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Visitors look at a Ukrainian-made combat robot at an arms fair in the capital, Kyiv.
Sergey Dolzhenko
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky recently announced that
ground robots (also known as unmanned ground vehicles) had captured a
Russian position. Zelenskyy said it was the first time in the Ukraine
war that an enemy position had been taken exclusively by robots.
Ukraine’s increasing use of drones
in its defence has received a great deal of attention as Russia’s
invasion has dragged on. While most of this has focused on aerial and
maritime drones, the army’s use of ground robotics has been a quieter story – but one with growing significance.
Military ground robotics are rapidly transforming battlefield tasks.
However, for the foreseeable future, their greatest impact will be in
supporting roles rather than directly replacing infantry soldiers. So,
while this capture of the enemy position by robots is a milestone moment, it shouldn’t be over-interpreted.
When it comes to ground robots taking on infantry combat, there are a
set of serious obstacles. The first is, quite literally, obstacles.
Anyone who has watched increasingly sophisticated robotics demonstrations online will have seen machines navigating complex and difficult terrain.
However, operating in a controlled environment in front of a camera is a world away from crossing broken ground under fire. Most ground robots
continue to rely either on wheels or tracks for a variety of very good
reasons: mechanical simplicity, availability of spare parts, and cost.
But they have sharp limits on the types of terrain they can traverse,
and not all enemy strongpoints are built at the end of paved driveways.
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Even accounting for combat loads and the nature of the battlefield,
human infantry can climb, jump, wade and otherwise traverse a large
variety of obstacles unassisted, in ways that robots still cannot match.
Human in control
The second major obstacle is the electromagnetic environment. While
the term robot is often used to describe uncrewed ground vehicles, they
are mostly still remotely operated, which means the operator must
maintain a constant control link with the vehicle.
This can be done via radio link. However, these links can be
interrupted by enemy jamming, or by unfavourable weather or terrain.
The operator can also control the robot by a fibre-optic cable,
which cannot be jammed but limits how far the robot can travel from its
operator. A cable can also be severed by a blast, shrapnel or just
adverse terrain.
The alternative is autonomy, and these ground robots do increasingly
have some autonomous capabilities. But so far, this tends to be for
specific tasks such as highlighting identified enemy positions, rather
than being autonomous in the sense of driving and controlling
themselves.
Autonomous driving is a massive challenge. Residents of London may have seen Waymo autonomous cabs
in recent weeks, moving through the city’s streets ahead of their
public rollout. But following traffic laws and (more-or-less) consistent
road markings is still a huge and complex task.
Navigating a battlefield in a complex 3D environment is at least as
complex, requiring a huge amount of processing power. That power can
either be put aboard the robot itself, which significantly increases its
cost and complexity, or done remotely and transmitted – which brings us
back to the issue of control link vulnerability.
Support roles
While these are serious challenges for ground robots in an infantry
role, they pose less of an issue in a range of critical support tasks.
Robots have, for example, been extensively used by Ukraine for battlefield casualty evacuation, front-line resupply, combat engineering, mine laying and mine clearing.
In these instances, their smaller size, substantially lower cost,
versatility and lower profile relative to traditional crewed vehicles
(which makes them harder to detect) hold benefits that substantially
outweigh the drawbacks. And while they are remotely operated so do not
drastically reduce overall personnel requirements, if the ground robot
is destroyed, its operator is not.
For Ukraine, the strategic imperative to rapidly roll out ground
robots is enormous. Four years of war against a numerically larger
opponent has imposed huge challenges on its ability to continue
recruiting and deploying a large enough force to safeguard its
sovereignty.
On a battlefield where the enemy can see and hit almost anything
moving within 20 kilometres of the front line, swapping irreplaceable
humans for cheap and replaceable robots is a necessary condition for
staying in the fight long enough to win it.
But for the immediate future at least, robots are more likely to support that fight, rather than lead it.
Ditch the algorithms for a more constructive inbox.
When you type a question into a search engine, the first result you see is probably an AI-generated answer sourced from the open web. There is every chance the answers presented by the algorithms that shape our contemporary reality are based on disinformation and misinformation.
But here at The Conversation our articles are written by academics and edited by professional journalists.
The fence keeps feral cats and foxes out and natives like the eastern barred bandicoot in. (Supplied: Pete James)
Ecologist Damian Jones is constantly reminded of the menace feral predators pose to Australian wildlife.
