2018 Day 5. Lucky thirteen

Tags

Amphibians, Biology, Chernobyl, Ecology, Fieldwork, frogs, Radioecology, Research, Science, Ukraine, Wildlife, Zoology

17 May 2018

Frog activity is still rather low in the Zone, but last night we managed to catch 13 frogs in a completely new locality for us, our locality 13 for the project!! Activity in the lab run smoothly too. We only need now some good weather and a night of good frog activity to move forward.

The day started as usual with lab work, sampling the last frogs from our first high contamination locality that we didn’t had the time to finish the previous day, and the additional six collected in two localities the previous night. Our work in the lab is pretty well organized by now, and by lunchtime we were able to finish with all the frogs. We managed to run samples in the iSTAT blood analyzer for all the frogs but one. The technique by now is fully under control!! This will give us a really good indication of the physiological situation of our study frogs in the Zone.

We even had the time for taking some good photos of our frogs (wait for Jean-Marc great photos!!). These are the kind of photos we will keep on using again and again in our work, when given talks, publishing papers or having any communication activity. So, in a way, they are also important for the project!!

Talking about photos, Pablo continues with our colorimetric studies trying to assess the variation of frog coloration and if this changes with contamination level. So far, no many dark frogs this year, just a few.

Due to some bureaucratic limitations we didn’t had the chance of going too far during the night, so we had to work in low contamination areas during the night. Sergey drove us to a marsh area quite close to Chernobyl city we had not visited before.

We arrived to this place with plenty of time before dusk, just to listen to many water frogs and fire-bellied toads in the distance. No sign of our treefrogs, but we now that at this time we need to way until it gets dark for these frogs to start calling. So, we wait and wait. During this time, Sergey was able to imitate the call of a tawny owl (Strix aluco) good enough as to attract it at a very close range. That was fun.. At the same time, far away, we heard the first treefrog calling. Time to put the chest waders on and move through the reeds to find the place where they were calling.

Calling activity was low. Once there it was possible to listen to 4-5 males, good but not super good. At the end, after quite a lot of patience, the five of us managed to catch thirteen frogs in about an hour of moving back and forth through the pond. This is great. A completely new locality for the project, just in the middle of all our previous localities and with enough frogs as to do many good tests. Being a low contamination site is also quite good, since most of the frogs we had until now this season were from a highly contaminated place. Sweet!!

After this, we move to the same location in which we capture four frogs the previous night, but there was no additional activity there. Not even in another place in which we also collected frogs in 2016. The night started to be cold, so we decided to get back and try more luck in the next night.

So, the plan for today is lab work during the morning with these thirteen frogs, and try to go to some mid contaminated localities on the east bank of Prypiat river during the night. We have worked there the last two years and we know that this is good treefrog area. So, let’s see how it goes, and if the weather stays good (some rain forecasted and a bit colder than we wanted…).

Working in low contamination areas, we only accumulated 3 more microSv to our total dose, for a total of 25 microSv during the trip. During the night, we also saw Przewalski horses, a nice group on our last location, rumbling in the middle of the foggy night.

Advertisement

2018 Day 4 Busy day, poor night

Tags

Amphibians, Biology, Chernobyl, Ecology, Fieldwork, frogs, Radioecology, Research, Science, Ukraine, Wildlife, Zoology

16 May 2018

Today was our first busy day at the lab, with 23 frogs to sample from the previous night, collected from a high contamination area. As always on the first day of a campaign it took us wuite some time to get everything organized, but finally it was a great (and exhausting lab day). The night was not so good… we visited three different localities but only managed to collect 6 more frogs.

During the day, it was time for us to sampling all the treefrogs. This time we were four people working together in the lab, which at the beginning is always something chaotic. Sergey was in charge of the radiometer, getting the radioactive dose rate for each individual. This is a process quite quick for highly contaminated animals, that will save us a lot of time (and money) on later analyses.

Jean-Marc was mostly in charge of the tricky extraction of blood for our blood physiology analyses with the iSTAT, and the sampling of frog saliva for hormonal analyses.

Pablo, same as last year, was responsible for the colorimetric evaluation, basic measurement of the frogs, and the obtention of samples for genomic analyses, telomeres length estimates, bone for skelotochronological estimation of the age of the frogs, and (new this year) some behavioral tests.

Finally, I took samples for analyzing skin and gut microbiome, oxidative stress, DNA damage, sperm and charging the cartridges for running the iSTAT blood analyzer.

At the beginning this was way too complicated to organize. Too many people doing too many things with the same frog. But, after a few frogs things started to run, although a bit slowly, quite ok for the amount of samples per individual (more than 30 different parameters!!!). Working with the iSTAT was a nightmare at the beginning. Cartridge after cartridge went to the bin because of lack of enough blood, bubbles when we tried to fill the cartridge and more. At the cost of 13€ per cartridge… Then, Jean-Marc modified a bit the blood extraction technique, getting more blood, I modified a bit the insertion technique… and with our frog 12-6 (locality 12, frog number 6), everything worked!! The song of the iSTAT printer when a sample is successful is now by far our favorite song in the house!! Finally, we managed to get results from 7 out of the 12 last frogs, after six consecutive failures!!

At the end, they were too many frogs and too little time. So, it was not possible for us to sample the last five frogs. We left them for the next morning. It was time for us to go again to the field, looking for more frogs in areas of low/medium contamination. We divided us in two teams, so we can check more localities at once. Anyway, the locality that Pablo and I visited with Evgeny, was full of water frogs, but nothing more. Not a single treefrog, not even fire-bellied toads… The area, located in the center of the Exclusion Zone, was part of a former youth camp during the soviet times, all abandoned now. Fate for Sergey and Jean-Marc was pretty similar, two treefrogs in a medium contamination place.

We decided to move for a clean locality that we visited during our 2016 trip, with the idea of collecting frogs there to complete some of the different parameters that we have added on the last years. But neither there we had much success. We were able to locate and capture four male treefrogs, in the middle of big noisy calls from water frogs and fire-bellied toads. It was midnight and no more frogs were calling, so we decided to go back and hope for better luck on next nights. So, a total of six new frogs to add for the trip, for a total of 29.

