Fukushima is the most radioactive place on Earth. A tsunami led to reactors melting at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Radium - The MOST RADIOACTIVE Metal ON EARTH!
Today, the Exclusion Zone is one of the most radioactively contaminated areas in the world and draws significant scientific interest for the high levels of radiation exposure in the environment, as well as increasing interest from tourists.
Shrouded in secrecy, the incident was a watershed moment in both the Cold War and the history of nuclear power. More than 30 years on, scientists estimate the zone around the former plant will not be habitable for up to 20,000 years.
The Fukushima event has been rated 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Even so, Japanese authorities estimate that radiation released at Fukushima is only 10 percent of the amount released from the Ukrainian plant.
Chernobyl (/tʃɜːrˈnoʊbəl/ chur-NOH-bəl, UK also /tʃɜːrˈnɒbəl/ chur-NOB-əl; Russian: Чернобыль, IPA: [tɕɪrˈnobɨlʲ]) or Chornobyl (Ukrainian: Чорнобиль, IPA: [tʃorˈnɔbɪlʲ] ( listen)) is a partially abandoned city in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, situated in the Vyshhorod Raion of northern Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there was less total atmospheric release of radioactivity from the Fukushima accident compared with Chernobyl due to the different accident scenarios and mechanisms of radioactive releases.
Polonium-210 is one of 25 known radioactive isotopes of polonium. Because it is a naturally occurring element that releases a huge amount of energy, many sources cite polonium as the most radioactive element. Polonium is so radioactive it glows blue, which is caused by the excitation of the gas particles by radiation.
Astatine is a chemical element with the symbol At and atomic number 85. It is the rarest naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust, occurring only as the decay product of various heavier elements. All of astatine's isotopes are short-lived; the most stable is astatine-210, with a half-life of 8.1 hours.
The Fukushima accident was an accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi (“Number One”) nuclear power plant in Japan. It is the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power generation, behind the Chernobyl disaster.
The first was that the explosion at Chernobyl happened on the ground, whereas the explosion at Hiroshima happened high in the air above the city, which greatly reduced the radioactive levels. The second difference was the strength of the explosions.
The radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today is on a par with the extremely low levels of background radiation (natural radioactivity) present anywhere on Earth. It has no effect on human bodies.
Before the disaster, Chernobyl was home to about 14,000 people. Although humans are not supposed to live there, some survivors remain in nearby villages.
At high altitudes, the protection from the column of air is less. The cosmic ray contributions are higher at 0.31 milligray and 0.44 milligray respectively at Delhi and Bengaluru as these cities are at altitudes of 216 metre and 921 metre.
The radioactivity released at Chernobyl tended to be more long-lived than that released by a bomb detonation hence it is not possible to draw a simple comparison between the two events.
According to a report by the Worldwatch Institute on nuclear waste, Karachay is the most polluted (open-air) place on Earth from a radiological point of view.
The Chernobyl nuclear accident was caused by an unfortunate cocktail of human error and flawed reactor design. It was the worst nuclear disaster in history, releasing more than 400 times as much radioactive material as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
Mutated Animals in Chernobyl
These included everything from pine trees to grasshoppers and voles. The researchers failed to find strong evidence of adaptation in most of these studies, however, aside from the eradication of a few individuals that seemed to be genetically more vulnerable to the effects of radiation.
May 8, 1986: Workers finish draining about 20,000 tons of radioactive water from the basement under the core. Over a hurried construction period of 206 days, crews erected a steel and cement sarcophagus to entomb the damaged reactor.
The official death toll directly attributed to Chernobyl that is recognized by the international community is just 31 people with the UN saying it could be 50. However, hundreds of thousands of “liquidators” were sent in to put out the fire at the nuclear power plant and clean up the Chernobyl site afterwards.
But he added, “Roughly speaking, the Chernobyl accident is estimated to have released an equivalent 30 to 40 times those the Hiroshima or Nagasaki A-bombs released.”
It was being said, he reported, that Hiroshima might remain uninhabitable for 75 years. Yet within 24 hours, survivors were already returning to the city to search for relatives, friends, and former homes in the rubble. Ms. Kondo's family was among those who would return and rebuild their lives upon the ashes.
How large an area was affected by the radioactive fallout? Some 150,000 square kilometres in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are contaminated and stretch northward of the plant site as far as 500 kilometres. An area spanning 30 kilometres around the plant is considered the “exclusion zone” and is essentially uninhabited.