Chernobyl: Nuclear Wasteland? Or Nature Reserve?

May 1, 2009 — -- When biologists began to probe the closed-off land around Chernobyl, they said they got a shock.

Chernobyl, in what is now Ukraine, became, in April 1986, the world's worst nuclear-plant disaster, far worse than Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Radiation sprayed from the core in powerful plumes, some of it later detected as far away as Scotland. An entire city nearby -- Pripyat, with a population of 45,000, now had a population of zero. Everyone was forced to move out, including another 90,000 people in the surrounding countryside.

Radioactive fallout from the meltdown is still high. Babies exposed to radiation have been reported with increased rates of thyroid cancer.

Scientists expected wildlife to have been laid low too. Instead, they found plants and animals thriving. Field mice scurried about. Moose, wolves, deer, foxes and rabbits roamed wherever they wanted.

Ronald Chesser and Robert Baker of Texas Tech University studied the "dead zone" around the wrecked plant, and sent ABC News videotape they shot in 1996 as they walked around in radiation suits.

"This area is deceptively normal," said Chesser as the camera rolled. "Until you turn on the Geiger counter and spoil the mood, you really are struck by the beauty of this area."

But some dissenters say looks can be deceiving. Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina has been studying barn swallows and other birds around Chernobyl, and he said the place is a wreck after all.

"Every study we did showed negative consequences for the ecosystem on every level," he said.

Birds' survival rates were dramatically reduced, he said. Butterflies, bumble bees, butterflies and grasshoppers were all notable by how hard it was to find them.

So Mousseau has been jousting for years with Baker and Chesser over just what Chernobyl's legacy is.