The plan for today is to finish sampling the last frogs of the first locality and these six collected last night. Hopefully the iSTAT will keep on working well and can complete all the sampling. During the night we plan to go to some localities near Chernobyl city and other areas in low/no contamination. Weather forecast looks semi-OK, warm but with chances of rain in the afternoon. So, let’s see if frogs are active, and how many!!

Working in areas with no contamination means that we only accumulated 3 microSv extra, for a total of 22 for the trip. During the night we managed to see one Przewalski horse, red dear, red fox and many hares.

Here some extra photos of the lab work, our radiometer working with a frog, and one of our Eastern treefrogs (Hyla orientalis).

2018 Day 1. Rainy arrival in Chernobyl

Tags

Amphibians, Biology, Chernobyl, Ecology, Fieldwork, frogs, Radioecology, Research, Science, Ukraine, Wildlife, Zoology

13 May 2018.

So, here we are, already in Chernobyl city, inside the Exclusion Zone. And already we experienced some troubles.

First, our French colleague Jean-Marc Bonzom (and his dry shipper!!) got stuck in the middle of flights problems and did not arrive yesterday as planned. He will (probably) arrive today, one day later than expected, so our Ukrainian colleagues will need to go back to Kiev to pick him up. Another negative news is that after a month of beautiful sunny and warm weather, we arrived to a rainy and coldish Kiev. And, as I’m writing this (Monday morning) is still raining, and expected to continue for the day. We know from last year that this is far from ideal for our warm-loving Eastern treefrogs, but let’s see. Weather forecast from tomorrow looks much better, back to warm and sunny days. Fingers crossed here…

The first day at #ChernobylFrogs18 started for us in Uppsala, packing the last things at the Animal Ecology Unit, Uppsala University, mainly the refrigerated cartridges for the blood analyses. Our Stockholm-Kiev direct flight went without any incidences. All smooth at the customs, and all our four bags of lab and field material arrived without problems.

In Kiev, our friend Sergey Gaschak (head of the Radioecology Lab at the Chornobyl Research Center) was waiting for us for the drive to Chernobyl (a bit more than 2 hours drive to the North). We arrived at the main entrance checkpoint to the Exclusion Zone at 9PM, under the rain, and after a quick paperwork we entered the Zone.

We settled in our state-owned hotel (exactly same rooms as last year, this time apparently with heating system finally working, not much for the warm water, but anyway… fine). And straight to our field lab for leaving there our equipment and a quick dinner with Sergey. One great novelty at the lab is that we will have now a radiometer there (the white and red machine in the background), which will give us measurement of radiation level of each of our frogs at the moment, without the need of much more complicated, long and expensive analyses as in the previous years!! That’s great news!!

So, the plan for us today is organizing all our lab stuff during the day (tubes, machines, photo studio…). Sergey will be working in other bird studies during the day. Some colleagues will go to pick up Jean-Marc (and liquid nitrogen!!!) back to Kiev. Hopefully everybody will be here in the afternoon, and we will probably go to the field already this night, trying to catch some frogs. As I said, the forecast is far from good, with coldish and rainy weather, but will see!!! The full plan for our trip is to stay inside the Zone for 8 days, and move out for our final 3-4 days (around Chernihiv/Slavutych) trying to catch frogs in areas never affected by the radioactive fallout.

Dosimeter are on now, but did not accumulate anything during our first hours in the Zone (we are inside the Exclusion Zone, but on a clean area). No much time either to see wildlife, although nightjars were abundant in the road as soon as we enter the Zone.

More tomorrow at #ChernobylFrogs18

Chernobyl Frogs 2018: Final preparations and a clip

Tags

Amphibians, Biology, Chernobyl, Ecology, Fieldwork, frogs, Radioecology, Research, Science, Ukraine, Wildlife, Zoology

(“Últimos preparativos y un video”, en español, más abajo)

We are less than two days away for the start of our fieldwork campaign in (and around) Chernobyl. All the field gear and lab material is ready and well packed in our suitcases. that includes, among other small things:

2000 2ml cryovials for all the physiological and genomic samples
210 50ml Falcon tubes for storing the frogs once sampled
200 cotton dry swabs for microbiome sampling
300 glass slides for immunological studies
48 plastic containers for holding the frogs in the lab
250 plastic Pasteur pipetes
175 Chem8+ iSTAT cartridges for blood physiology tests
20 Microgard 1500 Plus protective suits
400 nitrile gloves
Abaxis iSTAT blood analyser and printer
Tascam DR-100 MK3 audio recorder
Garmin eTrex 20x gps
Fujifil XT-1 photo camera with two lenses and colour checker
2 GoPro cameras
2 Rados Rad-60 S dosimeters
2 Olight 1500 lumens headlamps…

Part of our field and lab equipment for #ChernobylFrogs18

Weather forecast is still rather good, maybe a bit rainy and stormy some days, but that should not be a problem. On Sunday, Jean-Marc Bonzom will fly from southern France to Kiev, and we will arrive a bit later from Stockholm, to be all picked up at the airport by our colleague, and #1 expert on Chernobyl wildlife, Sergey Gaschack.

So, next post will be already from inside Chernobyl Exclusion Zone on Day 1 of #ChernobylFrogs18. Fingers crossed for good fieldwork!!! We will keep you posted daily!!!

But for now, here you have a short video clip ahead of the new fieldwork. I hope you like it!!

 

---

Sólo quedan un par de días para el inicio de nuestro trabajo de campo en (y alrededor de) Chernobyl. Todo el equipo para nuestro trabajo de campo y de laboratorio está listo y empaquetado en nuestras maletas, incluido:

2000 2ml crioviales para guardar todas nuestras muestras fisiológicas y genómicas
210 50ml tubos Falcon para guardar las ranas una vez muestreadas
200 bastoncillos de algodón para tomar muestras de microbioma
300 portaobjetos de cristal para estudios inmunológicos
48 contenedores de plásticos para mantener las ranas en el laboratorio
250 pipetas Pasteur de plástico
175 cartuchos Chem8+ iSTAT para análisis sanguíneos
20 trajes protectores Microgard 1500 Plus
400 guantes de nitrilo
Abaxis iSTAT analizador sanguíneo e impresora
Tascam DR-100 MK3 grabadora de audio
Garmin eTrex 20x gps
Fujifil XT-1 cámaera fotográfica, con dos objetivos y patrón de color
2 GoPro cámaras
2 Rados Rad-60 S dosímetros
2 Olight lámparas frontales de 1500 lumens…

El pronóstico del tiempo sigue siendo muy bueno, quizás con algo de luvvia y tormentas ocasionales, lo que no debería ser un problema. El domingo, Jean-Marc Bonzom volará desde el sur de Francia hacia Kiev, donde Pablo Burraco y yo llegaremos un poco más tarde, para ser todos recogidos por nuestro colega, y experto #1 en la fauna de Chernobyl, Sergey Gaschack.

