The elephant's foot is still very radioactive, it is now more than ten times less radioactive than it was when it was first spotted. It has decayed to the point at which people can go near it for a short time.
The Elephant's Foot is so deadly that spending only 30 seconds near it will result in dizziness and fatigue. Two minutes near it and your cells will begin to hemorrhage. By the time you hit the five-minute mark, you're a goner.
It takes about 1/10th of that to kill a person. In one hour, the Elephant's Foot would expose you to the radiation of over four and a half million chest x-rays. That dose is almost 1,000 times stronger than exposures that have been clearly linked to increased cancer risk.
For starters, the foot is not the sole source of the background radiation at the Chernobyl site. It may be the highest concentration, but it's not as if once removed, everything's hunky-dory and the signs can all come down.
Still, merely 500 seconds of exposure at this level would bring on mild radiation sickness, and a little over an hour of exposure would prove fatal. The Elephant's Foot is still dangerous, but human curiosity and attempts to contain our mistakes keep us coming back to it.
The radioactivity of radium then must be enormous. This substance is the most radioactive natural element, a million times more so than uranium. It is so radioactive that it gives off a pale blue glow. Yet it would still take the Curies another three years to produce a pure radium salt.
It's made up of nuclear fuel, melted concrete and metal, and was formed during the initial accident. The foot is still active. In '86 the foot would have been fatal after 30 seconds of exposure; even today, the radiation is fatal after 300 seconds.
Chernobyl animals are mutants ...
Among breeding birds in the region, rare species suffered disproportional effects from the explosion's radiation compared to common species.
The Elephant's Foot is the nickname given to a large mass of corium and other materials formed underneath the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near Pripyat, Ukraine, during the Chernobyl disaster of April 1986, notable for its extreme radioactivity.
Valery Khodemchuk was the first person to die in the Chernobyl disaster as it is thought he was killed instantly when the number 4 reactor exploded. Memorial to Khodemchuk in the reactor 4 building. His body was never found and it is presumed that he is entombed under the remains of the circulation pumps.
Chernobyl reactor 4 is no longer burning. The reactor was originally covered after the disaster, but it resulted in a leak of nuclear waste and needed to be replaced.
Fukushima is the most radioactive place on Earth. A tsunami led to reactors melting at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Even though it's been nine years, it doesn't mean the disaster is behind us.
More than 30 years on, scientists estimate the zone around the former plant will not be habitable for up to 20,000 years. The disaster took place near the city of Chernobyl in the former USSR, which invested heavily in nuclear power after World War II.
Today, an area with a roughly 19-mile radius surrounding the plant is essentially uninhabited by humans—but it hosts hundreds of dogs.
'For Centuries, If Not Millennia'
Experts have said it will be at least 3,000 years for the area to become safe, while others believe this is too optimistic. It is thought that the reactor site will not become habitable again for at least 20,000 years, according to a 2016 report.
New research has studied hundreds of the free-wheeling dogs that roam the ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and found that exposure to radiation may have made them genetically distinct from other dogs elsewhere in the world.
Dogs living in and around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine are genetically distinct from dog populations living further away from the site of the nuclear accident. The results will be used to try to understand the long-term genetic effects of radiation exposure.
Most deformities were so severe the animals only lived a few hours. Examples of defects included facial malformations, extra appendages, abnormal coloring, and reduced size. Domestic animal mutations were most common in cattle and pigs. Also, cows exposed to fallout and fed radioactive feed produced radioactive milk.
Now in his late 60s, Korneyev no longer visits the Elephant's Foot, having been banned after years of irradiation. But the photograph of him standing beside the Corium spewing from the pipe remains one of the most interesting images of the Chernobyl disaster.
The ambient radiation from the Elephants Foot is today low enough that a person can approach it, even touch it briefly, as long as there is no possibility that anything adheres to the skin. Washing afterward would assure that.
Eventually, it cooled down and solidified to form the Elephant's Foot. It is estimated to have reached a temperature of over 4,712 degrees Fahrenheit (2,600 Celsius) during the disaster. The Elephant's Foot is a large mass of highly radioactive and molten material known as corium.
How were the photographs taken with the radiation at such high levels? From a safe distance, workers – or “liquidators” as they were called – rigged up a crude wheeled camera contraption and pushed it towards the Elephant's Foot. The careful examination determined that it wasn't all nuclear fuel.
They were told they would be gone for two or three days and advised to take the minimum: identity papers, documents, food and clothing. None ever returned to live in Pripyat, declared too radioactively dangerous for human habitation for at least 24,000 years.
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.