Peering at the creature now safely confined within the curl of his fingers, Burraco immediately noticed the frog was slightly dark in colour, unlike other frogs of the same species that lived further away. “It was super exciting,” he says, recalling the moment. This frog raised a question that many have asked ever since the explosion at Chernobyl: had radiation from the stricken power station changed the creatures living near it? That’s what Burraco wanted to find out.
Four decades have now past since Chernobyl’s reactor number four exploded on 26 April 1986, sending radioactive material far and wide. Winds eventually carried radioactive dust as far as the UK, Norway and even parts of North Africa. But the landscape immediately surrounding the power plant in northern Ukraine received the heaviest dose. Intense radioactive hotspots still persist today.
Many feared the effect of such radioactive contamination would be devastating for the animals and plants living nearby. Almost all the humans in the surrounding area immediately left. These creatures could not. During the 40 years since the disaster, it has become clear that many species are living quite happily within the 37-mile-wide (60km) exclusion zone set up around the ruined power plant. But that’s not to say nature hasn’t changed here – sometimes for the worse.
Feral dogs – descendants of pets abandoned around Chernobyl – now roam close to the containment shield where the devastated reactor is now housed.
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