Así que, la próxima entrada de este blog será ya desde el interior de la Zona de Exclusión, en el Día 1 #ChernobylFrogs18. A ver si tenemos suerte con el trabajo de campo!!! Iremos informando aquí diariamente de nuestros progresos!!!

Por ahora, un corto video antes de empezar el trabajo de campo!!! Espero que guste!!

 

Chernobyl frogs 2018: The Game

Tags

Amphibians, Chernobyl, Fieldwork, frogs, Radioecology, Science, Ukraine, Wildlife

(más abajo, version en español “Las ranas de Chernobyl 2018: El Juego”)

Let’s have some fun!!

Field work is often exhausting and stressful, even more if we did it in a distant country and under special safety circumstances. But this doesn’t mean that we can not have fun once there. So, to make things more interesting, let’s try playing a game this year!!

Getting ready for collecting frogs in an uncontaminated area, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, May 2017 (photo: Pablo Burraco)

As mentioned in a previous entry of this blog, we are pretty close to the start of our field work in Chernobyl #ChernobylFrogs18. We will look at the effects that chronic low-dose radiation has on the morphology, physiology and genetics of the European treefrogs (Hyla orientalis) living inside Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. We will arrive in Kiev this Sunday and our first night trying to catch frogs will be on Monday 14^th May.

So, why not have some fun and try to guess the number of frogs we will collect during this trip? The winner, apart from the scientific glory of fieldwork cleverness, will get from us a 15x20cm dedicated photo print of her/his choice from the ones we will publish in this blog or @GOrizaola Twitter account during the field work (13-25 May).

Eastern treefrog (Hyla orientalis) males, captured in May 2017 inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine.

Just to give some clues. We will be in the field for a total of 10 nights, and depending on the weather, the activity of the frogs, and our ability to find good localities and catch enough frogs, our goal is to collect 12-20 frogs in about 10-15 localities across a gradient of radiation. Of course, the more localities and frogs, the better… we will not stop catching frogs until the very last night.

Here you have a table summarising how we did the last two years, on a quick and very successful trip during 2016, and on a much longer trip last year heavily affected (on the negative side) by miserable cold weather. So, go ahead and make your guess (total number of frogs) leaving a comment here on the blog or replying to our tweets on this topic at @GOrizaola Twitter account. Entries accepted until Sunday 13^th 23.59 Ukrainian time.

Fingers crossed, good frogging and good luck!!!!

---

Las ranas de Chernobyl 2018: El Juego

Vamos a divertirnos!!

El trabajo de campo es muchas veces una actividad dura y estresante, en especial si se desarrolla en países lejanos y bajos circunstancias especiales de seguridad. Pero eso no quiere decir que no nos podamos divertir… Así que para hacer todo un poco más entretenido, qué tal si jugamos a un juego este año?

Como hemos dicho en entradas anteriores de este blog, estamos ya muy cerca de comenzar nuestro trabajo de campo en Ucrania #ChernobylFrogs18. Una vez allí, trabajaremos para intentar evaluar el efecto que vivir en una zona contaminada de manera crónica con substancias radioactivas tiene en la morfología, fisiología y genética de la Ranita de San Antonio Oriental (Hyla orientalis). Aterrizaremos en Kiev el domingo 13 de mayo, para comenzar nuestro trabajo de campo la noche del lunes 14.

Así que, por qué no intentar entretenernos y averiguar el número total de ranas que vamos a coger durante estos días? El ganador, además de la gloria científica, se llevará una copia fotográfica dedicada a tamaño 15x20cm de una fotografía a su elección entre las que publiquemos en este blog o en la cuenta de Twitter @GOrizaola durante estos días (13-25 mayo).

Para dar unas pistas, estaremos en el campo durante 10 noches en las que, dependiendo del tiempo, de la actividad de las ranas y nuestra habilidad para encontrar buenas localidades y para capturar las ranas, intentaremos capturar entre 12 y 20 individuos en 12-20 localidades. Por supuesto, cuantas más localidades y más ranas, mejor para nuestro estudio… así que no pararemos de intentar capturar ranas hasta la última noche.

Aquí está un resumen de cómo nos fue en años anteriores: durante una visita rápida y muy productiva en 2016, y durante nuestra visita, más larga pero afectada muy negativamente por el mal tiempo el año pasado. Así que, adelante!! La predicción (número total de ranas) puede dejarse como comentario en este blog o como respuesta a los tweets que sobre este tema publiquemos en la cuenta de Twitter @GOrizaola. Se aceptarán entradas hasta las 23.59 horas del domingo 13 de mato, hora de Ucrania.

Crucemos los dedos por una campaña con éxito. Buena suerte a todos!!!

Chernobyl frogs: Season 3 (2018)

Tags

Amphibians, Chernobyl, Fieldwork, frogs, Radioecology, Science, Ukraine, Wildlife

(“Las ranas de Chernobyl: Temporada 3 (2018)”, versión en español más abajo)

 

It’s May, and for us this means one thing: the time for our third season of work with the amphibians of Chernobyl has arrived. For the newcomers to this blog, since 2016 we have been studying the effects that living under chronic exposure to low-dose radiation has on amphibians. For doing this, we work inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, in Ukraine, around the nuclear power plant that suffered the worst nuclear accident in history with the explosion of the reactor number 4 on the 26 of April 1986. This explosion released radioactive material equivalent to ca. 400 nuclear bombs like the one deployed over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. After the explosion, an Exclusion Zone of ca. 2600 square kilometres was created around the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, and about 300.000 people were evacuated from the area. The physical and psychological impact of the accident on humans was severe.

City of Pripyat, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, evacuated after the 1986 accident. May 2017.

