The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were devastated by atomic bombs in the summer of 1945. As soon as the war was over, both cities began rebuilding. Chernobyl was the site of a nuclear meltdown in 1986. Twenty-seven years later, Chernobyl is still an exclusion zone, with radiation levels registering as dangerous. What makes the difference between these places? There are several factors, the biggest of which has to do with the amount of fissionable nuclear material. That question is answered in a post at Today I Learned, but it also tells us the short version of what happened at Chernobyl to cause such a reaction, and why. -via Digg
(Image credit: Tiia Monto)