The blogger indicates that the level at this location, at the time the photo was taken last June, was 2 millirems per hour, about half what astronauts living on the space station are exposed to.
Didn’t live up to the billing? Is the city of Prypiat habitable? No, I didn’t think so. Japan being geographically tiny, simply can’t afford an alienation zone of that size.
I didn't say there were not any lasting effects. But back when Chernobyl happened, the MSM was making it out to be, quite literally, the end of the world. Nuclear fallout was going to kill or mutate nearly every living thing in the Northern Hemisphere.
Even in the exclusion zone near Chernobyl itself, we were then told that all life would cease to exist for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Of course we know that mother nature did not agree with that assessment, and the area is now a thriving natural area, teeming with plant and animal life.
So no, Chernobyl did not live up to the billing. And as another poster pointed out, Japan is far better at operating nuclear reactors safely than the old USSR was. While I know that the potential exists for a nuclear disaster of literally Biblical magnitude, I am not certain that that will be the case.
People still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those suffered the completely uncontained release of the entire core inventory of a supercritical nuclear reaction, not just some moderately contaminated radioactive steam drifting downwind.
Wildlife is thriving in the Chernobyl exclusion zone - many call it a "paradox," but it's not a paradox if your premise is false.
The blogger indicates that the level at this location, at the time the photo was taken last June, was 2 millirems per hour, about half what astronauts living on the space station are exposed to.