A devastating nuclear accident happened at Chernobyl, Ukraine, on 26 April 1986. These images show the area around the nuclear power plant approximately one month after the accident, and six years after the accident. The most visible change in these images is the abandonment of farm fields, which turn from a bright red-and-white pattern to a dull gray.
Abandonment, 1986-1992
This area is near the common borders of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The plant lies near the Pripyat River, at the northwest end of a cooling pond. The pond is 12 km long; during normal operation the plant discharges warm water counterclockwise around the pond, taking in cool water near the north end.1 Just northwest of the plant is the city of Pripyat. The smaller town of Chernobyl lies south of the cooling pond.
The 1986 and 1992 images clearly show farm abandonment. Agriculture appears as a collage of bright red (growing crops) and white (highly reflective bare ground). Many of these areas appear a flat tan-green in 1992, indicating natural vegetation which has taken over the abandoned fields.
While the reactor was still on fire, all settlements within 30 km were evacuated, including Pripyat (1986 population 45,000), Chernobyl (1986 population 12,000), and 94 other villages (estimated total population 40,000). As of 1992, this area remained almost completely abandoned.
Radiation contamination later forced abandonment even outside the 30-km zone. The 1992 image is overlaid with zones indicating December 1990 levels of cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years. Note that the area with more than 40 curies/sq km is almost completely abandoned, but abandonment of fields in the 15-40 curies/sq km zone is highly variable. In all, more than 120,000 people, from 213 villages and cities, were relocated outside contaminated areas.2
The radiation also affected wild plants and animals around Chernobyl. Pine forests soon died, cattails grew three heads, and wild animals declined in number. But in the coming years, as the short-lived radionuclides decayed and the longer-lived contaminants settled deep into the soil, the wildlife rebounded. Human abandonment also made habitat available for birds, deer, rodents, wolves, boar and other animals. These populations appear to be increasing despite the extraordinarily high mutation rates caused by contamination in the food chain and by one of the highest background radiation levels in the world.3
Question
What other salient feature do you notice in the 1992 image? What do you make of it? (See the answer below.)
Footnotes
1. Frank G. Sadowski and Steven J. Covington, 1987, Processing and analysis of commercial satellite image data of the nuclear accident near Chernobyl, U.S.S.R.: Washington, USGS Survey Bulletin 1785, 19 p., p. 10.
2. Ihor Stebelsky, 1995, Radionuclide contamination and settlement abandonment around Chornobyl: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, v. 85, 1995, p. 291.
3. Nigel Williams, 1995, Chernobyl; life abounds without people: Science, v. 269, 21 July 1995, p. 304. Karen F. Schmidt, 1995, The truly wild life around Chernobyl: U.S. News and World Report, 17 July 1995, p. 51-53.
4. Park, Chris C., 1989, Chernobyl; the long shadow: New York, Routledge, p. 121. Marples, David R., 1986, Chernobyl and nuclear power in the USSR: New York, St. Martin's Press, p. 160. Mould, Richard Francis, 1988, Chernobyl-- the real story: Oxford, England, Pergamon Press, p. 116.
Medvedev, Zhores A., 1990, The legacy of Chernobyl: New York, W.W. Norton, p. 108.
LT5182024008615110 (Landsat 5 TM, 31 May 1986)
LT4182024009220810 (Landsat 4 TM, 26 July 1992)
Defense Mapping Agency, 1965 [compiled 1965, aeronautical information revised 1983], Operational Navigation Chart E-3: scale 1:1,000,000.
Among the new features in the 1992 image is a curved white structure north of the Pripyat River. You can see a small amount of water dammed up against it and in the channels behind it. Soon after the accident the Soviets built a series of levees, dams and other structures to prevent contaminated runoff water from entering the rivers and contaminating regional water supplies, especially for the city of Kiev downstream.4
Campbell, Robert Wellman, ed. 1998. "Chernobyl, Ukraine: 1986, 1992." Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change. U.S. Geological Survey. http://earthshots.usgs.gov. This article was released 1 March 1998.
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