Every
week, riding a four-wheel motorbike, he patrols a 17-kilometre-long,
high voltage exclusion fence that encircles the 1,000-hectare Tiverton
farm at Dundonell in Western Victoria.
Then,
assisted by AI technology, he reviews hundreds of hours of footage
taken nightly by 50 trail cameras strategically placed along its length.
It
shows that inside the 2-metre-high wire netting fence the property's
eastern barred bandicoots and eastern quolls roam freely.
A fence holding back extinction
Outside the fence marauding feral cats and foxes are often seen ogling them through the wire.
"Without
the fence the bandicoots would not be here, they would eventually be
predated by the cats and foxes and they'd be gone," Dr Jones said.
"Similarly with the quolls, the foxes would take them out."
Damian Jones opens a gate that is a part of a formidable fence encircling the conservation property. (ABC Landline: Tim Lee)
Tiverton is Victoria's largest predator-free sanctuary.
It's also a commercial farm that usually runs about 5,000 merinos.
Conservationists
are hailing it as a major milestone, growing proof that commercial
farming and conservation can happily co-exist.
"What
we found is we have got a profitable enterprise there. Definitely not a
high carrying capacity margin enterprise, but enough to have a
profitable farm," said Odonata Foundation's Nigel Sharp.
Dr Jones believes that without the fence, natives like the eastern quoll would not survive at the property. (Supplied: Pete James)
Tiverton
is part of the foundation, a leading Australian environmental
conservation charity dedicated to saving endangered species.
It's the brainchild of Mr Sharp, an entrepreneur, investment manager, business executive, and environmentalist.
Two decades ago the foundation bought Mt Rothwell Sanctuary, a 500-hectare property an hour's drive west of Melbourne.
The
degraded landscape was first enclosed behind a predator-proof fence and
in collaboration with Zoos Victoria gradually transformed into a
wildlife refuge for nine endangered species.
Environmentalist and entrepreneur Nigel Sharp of the conservation charity Odonata Foundation. (ABC Landline: Tim Lee)
Successful
breeding programs for eastern barred bandicoots and eastern quolls
there have enabled surplus animals to be relocated to Tiverton where
their populations continue to grow.
Farm manager Tim Hill says he's constantly amazed by how well the marsupials cope with climatic extremes.
"It was perishingly dry in 2024-25. Species like the bandicoots were thriving. They were breeding," Mr Hill said.
Wildlife recovery on a commercial property
The initial aim on the farm was to preserve and regenerate endangered native grasslands.
There are only 500 remaining southern brush-tailed rock wallabies and 400 of them are at Mt Rothwell Sanctuary. (ABC Landline: Tim Lee)
Along the way has come the discovery that the presence of marsupials such as bandicoots helps accelerate the process.
"Bandicoots move a tremendous amount of soil every night based on their body weight," Dr Jones said.
"They're
helping to open up the pores of the soil, if you like, to allow water
to penetrate, and they're also helping to spread native seeds around."
There is another benefit for farming.
As the native grassland species on Tiverton rebounded, so too has the quality of the wool produced from them.
"We
found suddenly we were topping the wool market because we had this
really strong staple strength in a wet year, so the native veg wasn't
getting the same sugar hit through the spring," Mr Sharp said.
Sheep play a key role in the ecological management of Tiverton farm. (ABC Landline: Peter Healy)
That meant the wool had greater fibre strength and avoided a problem known as "tender wool".
Tiverton
is one of the Odonata Foundation's eight conservation properties across
Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia.
Its
giant fence cost more than $500,000 to build, and the property
custodians are diligent in ensuring no predators ever infiltrate.
Feral cats and foxes are the major cause of animal extinction in Australia.
Their exclusion from Tiverton further ensures an extremely high lamb survival rate.
About
one fifth of the property, including wetlands, is also fenced off from
stock, allowing ground nesting birds such as brolgas to make a
re-appearance.
Farm manager at Tiverton, Tim Hill, is excited to see rare marsupials in the landscape. (ABC Landline: Tim Lee)
Tim Hill said the property's transformation was very exciting.
"Our ambition is to release additional threatened species out onto this landscape over time,"
Mr Hill said.
Scaling up a predator-free future
There's growing evidence worldwide that the more native animals there are in the landscape the healthier the eco-system.
