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Post by Admin on Apr 9, 2022 17:56:19 GMT
Inside Ukraine's Chernobyl site after Russian occupation - BBC News 97,681 views Apr 10, 2022 The site of the former nuclear power plant at Chernobyl is back under Ukrainian control after being occupied by Russian troops on the first day of the war.
The BBC's Yogita Limaye was one of the first journalists to reach the site, north of the capital Kyiv, and spoke to some of the people who work there.
For several days, Russian forces cut off electricity at the plant, which was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986.
About 170 Ukrainian national guards who secured the plant were taken to the basement and held captive there during the occupation.
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Post by Admin on Mar 4, 2023 19:28:07 GMT
Roughly 350,000 people evacuated during the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, leaving their lives and belongings behind to flee the worst nuclear disaster in history. Facets of residents’ lives left behind but often unmentioned are their pets, which evacuees were forbidden to retrieve. Despite the high levels of radiation in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, many of these animals survived, and their descendants can be found in and around the region today. Prancer, one of these dogs, got her name from a dance she does whenever she greets Tim Mousseau’s research team. Mousseau, a biology researcher at the University of South Carolina, has studied the effects of radiation on living organisms in sites like Chernobyl and Fukushima for decades. Usually, however, his subjects are a lot smaller, potentially a result of the extremely harsh conditions created by nuclear radiation. “These are dogs. You can't help but love them and develop relationships with them,” he told The Daily Beast. “We think about bringing them home with us every time we go.” Even in conditions that drastically limit their lifespan—Mousseau said most of the Chernobyl canines only live to three—the dogs have found a way to thrive. Locals and an increasing number of dark tourists feed the dogs resulting in a surge in the canines’ population that have driven nonprofits and researchers to regularly provide veterinary care, and spay and neuter as many dogs as they can. Over the course of three years, Mousseau has collected hundreds of blood samples from the dogs as part of these efforts. The dogs’ blood contained an incredibly rare opportunity: a glimpse into how life prevails even under unnaturally harsh conditions. When Mousseau came to National Human Genome Research Institute geneticist Elaine Ostrander to analyze nearly 300 of these blood samples, she wasn’t about to let the chance slip by. “I said, ‘Me, me, me, me, me,’” she told The Daily Beast. “It's such an extraordinary opportunity, and it does have implications for human health and biology.” Mousseau and Ostrander’s team published genetic sequencing results from the Chernobyl dogs on March 3 in the journal Science Advances. According to the authors, the study represents “the first genetic analysis of domestic dogs affected by a nuclear disaster,” providing a baseline to measure the impact of prolonged radiation exposure on an animal’s genetic health. The radiation in Chernobyl City and near the power plant breaks the pooches’ DNA strands. Their cells try to repair it, but errors often occur. DNA gets deleted, spontaneously added, or switched around willy-nilly. Understanding how the Chernobyl dogs are able to survive in spite of this constant assault could inform a field like cancer treatment, since incorrectly repaired DNA is often found in cancer cells, Ostrander said. “These dogs are surviving generation after generation, they’re fertile, they're carrying out all their bodily functions, and they even have behavioral relationships with people in the area—they're doing all the dog stuff they're supposed to be doing,” Ostrander said. “What's allowed them to overcome [the radiation]? From the viewpoint of someone at the National Institutes of Health, we really care about that.” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade2537
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