Call It "Chernobyl World"

Chernobyl's ecosystems seem to be bouncing back, 19 years after the region was blasted with radiation from the ill-fated reactor. Researchers who have surveyed the land around the old nuclear power plant in present-day Ukraine say that biodiversity is actually higher than before the disaster.

Some 100 species on the IUCN Red List of threatened species are now found in the evacuated zone, which covers more than 4,000 square kilometers in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, says Viktor Dolin, who studies the environmental effects of radioactivity at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in Kiev. Around 40 of these, including some species of bear and wolf, were not seen there before the accident.

If animals at the top of the food chain are present, then the plants and animals they eat must also be thriving, says ecologist James Morris of the University of South Carolina. . .

Another factor in the ecosystem's apparent good health could be that the major radioactive elements in the region tend to stay in the soil rather than accumulating in plants and animals, suggests Dolin, meaning that contamination of the human food chain by radioactivity from Chernobyl might not be as severe as was feared.

All this has led some people to propose that tourism to Chernobyl would help develop the area.

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This is amazing. If you haven't taken the tour, check out this Russian gal's website. She used clearance obtained through her well-placed father to ride her motorcycle into the Chernobyl area and its biggest city. She took pictures of what she calls the "Ghost Town." Freaky stuff. After reading this woman's account, the idea that the area could be ready for tourism soon is amazing . . . and hard to believe.