The
Odonata Foundation is collaborating with overseas research into this
field, including scientists at prestigious Yale University in the United
States.
"Without the animals your fungi's not working," Mr Sharp said.
"There's
so many different parts of your soil eco-system and soil organisms that
don't operate the way they did, so we've got no chance of getting all
the native veg back if we don't think about the animals."
Nigel
Sharp believes it would be possible to enclose large areas of farmland
and replicate Tiverton on a larger scale elsewhere in Australia.
But
he cautioned that its main limitation would be finding large,
contiguous areas of farmland that contained suitable habitat, and a lack
of funding from federal and state governments.
Wildlife ecologist Damian Jones checks one of his 50 trail cameras on Tiverton. (ABC Landline: Tim Lee)
The
main challenge of safe havens such as Tiverton is ensuring the survival
of endangered species by building up large populations of genetically
diverse animals.
The property is a window into a world largely lost since European settlement, now being reborn.
Mr
Sharp's ultimate dream is to see a feral predator-free Australia where
native animals can again roam freely across the landscape.
"All
of these things need to be worked through in a well-planned
progression, but our ultimate goal is to be able to not have fences," he
said.
Watch ABC TV's Landline at 12:30pm AEST on Sunday or stream anytime on ABC iview.
Fewer than 2,000 mountain pygmy possums remain in the wild across NSW and Victoria. (ABC Central West: Hamish Cole)
In short:
The mountain pygmy possum is being bred at lower altitudes to help the marsupials adapt to a changing climate.
Increasing snow loss in the Snowy Mountains exposes the species to increased predation.
What's next?
Secret Creek Sanctuary runs a successful breeding program in Lithgow.
For the past six years, Trevor Evans has seen the number of endangered mountain pygmy possums at his sanctuary increase sixfold.
The
pocket-sized possums are traditionally found on the peaks of the Snowy
Mountains, but are being bred at a lower altitude at the Secret Creek
Sanctuary in Lithgow in the NSW Central Tablelands to prepare them for
the impacts of climate change.
"We started off with six possums many years ago," Mr Evans said.
"We've grown the population to about 36. Our work is instrumental [in its survival]."
Trevor Evans says the mountain pygmy possum is facing extinction. (ABC Central West: Hamish Cole)
Weighing
less than 100 grams, the mountain pygmy possum is Australia's only
hibernating marsupial, spending up to seven months of the year sleeping
under the snow.
There are fewer than 2,000 individual possums living in the wild as a changing climate exposes them to growing threats.
"They are quite unique, very special, and disappearing," Mr Evans said.
"With the loss of snow in the Snowy Mountains, it allows predators to come up in the summer and feed on them."
The possums spend seven months of the year hibernating under snow and rocks. (ABC Central West: Hamish Cole)
Changing habitat
In
collaboration with the University of NSW, the sanctuary is attempting
to better prepare the species for living in warmer temperatures by
breeding them at an altitude of 1,000 metres.
The species is usually found above 1,400 metres.
"Breeding them here at 1,000 metres will help them live through climate change," Mr Evans said.
"We are adapting them to lower altitudes, higher temperatures and different mating cycles.
"They have the opportunity to breed twice in a season. They breed quite readily if you give them the right opportunities."
Mountain pygmy possums are found in the Snowy Mountains, but climate change is threatening their habitat. (ABC Central West: Hamish Cole)
University
of New South Wales biological sciences professor Michael Archer said it
showed the species had not always lived in the Snowy Mountains.
"Every
time we see this species in the fossil record, it is always in fossil
communities that were cool temperate lowland rainforests, not alpine
environments," Professor Archer said.
"Every signal to us says they are not in their comfort zone now; they're struggling to survive by the skin of their teeth.
"If we could get them back into their ancestral comfort zone, the lowland rainforest, we predict that they will be very happy."
Michael Archer says the mountain pygmy possum is more suited to living in lowland rainforests. (Supplied: UNSW)
The possums have become reliant on snow coverage, providing insulation for their nests under the rocks.
Professor
Archer said they would be unable to survive in the alpine regions if
snow coverage were reduced further by global warming.
"For these possums, that would be lethal," he said.
"If the snow disappears, the wintry cold winds will end up going down into these rock piles and kill the possums."
While
the colony at Secret Creek Sanctuary will remain in captivity, Mr Evans
hoped the population could be used to support efforts to increase
numbers in the wild.
