31 years ago on April 26, 1986 at 1:23 am, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blew up after operators botched a safety test, triggering an explosion and a fire that burned for 10 days.
Recently, several European media outlets reported that one third of all wild boars hunted in countries in the path of the nuclear fallout (such as the Czech Republic and Germany) still contain such high levels of radiation (Cesium-137) that their meat is not save for consumption. Read more here
During my first visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, in the early 1990’s, I photographed scientists from the Department of Ecological Botany at the Swedish University in Uppsala as they worked on a study of tissue radioactivity in animals in the Chernobyl Zone. Their research concentrated on the area’s wild boar and roe deer. After the animals’ dissection, then performed in a makeshift lab in a former kindergarten kitchen, their stomach contents were analyzed (photograph above).
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