 

The basic aim of our work is trying to understand how an area that still maintains parts heavily contaminated with radioactive material, and that was supposed to become a nuclear wasteland for centuries, is now merely 30 years after the accident full of wildlife. Some studies conducted in the area have reported damage in animals living in contaminated areas (reviews in Yablokov et al. 2009, Mousseau and Møller 2014), although some others have not found any effects and even reported abundant and thriving populations of big animals (Deryabina et al. 2015). One thing is clear in Chernobyl after 32 years: there is still no scientific consensus about the effects that living inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, under chronic exposure to low-dose radiation, is causing to wildlife. A good understanding of the effects that living in radioactive contaminated areas has on animals is, of course, crucial for defining the way in which nuclear accidents, and nuclear energy production and waste disposal in general, should be managed.

Collecting frogs in a highly contaminated pond, 1.5 km from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, May 2017.

 

Over the last two years we have focussed our work on the Eastern treefrog (Hyla orientalis), a small green frog with males weighing 5-8 g, and a long breeding period in which males can be calling at the breeding localities from May to July. The breeding activity of the species is highly warm-dependent, so males are especially active after sunny days (>20° C) and on warm (>10° C), rain-less, nights.

Male Eastern treefrog (Hyla orientalis), Chernobyl, May 2017.

 

During our 2016-2017 work, we collected more than 150 breeding males to examine the effects of the radioactive contamination on the morphology, physiology and genetics of these amphibians. On our previous field campaigns, we sampled localities distributed across a gradient of radioactive contamination, from areas with high radiation levels (8800 KBq/m² Sr⁹⁰; 1000 KBq/m² Cs¹³⁷) to clean areas (44 KBq/m² Sr⁹⁰; 104 KBq/m² Cs¹³⁷). Once in the lab, from each frog we collected a wide array of samples, from skin swabs to examine the composition of their microbiome, to sperm and blood samples, and different muscle tissues for genomic analyses.

Getting ready for collecting frogs in an uncontaminated area, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, May 2017 (photo: Pablo Burraco)

 

With our work, we want to understand if these frogs living in radioactive areas are suffering, or not, from the exposure to radioactive contamination, or if they are suffering some detrimental effects but are able to reduce the damage. Or, even more interesting, if they are already showing signs of adaptation to living under radioactive contamination, as some studies have started to suggest (Møller and Mousseau 2016).

This year, we will head to Chernobyl on the 13th of May for two weeks of intense field and lab work, in which we will aim at collecting treefrogs both inside and outside the Exclusion Zone. On top of collecting frogs in uncontaminated localities inside the Zone (internal controls), we want to collect frogs also from uncontaminated places further away of the Zone, to use them as external controls. Anyway, once again, most of our work will be conducted in areas of medium and high radioactive contamination inside the Zone, in which we will try to collect 15-20 male treefrogs from each of 8-10 localities, depending on weather conditions and the intensity of the breeding activities of the frogs.

Pond located near the Red Forest, Chernobyl, one of the most radioactive contaminated places on Earth, May 2017.

 

New in 2018

The team from last year (Pablo Burraco and myself from Uppsala University, Sweden, and Sergey Gaschack from the Chornobyl Centre, Ukraine) will be joined by Jean-Marc Bonzom from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). Jean-Marc, a researcher at the IRSN Radionuclide Ecotoxicology Laboratory in Cadarache, has been part of this project from the beginning, but always from the distance of the lab. This year, Jean-Marc will be with us during the entire campaign. He will be also on charge of bringing the dry-shipper to Ukraine, crucial for storing our frozen samples, and that caused quite some problems last year… Welcome on-board Jean-Marc, bienvenue!!!

Left to right: Germán Orizaola, Jean-Marc Bonzom and Olivier Armant, Nice, June 2017.

Also new this year are some additional traits that we will measure both in the field and the lab. With our new sound recorder, we will record the calls of the male treefrogs, trying to evaluate if males from contaminated areas differ in their calls from these from clean localities. Once in the lab, we will examine all the previous traits from last years but we will also obtain a full blood physiology profile for each frog thanks to our new blood analyser (Abaxis i-STAT), expected to arrive on May 8th (fingers crossed!!). This will give us a good indication of the existence, or not, of liver and kidney malfunctions and/or general physiological imbalances that organism may suffer as a consequence of living in a radioactive environment. We will also conduct some new behavioural tests on the motility and escape behaviour of the frogs, looking for differences in activity between localities.

Our lab at the Chernobyl Field Station, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, May 2017 (photo Pablo Burraco)

 

Contrary to last year in which we experienced really cold, miserable, weather, with even some snow, the weather forecast for these days is extremely good, with sunny days and temperatures moving from 30° C during the day to around 15° C during the night. The weather has been on these numbers now for two weeks, let’s see if it’s not too good for the frogs, and we not found them “a bit too tired”…

Weather forecast for May 2018 in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Data from http://www.wunderground.com

As we did in previous years, we will provide detailed information about our preparations for the trip, our activities in the field and the lab, and about how is it to work in a radioactive contaminated area as Chernobyl in this blog, our Twitter accounts (@GOrizaola, @pabloburraco, using the hashtag #ChernobylFrogs18) and also on Instagram (@gorizaola). Please, if you have any questions, ask us by any of these media. I hope you like it!!!

Let’s go!! Ходімо!!

---

 

Las ranas de Chernobyl: Temporada 3 (2018)

(Este año, como novedad, algunas de las entradas de este blog serán bilingües, con traducción al español. Al menos las que aparezcan antes de ir a Chernobyl estarán publicadas en inglés y español, una vez allí todo dependerá del tiempo, el sueño y el cansancio…)

Mayo ya está aquí, y eso para nosotros significa una cosa: ha llegado la hora de nuestra tercera temporada de trabajo con los anfibios de Chernobyl. Para la gente que lea por primera vez este blog, desde 2016 hemos estado estudiando los efectos que la exposición crónica a niveles bajos de radiación tiene sobre los anfibios. Para ello, trabajamos dentro de la Zona de Exclusión de Chernobyl, en Ucrania, alrededor de la central nuclear que sufrió el mayor accidente nuclear de la historia con la explosión del reactor número 4 el 26 de abril de 1986. Esta explosión liberó material radioactivo equivalente a unas 400 bombas atómicas como la detonada en Hiroshima, Japón, en 1945. Tras la explosión del reactor, se creó una zona de Exclusión de unos 2600 km² alrededor de la central, evacuándose a unas 300.000 personas de la Zona. El impacto físico y psicológico del accidente sobre la población humana fue severo.

