(Adnkronos) – 40 years after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, the worst civilian nuclear catastrophe in history, the site remains one of the most monitored and delicate places in the world. If the explosion of April 26, 1986 continues to mark the history of atomic energy, Chernobyl today is above all an area under permanent management, between dismantling, radiation control, and a deeply transformed but living ecosystem.
The Chernobyl incident – detailed to the general public by the award-winning eponymous series of 2019 – was caused by a test conducted under inadequate safety conditions: the Rbmk reactor, lacking a containment structure, went out of control, causing an explosion and a fire that dispersed radioactive elements into the atmosphere, including iodine, cesium, and strontium. Two workers died immediately, while dozens of rescuers lost their lives in the following months due to acute radiation syndrome. Within a few weeks, over 100,000 people were evacuated, including all inhabitants of nearby Pripyat, giving rise to the largest exclusion zone ever, if the 2160 square kilometers of the adjacent Polesie State Radioecological Reserve, in Belarusian territory, are added.
Today, the area around the power plant is largely uninhabited: the approximately 30-kilometer radius officially remains off-limits, and hundreds of settlements have been abandoned. Some former residents – the so-called “Samosely,” mostly elderly – have returned to live in their homes, despite prohibitions and radiation levels above the norm. Meanwhile, the absence of humans has favored the return of wild fauna: wolves, moose, wild boars, and Przewalski’s horses populate what has become, in fact, a nature reserve. An ecological paradox confirmed by numerous studies: without anthropogenic pressure, the approximately 2,600 square kilometers of the exclusion zone have transformed into a refuge for biodiversity.
The central issue, however, remains the destroyed reactor. After the disaster, a concrete and steel sarcophagus was built in a few months, later joined by the “New Safe Confinement,” installed between 2016 and 2017: the largest movable metal structure ever built, designed to last at least a century and allow for the dismantling of the old, now unstable, casing. Despite this, the International Atomic Energy Agency emphasizes that the site requires constant vigilance: isotopes like cesium-137 and strontium-90 are still present and can have long-term health effects. The power plant, definitively closed in 2000, is in the process of decommissioning, a process expected to last decades.
Approximately 2,500 technicians still work in the area, living in rotation in the city of Slavutych, to monitor radiation levels, manage spent fuel (particularly in the Isf-2 storage facility), and maintain the safety of the structures. The fragility of the site also emerged in 2022, when Russian forces occupied it for over a month: the episode caused damage to monitoring systems, forced personnel to operate under pressure, and contributed to raising radioactive dust in the so-called “Red Forest,” one of the most contaminated areas.