"To be able to breed some from the wild that are currently geographically isolated from each other is a goal," he said.
"We would like to breed those and then return those possums to the wild."
It
is hoped that the possums that return to the Snowy Mountains will be
more predator-aware and better able to deal with warmer temperatures.
Critical research
During
hibernation, the species lives deep under snow and rocks, giving
scientists little understanding of the animal's daily life for much of
the year.
The population of mountain pygmy possums at the Secret Creek Sanctuary has grown from six to 36. (ABC Central West: Hamish Cole)
Mr Evans said observing the marsupials in a controlled environment had been educational.
"We filmed them mating for the first time. We filmed the little nest that they make when they hibernate in winter," he said.
"We
get a better understanding of what they're eating, how they're
surviving, where they actually live, how they nest, and how they
hibernate as well.
"If we understand them, we can help manage them."
The Secret Creek Sanctuary in Lithgow is home to hundreds of native animals, including koalas. (ABC Central West: Hamish Cole)
The
Secret Creek Sanctuary has been operating for more than 30 years and
contains hundreds of native species, many of which are endangered.
For Mr Evans, protecting the mountain pygmy possum from extinction had become a critical part of the shelter.
"It feels really good to be involved," he said.
"If we don't do it, and no-one does, it's a species that we could lose.
"We need to [put in] an all-out effort, and the critical thing is funding and support."
Seven people were killed in two strikes on an apartment building. (AP: Mykola Synelnykov)
In short:
Russia attacked the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, as well as other regions, with over 600 drones, Ukrainian's air force has said.
Seven people were killed in two separate strikes, with dozens more injured.
What's next?
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has visited Azerbaijan in a bid to strengthen ties with the Middle East.
A major Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro has killed seven people and injured dozens.
Russia's
overnight attack on Saturday used 619 drones and 47 missiles, Ukraine's
air force said in a statement on Telegram, adding that it downed 580
drones and 30 missiles.
A large chunk of an apartment building in Dnipro collapsed after being hit during the attack.
Four bodies were recovered from the rubble, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said.
Rescue workers are clearing rubble at the site. (AP: Mykola Synelnykov)
The
site was struck again in a daytime attack, authorities said, while
rescuers were working there. The second attack killed one person and
injured seven.
Moscow has been
launching smaller barrages of dozens of drones every night at Ukraine,
interspersing them with occasional large-scale attacks that use hundreds
of drones and dozens of missiles.
Thick
columns of black smoke could be seen streaming into the sky on Saturday
morning, local time, as Ukrainian media warned residents in Dnipro
about worsening air quality.
Residents are being warned about poor air quality following the strikes. (AP: Mykola Synelnykov)
A
Reuters reporter saw a Russian drone being destroyed in the sky over
the ruined apartment block as rescuers were working in the rubble.
In total, over 30 people in the city were wounded, officials said.
Ukrainian
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia was "deliberately
prolonging its terror against our people, continuing to target critical
infrastructure and residential buildings".
Russia's
defence ministry said it had hit military-industrial and energy targets
in Ukraine overnight. It did not comment on the strike on the apartment
block in Dnipro.
'Like being given a second life'
At
the destroyed apartment block in Dnipro, which had a pre-war population
of nearly a million and has experienced many lethal bombardments over
the last four years, residents were stricken with grief and rage.
"May
their children sleep in their warm beds in Russia, and may everything
be alright for them. Let them watch as Russia 'liberates' us of our
apartments and houses," Aliona Katrushova, 37, told Reuters.
Ms Katrushova lives in the building opposite and looked on in her dressing gown as survivors were hauled out from the rubble.
"It's
like being given a second life," her husband Oleh said after surviving
the attack, although the couple's apartment was damaged.
In
the northern region of Chernihiv, missile and drone attacks killed two
people and wounded seven others, the governor there said.
"Every
strike like this must remind our partners that the situation needs
immediate and firm action, rapid strengthening of our air defences,"
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Drone
fragments damaged an electricity pole and household annex in NATO
member Romania, which borders Ukraine, authorities there said, although
there were no casualties.
Ukraine
has recently stepped up its own drone attacks hitting Russian
territory. Authorities in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg said on
Saturday, local time, that a Ukrainian drone crashed into an apartment
building there, causing minor injuries.