El objetivo principal de nuestro trabajo es tratar de investigar cómo un área que aún hoy mantiene zonas altamente contaminadas por radiación, y que se suponía iba a convertirse en un desierto nuclear carente de vida, se ha transformada en sólo 30 años en una zona llena de vida salvaje. Algunos estudios desarrollados en la Zona han señalado efectos negativos de la radiación en animales que ocupan áreas contaminadas (revisiones en Yablokov et al. 2009, Mousseau and Møller 2014). No obstante, otros estudios no han detectado daño alguno en otras especies, e incluso han encontrado poblaciones abundantes y saludables de grandes mamíferos (Deryabina et al. 2015). Una cosa está clara en Chernobyl después de 32 años: en la actualidad sigue sin existir un consenso científico sobre el efecto que la exposición crónica a niveles bajos de radiación, como los experimentados actualmente en la Zona, tiene sobre la fauna salvaje. Un conocimiento preciso del nivel de ese impacto es indudablemente clave para definir protocolos de actuación eficaces ante nuevos accidentes nucleares, así como para la correcta regulación de la producción de energía en centrales nucleares y la gestión de los residuos generados.

Durante los últimos dos años nuestro trabajo en la Zona se ha centrado en la Ranita de San Antonio Oriental (Hyla orientalis) un pequeño anfibio de color verde intenso, en el que los machos pesan unos 5-8 g, y que mantiene un largo período de actividad reproductora que puede extenderse en la Zona desde mayo hasta julio. La actividad de esta especie es muy dependiente del calor, por lo que los machos están especialmente activos en noches sin lluvias y con temperaturas medias (>10° C), precedidas de días soleados y con temperaturas por encima de 20° C.

A lo largo de nuestro trabajo durante 2016 y 2017, capturamos unos 150 machos de esta especie, en los que examinamos los efectos que vivir en una zona con contaminación radioactiva tiene sobre la morfología, fisiología y genética de estos anfibios. Durante estas campañas muestreamos en zonas distribuidas a lo largo de un gradiente de contaminación radioactiva, desde zonas con altos niveles de contaminación (8800 KBq/m² Sr⁹⁰; 1000 KBq/m² Cs¹³⁷), hasta zonas limpias, no contaminadas (44 KBq/m² Sr⁹⁰; 104 KBq/m² Cs¹³⁷). Una vez en el laboratorio, de cada individuo se tomaron diversas muestras, desde muestras para examinar el microbioma de la piel, hasta diferentes tejidos musculares para estudios genético, pasando por muestras de sangre y esperma.

Con nuestro trabajo queremos evaluar si estos anfibios están sufriendo, o no, efectos negativos como consecuencia de vivir en zonas contaminadas por substancias radioactivas. O si están sufriendo algún efecto, pero son capaces de neutralizarlo y disminuir el daño. O, más interesante todavía, si pudieran estar mostrando ya patrones de adaptación a vivir en estas zonas radioactivas, como algunos estudios previos han comenzado a sugerir (Møller and Mousseau 2016).

Este año iremos hacia Chernobyl el 13 de mayo para comenzar dos semanas de intenso trabajo de campo y de laboratorio en el que tendremos como objetivo capturar ranas tanto dentro como fuera de la Zona de Exclusión. Además de seguir capturando ranas en algunas localidades de la Zona de Exclusión que permanecen no contaminadas (controles internos), queremos muestrear en zonas contaminadas lejos de la Zona de Exclusión para tener también controles externos. De todas formas, una vez más, gran parte de nuestro trabajo lo desarrollaremos en zonas de radioactividad media y alta dentro de la Zona de Exclusión. En estas localidades, el objetivo es capturar 15-20 machos en cada localidad, muestreando unas 8-10 localidades dentro de la Zona, dependiendo de las condiciones climatológicas y de la intensidad de la actividad reproductora de la especie.

Novedades en 2018

Nuestro equipo de años anteriores (Pablo Burraco y yo desde la Universidad de Uppsala, Suecia y Sergey Gaschack desde el Centro Chornobyl, Ucrania) se verá reforzado esta vez con la participación durante todo el periodo de muestreo de Jean-Marc Bonzom, del Instituto Francés de Protección Radiológica y Seguridad Nuclear (IRSN). Jean-Marc es un investigador del Laboratorio de Ecotoxicología Radiológica del IRSN en Cadarache, y ha sido parte integrante de este proyecto desde sus inicios, aunque siempre desde la distancia del laboratorio. Este año tendremos la suerte de contar con su colaboración también en el campo!! También estará a cargo de llevar hasta Ucrania el contenedor especial para mantener nuestras muestras congeladas, una pieza vital en nuestro equipo, que espero que no de tantos problemas como el año pasado… Bienvenido a bordo Jean-Marc, bienvenue!!!

Otras novedades de este año serán algunos de los parámetros que vamos a medir tanto en el campo como en el laboratorio. Con nuestra nueva grabadora haremos grabaciones de los cantos de lo machos con la idea de examinar si estos difieren entre zonas con diferentes niveles de contaminación. Una vez en el laboratorio, además de examinar todos los parámetros de años anteriores, este año tomaremos muestras adicionales de sangre para hacer un completo análisis de parámetros sanguíneos en nuestro nuevo analizador (Abaxis i-STAT), que llegará a nuestras manos (esperemos!!) el 8 de mayo. Estos análisis nos darán una idea muy precisa sobre si estas ranas están experimentando, o no, daños en el hígado y riñones, o desajustes fisiológicos generales, como consecuencia de vivir en ambientes radioactivos. Por último, también haremos algunos estudios de movilidad y comportamiento para ver si difieren entre ranas de distintas localidades y niveles de contaminación.

