A story of nature for Chernobyl?

Abstract: Is the Chernobyl disaster a story of nature? Apparently it is, since flora and fauna came back to life in the «Zone of Alienation», the 30 kilometre exclusion area created all around the nuclear site disaster. Over time animal and plant species have returned to populate the area abandoned by the man and where the human being still will have to keep out. Even if the air is now breathable, radioactive cesium-137 and strontium-90 particles have contaminating both the ground and the plant world. Everything there has radioactive, and it appeared impossible to believe that life could come back. Immediately after the accident no living beings were present in what has become the «Zone of alienation». Humans were evacuated, while flora and fauna simply burnt in the radioactive cloud. In 1986 the radioactive concentration was too high to don't create collateral effects, and in fact it created. Soon after nature started to replace what had been lost.



The absence of animals in the zone all around the nuclear power plant brought the animals leaving beyond the perimeter to have more space to use, so living beings came back. They started eating what nature could offer: radioactive food. Instead of die, animals lived. While men started having cancer or deformities, animals didn't. Nature found a balance, allowing wild species to live in mutated conditions. This is the story of Chernobyl after the disaster. In 1994 Robert Becker, professor from the Texas Tech University, started an observation of mice living in the red forest, inside the prohibited zone around Chernobyl. Since they are constantly exposed to thousands of radioactive particles, they are supposed to be a mutant specie. The study was made in collaboration with Sergej Gashak, researcher at Slavutich. Studies showed a huge number of mutations in DNA, and on April 1996 the result of these studies were published on Nature. But the story was a fake. New studies made by machineries of newer technology proved the mice were normal and no mutations were in DNA mice. The latter were simply different species genetically close each to the other, so the gap in genetic codes were linked to that. So, mice were OK and their genome didn't experience any mutation.
It is not the case for birds, where cancers and abnormalities were detected in more than 50% of spermatoozon by Andir Pog Moller, of the CNRS - University of Paris. Apparently all animals all around Chernobyl survive with no health diseases thanks to the antioxidants substances present in their organism. Antioxidants particles work as defence against radioactivity, but in case of birds they are already used to answer the stress caused by the migration flights. That's why only birds stopping in Chernobyl to take a rest have get cancers. So, nature offer animals a faster and wider system of recovery and adaptation, unknown to human beings.