Zelenskyy signs defence agreements in Azerbaijan
Mr Zelenskyy was visiting Azerbaijan on Saturday to sign agreements on defence and energy co-operation.
Kyiv
is seeking to strengthen its diplomatic and security alliances by
leveraging wartime experience in countering vast aerial attacks,
particularly its experience in downing hundreds of drones with low-cost
methods.
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy meets Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Gabala. (Supplied: Press Service of President of Azerbaijan)
Mr
Zelenskyy posted a picture of him meeting Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev, and said he also met a Ukrainian military team "which is sharing
Ukraine's experience in protecting the skies".
Azerbaijan
has a long border with Iran, with which it has tense relations.
Azerbaijan has also fought multiple wars with its other neighbour
Armenia since 1991.
Since the
US and Israel attacked Iran earlier this year, triggering a war in the
Middle East, Kyiv has worked hard to build security co-operation with
Middle Eastern nations concerned about Iranian drone and missile
bombardment.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened 40 years ago today in what is now northern Ukraine. (Reuters: Vasily Fedosenko)
In
northern Ukraine, about 100 kilometres from Kyiv, lies a strange and
abandoned landscape. Villages and towns are almost empty; kindergartens,
once alive with children's voices, are silent. Buildings are being
reclaimed by vegetation. Wild animals roam empty streets.
But it is not war with Russia that has led to this.
At
1.23am on April 26, 1986 an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power
Plant outside the town of Pripyat became the worst nuclear disaster in
history.
Dolls,
which were placed by a visitor, lie on beds at a kindergarten in the
abandoned city of Pripyat near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. (Reuters: Gleb Garanich)
The
nuclear power plant opened in 1977 and the nearby town of Pripyat was
built to house thousands of workers and their families. The plant, with
four reactors, was celebrated as a triumph of Soviet engineering and
energy planning.
Less than a
decade later, the explosion led to a tragedy that lingers 40 years on.
The Soviet leader at the time, Mikhail Gorbachev, has claimed it to be
so significant the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl underpinned the collapse of the Soviet Union even more profoundly than his Glasnost and Perestroika political reforms.
A
picture of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin as seen through wild
flowers inside a hospital in the abandoned town of Pripyat. (Reuters)
Dozens
of employees died when reactor 4 exploded — caused when a power surge
and a build-up of steam blew it apart. But there was more tragedy to
come.
In the days that
followed thousands more became ill with acute radiation poisoning,
reporting nosebleeds, dizziness and nausea as radioactive material
including iodine-131, caesium-137, strontium-90, xenon gas and plutonium
— with half a half-life of thousands of years — was released into the
atmosphere.
Anyone inside the
reactor at the time of the explosion would have received an annual safe
dose of radiation in under a minute. Plumes of radioactive smoke spread
across Europe.
As many as 600,000 "liquidators" — teams of workers sent in to clean up the mess — were among those exposed.
No
one knows how many have died as a result of the explosion at the
nuclear facility 40 years ago. Doctors suspect thousands of premature
cancer deaths can be tracked to the nuclear meltdown and the release of
radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere.
As radiation spread across Europe those at risk were offered an anti-radiation iodine solution. (Reuters)
In
the days following the disaster more than 115,000 people were evacuated
from their homes in Ukraine. Many were told they would be gone only a
few days. Yet most have never returned.
Some
estimates suggest the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, or Zone of Alienation —
a 2,600 square kilometre swath of Ukrainian territory bordering Belarus
— will be radioactive for millions of years. Plutonium-239 has a
half-life of 24,110 years. Uranium-235, an astonishing 704 million
years.
Ghost villages, abandoned after the explosion, now surround the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. (Upsplash)
'Everything was humming'
April
26, 1986, was Iryna Statsenko's wedding day. She remembers waking in
the middle of the night to a "rumble" that sounded as if planes were
flying overhead.
"Everything was humming and the glass in the windows shook," she told the BBC.
Iryna's
fiance, Serhiy Lobanov, was sleeping on a mattress on the kitchen floor
of his family's apartment nearby: the bedrooms were filled with wedding
guests.
He remembers "a shake, as if some kind of wave passed", before falling back to sleep.
When
their wedding day dawned radiation from the stricken plant could not be
contained. But the Soviet authorities were silent.
Iryna
and Serhiy saw soldiers in gas masks washing the streets with a foamy
solution. The market was deserted. Neighbours whispered, something
"terrible" has happened.
