Scientists use drones to map Chernobyl's Red Forest
A group of scientists have used drones to make the most accurate map yet of the radiation in Chernobyl’s “Red Forest”.
The Red Forest is the wooded area surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear complex in the Ukraine.
It was named because of the copper colour the pine trees turned after they died in the fallout of the 1986 explosion and fire in the plant's number-4 reactor.
The Red Forest is still one of the most contaminated sites on the planet and the drones have given a fresh insight into its current distribution of radiation.
An abandoned bus belonging to the Chernobyl Road Repairing and Building Service. Tom Scott, University of Bristol
The project, which helped identify some previously unknown hotspots in the exclusion zone, was completed by researchers from the University of Bristol, as part of the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics.
The NCNR team flew 50 sorties over 10 days, spending 24 hours in the air to map an area of 15 km2.
The scientists began their work at the eerily abandoned village of Buriakivka, which is located 13 km from the epicentre of the accident, showing desolate homes which had not been lived in for decades.
A large proportion of the trees in the Red Forest were bulldozed and buried in "waste graveyards". This photo taken 30 years after the disaster shows some small green trees which have regrown. Getty
Moving onto the Red Forest, one of the surprise hotspots uncovered included an old soil separation unit used during the original clean-up efforts.
"They were trying to separate out the contamination and thereby reduce the volume of the waste," Prof Tom Scott, from Bristol University and co-director of the NCNR, told BBC News.
"The legacy left at that facility is essentially spent nuclear fuel scattered on the floor, which was giving a very high radiation dose. About 1.2 millisieverts an hour. That would mean I'd be able to hit my yearly dose within just a few hours."
A safe confinement structure surrounds the sarcophagus built around the stricken reactor immediately after the 1986 disaster. Tom Scott, University of Bristol
Despite the extreme levels of radiation in the Red Forest, scientists have previously reported on a renewed biodiversity that has taken place as a result of humans fleeing the area.
Although the long term impact of the contamination on the animals is not known, populations of birds, wild boar, wolves and deer have all moved in.
More than 30 workers were reported to have died either immediately or in the months after the accident, but the resulting levels of radiation are believed to have killed more than 4000.
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