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Part 1 of 3 Parts

    Chernobyl has been in the news a lot lately with a television miniseries and a newly constructed cover. It is a nuclear power plant in Ukraine that is famous for a horrible nuclear accident in 1986. So much radiation was released in the surrounding area that it was closed to human activity. There is a forest near the plant where all the trees are dead and their leaves are red. The radiation released by the accident was so intense that it killed all the bacterial and fugus that would have caused the trees to rot away. Mushrooms in nearby countries triggered a Geiger counter soon after the accident. The meat of wild boars in the area was dangerous because they foraged in the ground for mushrooms and thus consumed radioactive materials.
    The Russians government that followed the Soviet control of the area did not admit anything about the accident until ten years had passed. Before they admitted that there had been an accident, the area that was evacuated around the plant was designated on maps as a wildlife refuge. Wildlife did flourish in the area but there are questions about the health of the animals roving around eating and reproducing in an irradiated area.
    The Ukraine government has been promoting travel to the Chernobyl plant lately in their thrust to expand tourism. Some of the radiation from the accident has dissipated in the thirty years since the accident. Visitors to some areas have to wear dosimeters to measure possible exposure to radiation. While Ukraine is entitled to manage their land as they see fit, it would be better for them to find someplace not quite as problematic as Chernobyl to promote.
    The U.S. has its own legacy of sites that were once utilized for nuclear projects mostly related to the military where wildlife now roams free. A diverse array of animals and habitats now flourishes in six obsolete weapons complexes because the U.S. government has prevented the public from entering parts of those areas for decades. Parts of these areas were converted into wildlife refuges under the authority of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The cost has been exorbitant, and critics of the program say that the sites have not been decontaminated sufficiently for the wildlife and people to be safe from radiation and toxic chemicals.
    The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), Department of Defense (DoD) and some private companies have spent over fifty-seven billion dollars to clean up serious pollution on the six sites. The DoE estimates that between three hundred twenty-three billion dollars and six hundred and seventy-seven billion dollars of additional spending will be needed to finish cleaning up just the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.
    Despite the expensive cleanup carried out to date, critics say that there is still dangerous contamination on the sites. They say that there must be tighter restrictions on where the public is allowed on the sites. They also say that the federal government must monitor the sites for centuries.

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