4 Years After the Meltdown, Investigating Fukushima’s Ecological Toll

We know surprisingly little about what low-dose radiation does to organisms and ecosystems. Four years after the disaster in Fukushima, scientists are beginning to get some answers

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Until a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986, spreading the equivalent of 400 Hiroshima bombs of fallout across the entire Northern Hemisphere, scientists knew next to nothing about the effects of radiation on vegetation and wild animals. The catastrophe created a living laboratory, particularly in the 1,100 square miles around the site, known as the exclusion zone.

In 1994 Ronald Chesser and Robert Baker, both professors of biology at Texas Tech University, were among the first American scientists allowed full access to the zone. “It was a screaming place—really radioactive,” Baker recalls. “We caught a bunch of voles, and they looked as healthy as weeds. We became fascinated with that.” When Baker and Chesser sequenced the voles' DNA, they did not find abnormal mutation rates. They also noticed wolves, lynx and other once rare species roaming around the zone as if it were an atomic wildlife refuge. The Chernobyl Forum, founded in 2003 by a group of United Nations agencies, issued a report on the disaster's 20th anniversary that confirmed this view, stating that “environmental conditions have had a positive impact on the biota” in the zone, transforming it into “a unique sanctuary for biodiversity.”

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