Al contrario que el año pasado en el que el tiempo fue frío, desapacible y incluso tuvimos nieve, el pronóstico del tiempo para nuestros días en el campo no puede ser mejor, con días soleados y temperaturas entre los 30° C por el día y los 15° C por la noche. El tiempo se ha mantenido en esas condiciones durante las últimas dos semanas, veremos si no es demasiado bueno y nos encontramos a las ranas demasiado avanzadas en su actividad reproductora, “demasiado cansadas”…

Tal y como hemos hecho en años anteriores, contaremos todos los preparativos de este trabajo, nuestra actividad en el campo y el laboratorio, y cómo es trabajar en una zona contaminada por compuestos radioactivos como Chernobyl, desde este blog, desde nuestras cuentas en Twitter (@GOrizaola, @pabloburraco, usando la etiqueta #ChernobylFrogs18) y también desde Instagram (@gorizaola). Cualquier pregunta, duda o curiosidad, estaremos encantados de responderla desde cualquiera de estos medios. Esperemos que os interese!!!

Un resumen de nuestro trabajo se puede encontrar también en un artículo publicado el año pasado por América Valenzuela en El Independiente “El enigma de las ranas negras de Chernóbil” y en una entrevista reciente en el programa “Por fin no es lunes” de Onda Cero Radio.

Why I am going BACK to Chernobyl?

Tags

Amphibians, Chernobyl, frogs, Radioecology, Science, Ukraine, Wildlife

A year ago, around this time, I posted an entry on this blog explaining why I was on my way to start a fieldwork trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, in Ukraine, in search of amphibians (“Why I am going to Chernobyl?”). Now, I am ready to get back to Chernobyl to extend the work done last year examining the effects that living under chronic low dose radiation has on amphibians. I will arrive to Ukraine on Sunday 7^th May, for more than a week of intensive field and lab work in the Zone.

 

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone includes some of the most radioactively contaminated areas in the world as a consequence of the accident occurred in the reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on the 26 April 1986. It is estimated that the accident caused the release of ca. 5200 PBq of radioactive material to the atmosphere. In comparison, this is equivalent to about 400 Hiroshima atomic bombs, whereas <800 PBq were released in the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan.

However, after the acute phase of the accident, and all the severe impact it caused on humans and the environment, radiation levels started to decay. For example, one of the most dangerous products of radioactive fission, Iodine-131, which accounted for about half of the radionuclides dispersed after the Chernobyl accident, has a half-life of ca. 8 days. For putting another example, shortly after the explosion, radiation levels around the reactor peaked at 300 Sv/hour (300,000,000 microSv/hour), whereas in the same area radiation levels are now ❤ microSv/hour. Furthermore, the differences in wind direction, precipitation, etc. during the atmospheric releases created a pattern of uneven, patchy, distribution of radioactive contamination inside the Zone.

Currently, one of the crucial questions in field radioecology is trying to understand what are the long term effects of radiation for organisms living in low-dose radioactive contaminated areas? Visiting the Zone, it’s obvious that the area is full of wildlife (see last year’s post “Chernobyl recap: the wildlife”), although many studies have also reported damaging effects in animals living inside the Zone (see last year opening post “Why I am going to Chernobyl?”). The main goal of our project is, thus, to evaluate the impact that living in areas with radioactive contamination has on the genetics, physiology and morphology of wildlife, paying special attention to detecting patterns of adaptive responses to radiation. And for this, we use amphibians as study models, in particular treefrogs (genus Hyla).

Last year, we managed to collect frogs in six localities distributed across a gradient of radioactive contamination ranging from >1000 kBq/m² Cs-137 and >8000 kBq/m² Sr-90 in the most contaminated area (just 1km from the reactor), to 70 kBq/m² Cs-137 and 23 kBq/m² in the non-contaminated area (i.e. background radiation levels). The main goal for this year is extending the sampling to more localities across the gradient of radioactive contamination inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, as well as collecting an additional bunch of material for new analyses on coloration, genomics and transcriptomics. The big objective is to extend this sampling to a total of 15 localities, including a few ones from the higher levels of radioactive contamination.

The will be a few things different from last year, of course.

One of the things that will change with respect to last year is that we will adopt the new taxonomic developments, and no longer consider that we work in Chernobyl with the European tree frog (Hyla arborea), but with the Eastern tree frog (Hyla orientalis, see Dufresnes et al. 2016). Not a big change in our approach, mainly a change of names. But, you need to properly address these changes.

Another big change is that this year I will be joined in the field by my colleague, and friend, Pablo Burraco from the Doñana Biological Station (EBD-CSIC, Spain). I will miss the great help, and fun, provided last year by Nele Horemans and Robin Nauts (Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, SCK-CEN) during nights in which they become top-level frog-catchers. However, having extra hands in the lab for processing all the frogs, and from a well-trained amphibian ecologist, will be a huge improvement. And the fun is also more than guaranteed…

Something different also is that this year I will fly with a dry shipper in order to (try to) fly back to Sweden carrying all the frozen samples myself. Last year we sent one through a cargo company only to face all the unimaginable bureaucratic barriers for getting it into Ukraine, and out of Ukraine, which resulted in getting the samples five months later… In short, a dry shipper is a container with a matrix that absorbs liquid nitrogen, and maintains your samples deep frozen without the need to have liquid in the container. So you can just close it properly, and fly with it on a plane. Or at least that’s the theory. Let’s see if there is no problem with the customs…

But something that will not change this year is that we will be in the Zone together with our colleague Sergey Gaschack, from the International Radioecology Laboratory, Chornobyl Centre, Ukraine. Sergey has been working there since the year of the accident, in different tasks around radiation, and in particular with the wildlife of the Zone. Moving around the Zone during the night with him on the driving seat was one of the most amazing experiences from last year trip. Impossible to have anyone with more knowledge about the zone in our team!!

And, same as last year, we will have another part of the team waiting for our samples in the labs of the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) in Cadarache. Jean Marc Bonzom, Olivier Armant, Chirstelle Adam-Guillermin and Karine Beaugelin are also an essential part of this project, both for the molecular and the dose rate analyses. Also Clare Bradshaw will keep on helping with many different aspects from Stockholm University. I have to say that it’s such a pleasure to form part of this amazing, international, multidisciplinary, team!!

The work will be conducted as one of the last actions of the European Union FP7 funded project COMET (COordination and iMplementation of a pan-European instrumenT for radioecology), but also thanks to the financial support of the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) to the project “Effects of long-term exposure to ionizing radiation on Chernobyl’s treefrogs”. Thanks!!

