The Effects of Nuclear Radiation on the Environment

We live in the modern age, and one of the downsides of living in this unique time period is the emergence of nuclear weapons and energy. It is no secret that millions of people are looking for an excuse to ban or discredit nuclear technology just as others are looking for ways to promote it's usage. One of the cited reasons for not using nuclear technology is it's damaging effects on the natural world. The radiation emitted from the use of nuclear weapons and power plants is extremely harmful to the environment. This is not a speculation, it is an observation. Even we humans have suffered the effects of a horrible situation where a nuclear plant went through meltdown. I think we all have heard of Chernobyl at one point or another.

Chernobyl was a nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union. It was used to create large amounts of energy using the highly dangerous nuclear process. One of the reactors eventually had a meltdown and exploded violently. The result was the releasing of an enormous cloud of radiation into the environment. It has been determined that the meltdown released roughly four hundred times the amount of radiation produced by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The radiation spread, and effected countries as far away as Great Britain and South Africa. Locally, the damage was devastating. The radiation killed a very large part of woodland that would later become known as the famous "Red Forest". All wildlife in that area was wiped out. Nearby towns and villages suffered deaths from radiation poisoning and many more deaths in the future were linked to the accident. There were also a great many deformities among newborns, both people and animals.

The scary and awful effects of nuclear radiation on the environment is shown in this infamous incident. However, it shows us something else. Although the radiation destroyed a large amount of life at first, it eventually wore off. Today, the Red Forest is once again teeming with life. Animals of all shapes and sizes populate it and the nearby people have, to an extent, recovered. However, this was just one small incident. What if every nuclear power plant in the world experienced meltdown, and every nuclear bomb exploded? What would happen to the world?

It is undoubted that most, if not all life would be destroyed. The radiation would kill a lot of plant life, which in turn would kill the animals feeding on those plants and the animals feeding on those animals, not to mention the vast amount of animals that would die of radiation sickness and not starvation. Any life that survived would probably be mutated into something completely different. Humans, would be all but exterminated, if indeed we aren't wiped out completely. Without our technology, any survivors would go back to the bottom of the food chain, and since most of the food chain has been destroyed anyway, they would probably starve to death. Just another reason to seriously reconsider our nuclear policy.

All information was taught to me by my senior year high school history and science teachers.