Radiation from contaminated water that escaped Fukushima reached North America's western coast in 2014, but experts said that contamination was too low to pose a threat to human health. The extent of Fukushima's environmental impact is still unknown, though there is already some evidence that genetic mutations are on the rise in butterflies from the Fukushima area, producing deformations in their wings, legs and eyes. Japanese authorities created a no-go zone around Fukushima that extended for 12 miles (20 kilometers) the damaged reactors were permanently closed, while cleanup efforts continued. However, Japan's aggressive disaster response, which relocated 100,000 people from their homes near Fukushima, is thought to have indirectly caused around 1,000 deaths, most of which were people age 66 years or more, the World Nuclear Association reported. (Image credit: Shutterstock)Īt Fukushima, there were no deaths or cases of radiation sickness directly associated with the accident - neither workers nor members of the public, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In an abandoned village in Belarus, in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, vacant houses are overgrown with bushes and trees. Greenpeace International estimated, in 2006, that the number of fatalities in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus could be as high as 93,000 people, with 270,000 people in those countries developing cancers who otherwise would not have done so. A report issued by United Nations agencies in 2005 approximated that 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from Chernobyl. In the years that followed, cancers in children skyrocketed in the Ukraine, up by more than 90%, according to Time. Government officials relocated an estimated 200,000 people from the region, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Many of those who died had knowingly exposed themselves to deadly radiation as they worked to secure the plant and prevent further leaks. Sickness, cancer and deathĪt Chernobyl, two plant workers were killed by the initial explosion and 29 more workers died from radiation poisoning over the next three months, Time reported in 2018. What's more, Chernobyl's raging inferno created a towering plume of radioactivity that dispersed more widely than the radioactivity released by Fukushima, Lyman added. 'About 25 petabecquerels (PBq) of cesium-137 was released to the environment from the three damaged Fukushima reactors, compared to an estimate of 85 PBq for Chernobyl,' he said (PBq is a unit for measuring radioactivity that shows the decay of nuclei per second). In both meltdowns, the long-term hazards arose primarily from strontium-90 and cesium-137, radioactive isotopes with half-lives of 30 years.Īnd Chernobyl released far more cesium-137 than Fukushima did, according to Lyman. In both accidents, radioactive iodine-131 posed the most immediate threat, but with a half-life of eight days, meaning half of the radioactive material decayed within that time, its effects soon dissipated.

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