Last year I was able to write a daily entry on this blog from the Zone, which was a great experience (thanks to all the people that read these entries!!). That was thanks to one of the totally unexpected things that I discover once there: it was possible to have great wifi at our hotel in Chernobyl!! This year the hotel is fully booked by tourists coming to the Zone to see the reactor, the abandoned city of Prypiat and the derelict villages. So, we will need to stay at a different place, and I am not sure if we are going to have wifi there. Anyway, my plan is writing again a daily entry describing how is it to work in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the animals and landscapes we encounter, and our fate on the pursue of amphibians there. If possible, I will send these entries from the field, if not I will publish them once back to “wifi land”. You will be able to follow also some updates in Twitter using #ChernobylFrogs17, on my account @GOrizaola or on Pablo’s @pabloburraco.

It’s time now for me to finish with some deadlines, and to organize all the material needed for the fieldwork (it’s crazy when you have to carry everything with you, from vials, to gloves, to scissors…), and to develop a clear plan for sampling procedures in the lab (too many different things to sample at once).

Weather forecast looks just perfect for this week in the Zone (sunny and around 20 °C), but a bit colder and with more chances of rain for the start of our fieldwork there, not good for treefrog males calling during the night. But let’s see…

Hopefully, next post will be already from Ukraine, from the Airport hotel, and with a dry shipper on my side… Fingers crossed.

Chernobyl Recap: the People

Tags

Amphibians, Chernobyl, Radioecology

#ChernobylFrogs16 Chernobyl Recap: the People

This is going to be the last post (at least for now) about the field work I did in Chernobyl in order to examine the effects of chronic exposure to radiation on the genetics, physiology and development of treefrogs (Hyla arborea). So, I will use it as a way to say thanks to all the people that has helped me in the preparation of the study and during the field work.

As I said before, the funding for this work comes from a large EU-funded project on radioecology, the COMET project (COordination and iMplementation of a pan-Europe instrumenT for radioecology). So, thanks to everyone involved in the project logistics!!

Probably, the most crucial person involved in this project was Sergey Gaschak, director of scientific research activities at the Chornobyl Centre for Nuclear Safety, Radioactive Waste and Radioecology, Ukraine. I said at the beginning of the trip that I was sure to be in the best hands, due the vast experience of Sergey with Chernobyl’s wildlife, but little I knew how good these hands are!! Sergey arrived to the Chernobyl area a few months after the accident in the Nuclear Power Plant, working first as a liquidator with the Soviet Army, then doing research on farm animals, and for ca. the last 20 years studying the wildlife of the Zone. His knowledge about the animals of the Zone, and about the Zone itself is just amazing. He even say “sorry” when we hit a bit hard a bump on a tiny abandoned road in the middle of nowhere because he did not remember that bump!! A project like this one would have been impossible without the help and collaboration of Sergey…

During my stay in Chernobyl, I also had the pleasure to meet Nele Horemans and Robin Nauts, researchers from the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK-CEN), which were there to sample Arabidopsis plants for their radioecology studies. Not only they did their intensive fieldwork during the day, but were also happy to go with us during the long nights of frog capture. Even during the last night, Robin managed to be the person that captured the most treefrogs!! That was an intensive training in field herpetology for them. And they are now on their way to Fukushima (Japan) to continue their studies on the radiation effects of plants. Their help, advice and company during field work were invaluable. Thanks and good luck!!

While organizing the trip, I was lucky enough to count with the help of Jean-Marc Bonzom from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), which previously conducted research on the radiation effects on the Japanese treefrog (Hyla japonica) in Fukushima. He is also going to be in charge of the epigenetic studies of the Chernobyl treefrogs. His guidance and advice were immensely helpful when processing the frogs. Merci beaucoup, Jean-Marc!!

Big thanks also to my colleagues from the Stockholm University, Clare Bradshaw and Karolina Stark. Clare coordinates the Swedish part of the project, and has been dealing with the crazy bureaucracy and logistics of bringing the frozen samples from Ukraine (we are still there…), and always open to help me with everything. And, of course, big big thanks to Karolina that designed the first steps of the this project and was the person that involved my in all this, without Karolina I would have never think about doing research in Chernobyl. Tack så mycket!!

It has been a great fun to write all these posts, especially after seeing how many people were interested in the project. So far, the posts have received more than 300 views here and many comments in Twitter @GOrizaola. I hope I was able to tell how is to be doing fieldwork in an area as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Thanks everyone for reading!! More news, with the results of our studies, will come in the future!!

Chernobyl Recap: the Zone

Tags

Amphibians, Chernobyl, Radioecology

#ChernobylFrogs16 Chernobyl Recap: the Zone

As soon as you tell anyone that you are going to do fieldwork in Chernobyl, you start getting questions about if it is possible, or safe, or wise… So, here are my impressions about how is to work inside Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

First, two big surprises. We arrived to the Zone on the 9^th of May, and this is World War II Victory Day, a day highly celebrated during the time of the Soviet Union, and a bit less nowadays, but still a date in which a lot on people visit old graveyards and commemorative monuments. And so, it is also a pretty special day at the Exclusion Zone. An area that normally is forbidden for people not working inside (and a few tourists) is open to everyone. People can freely move inside, and this includes kids and people having picnic on shorts in any place, without caring much about radiation levels. At the time we arrived at the entrance checkpoint, we encountered a queue of ca. 200 cars!! Thanks to our special permit, and not without annoying a few drivers that tried to block our pass, we avoid queuing and entered into the zone.

During the rest of the day we encountered people almost in any place we passed during our fieldwork, and cars full of people in roads that are normally empty. This was something I was not expecting at all, not the kind of Exclusion Zone I was thinking about…

My second surprise came when we headed for our hotel. I was thinking (I don’t’ know why) we were going to stay outside the Zone, and going in and out every day. Well, no. Our “Chernobyl Hotel” was actually inside the Zone, about 20 km in straight line from the entrance checkpoint and 15 km from the Nuclear Power Plant. The hotel is located in Chernobyl or Chornobyl city/village, founded in 1193, and at the time of the Chernobyl accident occupied by ca. 14.000 residents. Still today (another surprise to me) is the home of 700-800 people, mostly men working on the construction of the new sarcophagus for the reactor number 4 or in radioactive waste management. Our hotel was a modest, but more than correct, hotel with ca. 20 rooms and free Wi-Fi!! That was also something that I was not expecting at all, staying overnight inside the Zone with free Wi-Fi…

The Zone itself is now a mostly forested area with a mixture of pines and birches, and scattered areas of oaks. There is also plenty of water everywhere, with several rivers crossing the area, the big one the Prypiat River. There are plenty of small lakes, ponds and bogs surrounded by reeds all across the Exclusion Zone. A potential paradise for amphibians J (I will talk about Chernobyl wildlife in an oncoming post).