But
Soviet authorities insisted there was nothing to fear and things should
carry on as normal. Information was impossible to find.
Iryna
and Serhiy's wedding went ahead. But it felt "sad", the couple says
now, with the weight of this unspoken doom. The wedding dance was a
disaster: "From the first steps we went out of rhythm", Iryna remembers.
"We just hugged each other and moved in the hug."
At
10am on April 27, still without a formal acknowledgement from the
government, helicopters began ferrying sand, clay, lead, boron and
dolomite and dumping it into the burning core of the reactor in a futile
attempt to slow the release of radioactivity.
A
few days later Sergei Belyakov, an assistant professor at the Ukrainian
State Chemical Technical University, was fishing on the Dnieper River
when he noticed that the water level was dropping. He knew it was a sign
that an industrial accident had occurred further upstream. Water from
the river was being pumped out of the river.
A
news broadcast mentioning a few casualties from an accident at the
nuclear power plant. The broadcast said everything had been "taken care
of", Sergei remembers.
Behind the scenes, extraordinary efforts were being made to keep the extent of the explosion secret.
As
the days passed it became impossible to contain the rumours.
Information began to leak. The Soviet leadership switched tack: instead
of a cover-up officials used propaganda to entice citizens to volunteer
for the clean-up emphasising this was a time for national pride. They
would be paid handsomely.
Sergei
was proud of his skills as a military chemist. He believed he would be
of help and spent several weeks volunteering as a "bio-robot
liquidator". He earned five times his monthly salary. Decades later, he
says the health impact of those weeks remain with him.
Spy satellites unravelled the mystery
By
April 28 air monitors in Sweden had picked up large quantities of
radiation in the atmosphere and tracked it back to the USSR.
The following day Western spy satellites captured photographs of the devastation. Soviet officials finally publicly admitted they had a problem.
Attempts
to reduce the risk of radiation spread continued: liquid nitrogen was
pumped below the reactor to cool it, contaminated villages were
bulldozed, radioactive pets and livestock were shot, contaminated
topsoil was buried.
By early
May the fire in the reactor's core had burnt itself out but in Kyiv,
schools closed, residents were told to stay indoors and leafy vegetables
were off the menu.
A
few days later construction began on a huge concrete sarcophagus to
cover the ruins of reactor 4, marking the start of a 100-year process to
decommission the reactor and contain its lethal remains.
The sarcophagus covering the damaged fourth reactor seen from a building in the abandoned town of Pripyat. (Reuters: Gleb Garanich)
But
despite the danger, the Soviet Union could not just abandon the
Chernobyl power plant. Apart from regularly monitoring radiation levels,
scientists and engineers continued to operate reactors 1, 2 and 3.
Workers
wore protective clothing, committed to decontamination, limited work
hours to reduce exposure and regular medical checks. While the original
worker's town of Pripyat was abandoned, a new town — Slavutych — was
built 30 kilometres away on the edge of the exclusion zone.
A Ukrainian police officer working inside the 30km exclusion zone receives a medical examination. (Reuters)
Then,
in 2020, reactor 3 was closed. It was the last of Chernobyl's nuclear
plants to be decommissioned and an era of wider decontamination and
decommissioning of the site began.
When
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers briefly took
control of this strategically important area, lying between Russia's
ally Belarus and Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. A fire broke out and there
were concerns it could reach the power plant, creating a new nuclear
disaster.
But by the end of March, the soldiers were gone. The dangerous and deserted region was back in Ukrainian hands.
Remnants of abandoned Pripyat's once-thriving town are being reclaimed by nature. (Reuters: Gleb Garanich )
Ghost villages wrestle with nature
Forty
years after the explosion the Zone of Alienation is scattered with
ghost villages. The town of Chernobyl, transliterated as Chornobyl in
Ukrainian, once buzzed with 14,000 residents. Nearby Pripyat, the town
founded in 1970 to house nuclear plant workers and their families, was
home to 45,000 people.
Shoes and a gas mask for children are left in a kindergarten in Ukraine's ghost town of Pripyat where 45,000 used to live. (Reuters: Gleb Garanich)
About one or two hundred people, mostly elderly women,
continue to live in the Zone of Alienation. They are known as Samosely,
self-settlers, and refused to leave their homes inside the radioactive
"forbidden zone". Others are moving to the edges of the exclusion zone
where a crumbling house can be bought for a few hundred dollars.
