Certainly, not all species are thriving. Recent research has found that the combination of radioactive contamination and rising temperatures from climate change are together placing growing strain on barn swallows living around Chernobyl, which may make it harder for them to survive as global warming continues.
The influence of the Chernobyl disaster is far from confined to the creatures living in the immediate vicinity of the power plant. Take the edible mushrooms in Poland, blueberries sold in the US, or firewood burned in Greece that all contain very small amounts of radionuclides dispersed by the nuclear disaster that happened decades ago.
The story of how Chernobyl has affected wildlife is complicated, argues Jonathon Turnbull, a geographer at Durham University. You can’t just say nature in the exclusion zone is thriving or dying, he says: “There’s the spectacular story of ‘Chernobyl changed everything’ – that doesn’t go very deep.”
Rather, there exists a menagerie of subtle effects and responses. An entire ecosystem that experienced a terrible disaster but kept living and growing. It’s no surprise, says Turnbull, that so many questions still litter this landscape 40 years on.
