Soviet Archives Reveal Cover-Ups at Chernobyl Plant before Disaster.” Edited by Estelle Shirbon. Reuters, April 26, 2021. https://www.reuters.com/world/unsealed-soviet-archives-reveal-cover-ups-chernobyl-plant-before-disa ster-2021-04-26/.