A few hundred self-settlers refused to leave their homes inside the radioactive "forbidden zone". (Reuters: Vasily Fedosenko)
Living
alongside the Samosely "babushkas", a rotating staff of up to 3,000
scientists work shifts to monitor contamination and manage what remains
of the power plant.
Under the
shadow of radioactive contamination, pockets of habitation and vast
emptiness, an experiment on what happens when humans disappear from a
landscape is underway. Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation has been reclaimed
by nature, described as "the most picturesque nature reserve on Earth".
When humans disappeared from the landscape, wildlife returned.
The
region is home to packs of wild horses, dogs, wolves and more. After
decades of absence, brown bears have returned to live alongside lynx,
red deer and moose. Most intriguing is the population of Mongolian
"spirit" horses that have established themselves in the zone after being
introduced as an experiment in 1998.
Przewalski's horses have thrived since being introduced to the area from Mongolia. (Reuters: Gleb Garanich)
One
of the most curious transformations is organisms turning black, an
adaptation scientists believe is caused by a rise in melanin that helps
to manage high levels of ionising radiation.
A strange black fungus has been found thriving on the walls inside some of Chernobyl's most radioactive structures.
40 years on, wildlife is thriving in Chernobyl
Scientists have discovered that the fungus Cladosporium sphaerospermum
is not harmed by ionising radiation in the same way as other organisms
are affected. Not only that but C sphaerospermum grew better when
exposed.
Even
wolves in the region have quickly adapted through natural selection
with studies suggesting key genes associated with cancer have mutated to
create a "biological shield".
A wild dog at home in the abandoned city of Pripyat.
Princeton University evolutionary biologist Cara Love
has discovered that wolves in the zone receive six times the daily safe
limit of radiation for the average human. Similar to a patient
undergoing radiation for cancer, the wolves have evolved an altered
immune system and changes to elements of their genetic code that resists
cancer.
They now roam the region in numbers not seen for 100 years.
Despite
radiation, wildlife in and around the exclusion zone has been teeming
since people left and some continue to hunt the animals. ( Reuters: Vasily Fedosenko)
A woman lights a lantern to commemorate those killed in the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011. (Reuters: Yuriko Nakao)
Some
argue Fukushima's global contamination was worse because the coastal
location of the plant allowed radioactive waste to flow directly into
the Pacific Ocean and travel around the world.
It
can be tempting to look at the way nature, and some small human
communities, have thrived in Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation and conclude
that we have little to fear from nuclear disaster.
But
experts warn although the absence of humans and rewilding of the region
has allowed animals to breed in large numbers, they are often
unhealthy. Individual animals continue to experience high rates of
cancer as well as smaller brains, cataracts and other genetic mutations.
And the number of humans who have died early from cancer induced by radiation exposure is almost impossible to know for sure.
Humans
generally have more complex health systems than animals and their
longer lives gives greater opportunity for the impact of radiation to
take affect.
Liquidators
or emergency workers, who fought the blaze at the Chernobyl nuclear
reactor, have demonstrated against cuts to their subsidies and benefits.
This man's bandage reads "I am starving". (Reuters: Valeriy Bilokryl )
The Chernobyl explosion has a social legacy too.
Hundreds
of thousands of people were uprooted from their homes, never to return.
The "liquidators" who cleaned up the disaster have lived with trauma
and health problems, more recently demonstrating against cuts to their benefits and compensation.
A
woman wipes tears while holding a portrait of her relative, a victim of
the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, as she visits a cemetery in Kiev. (Reuters: Konstantin Chernichkin )
While
the most dangerous areas remain inaccessible, the risk has not
disappeared. The forest that has reclaimed the land is still highly
radioactive. If it were to burn, toxic smoke and ash could spread far
beyond the exclusion zone.
Drone
surveys of the Red Forest — named for the trees that turned a rusted
red in the days after the explosion — show radiation levels remain
extreme. In some areas, a person could receive a year’s recommended dose
of radiation in less than an hour.
A cross with a crucifix stands next to a radiation warning sign near the Chernobyl power plant. (Reuters: Gleb Garanich)
The
explosion lasted only minutes but the damage remains in the landscape
and in the uncertainty that surrounds its long-term human toll.
Nearly four decades on, the scale of that toll is still unfolding.