Moving across the Zone in our amazing 4×4 car (donated to the Chornobyl Center by the Chinese Embassy by the way) we only passed by an additional checkpoint almost every night during the fieldwork. Strange looks and additional papers given to the guards on each occasion, but nothing more.

During our driving in the Zone, we passed by a few abandoned villages and many derelict cottages, a vivid reminder of the human impact of the Chernobyl accident (more than 350.000 people were evacuated from the Zone). I didn’t visit the famous abandoned city of Pripyat (3 km from the reactor and with ca. 50.000 people living there at the time of the accident), something to look for during my next visit at the end of August. On our final day of field work, I had the opportunity to walk around an abandoned village (in otherwise a clean area), with many houses surrounded by trees, fallen roofs and some personal objects left by..

One of the things that caught my attention in these areas was that one the first indications I saw of a previously inhabited place was the sight of lily trees emerging in the middle of a forest patch. Only when you approached a bit more and look more carefully, it was possible to discover the rests of a house, in many cases in the middle of the forest by now and covered by climbing plants. Thinking on the people that used to live by (and care of) these lilies, was a quite sad feeling.

Regarding my work there, it was almost as normal as doing fieldwork anywhere else. Nothing similar to the images that you can see in many documentaries about the Zone that presented it as an extremely dangerous place and a devastated wasteland. I recently show e.g. the Animal Planet “Life after Chernobyl”, a sad example of over-sensationalistic documentary about the Zone with people covered in ultra-protective gear, showing scary faces and literally running away from hot places… During the field work, I never wear any special suit, any mask or any protective glasses, except normal vinyl gloves to collect the frogs (also in part because I was interested in examining skin microbiome…).

We had always our dosimeters with us, so we could have a clear idea about the radiation of the places we were visiting and the total radiation accumulated during our stay in the Exclusion Zone. Overall, I accumulated 54 microSv during my stay in the Zone, most of them (35 microSv) during the night we expend collecting frogs 1.5 km away from the reactor 4. We passed by a locality, Glyboke lake, with radiation levels in some areas up to 77 microSv/h. On our final night of sampling, we moved across and area around Uzh River that, although inside the exclusion zone, is completely clean.

To put these numbers into context, normal background radiation ranges between 1000-3000 microSv/year, and people get 100 microSv from a dental x-ray or 3000 microSv from a mammogram. I myself was exposed to ca. 5000 microSv during three brain CT scanners I went through last August. Overall, knowing the area (and we have the best expert with us, Sergey Gaschack) and the very different levels of radiation within, it was a perfectly safe area to work (I am not saying a perfectly safe area to live, let’s have this clear).

I definitely want to come back next year and continuing with this work!!

Chernobyl Recap: the Science

Tags

Amphibians, Chernobyl, Radioecology

#ChernobylFrogs16 Chernobyl Recap: the Science

I am finally back from #ChernobylFrogs16 fieldwork at Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, so it is time for some recapitulation about the work I did there. As I mentioned in previous posts, the objective was to sample European treefrogs (Hyla arborea) on localities within Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, exposed to different levels of radioactive contamination originated by the accident of reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986.

We chose this particular species because it’s highly terrestrial, living on bushes and grasslands during big part of the year, and those are areas more severely contaminated by radiation than water itself (Cesium does not stay much time dissolved in water and tends to aggregate with particles, sedimenting or getting absorbed by soil and vegetation). Our goal was to look at a wide range of genetic, physiological and developmental traits on these frogs to examine how chronic exposure to radioactive contamination could affect them.

After four nights of work in the area, we collected a total of 84 male treefrogs in 6 different localities ranging from high contaminated places (ca. 30 microSv/h), to areas not contaminated at all. From these frogs we look first for morphological anomalies, such as presence of tumors or cataracts (reported for some birds in the area), extracted blood for physiological analyses, sampled a different array of tissues (liver and muscles) for epigenetic studies, collected skin microbiome and sperm samples, bones for skeletochronology (in order to estimate changes in lifespan associated with radioactive contamination), and preserved the frogs for estimating individual radioactive doses accumulated by each frog. All these procedures took about 15-20 minutes per individual, quite time-consuming, but would represent an extremely detailed multidisciplinary approach to understand how living in radioactive areas affects wildlife.

This study is part of a much larger public funded EU-project aimed at improving and integrating research on the impact of radiation on man and the human food chain and on environment, particularly the protection of wildlife. This COMET project (COordination and iMplementation of a pan-Europe instrumenT for radioecology) represents a joint force of more than 20 institutions from 15 different countries. In particular, the study of the effect of radiation in amphibian biology implies researchers from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), the Chornobyl Centre (Ukraine), Doñana Biological Station (Spain), and the Swedish Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala.

Some of the samples are here with me in Uppsala ready to be analyzed (sperm, blood, histological samples), but most of them (the frozen ones) still need to get out of the Ukrainian custom bureaucracy in order to reach our labs.

We already have some very preliminary indications that suggest than male treefrogs from the more contaminated locality (collected ca. 1.5 km from Chernobyl reactor 4) may be affected by living under such high radiations levels, although it is still too early to say something about (we first need to know the dose absorbed by each individual in order to have more solid interpretations).

It was an exciting time there in Chernobyl, but now starts the equally exciting time of getting data from these samples and perform all the analyses in order to understand how these frogs are affected by the different levels of radiation in the area. With the experience accumulated this year, I hope to be back in the area next spring to extend our sampling to more localities and more specific traits. On the meantime, at the end of August, I will be back in Ukraine for the COMET workshop “Thirty years after the Chernobyl accident what do we know about the effects of radiation on the environment?” Time to put research pieces together, and try to produce some general ideas about the long term effects of radiation in natural environments. Exciting time!!