1) The Elephants foot, Ukraine
On 26 April 1986, a series of errors causes one of the nuclear reactors to explode and meltdown. In the cleanup operation the Soviets dropped thousands of tons of sand, lead and sealing materials on the reactor in an attempt to stop it leaking radioactive particles into the air.
Since it was impossibly hot, the reactor melted anything dropped on it and ended up burning through the floor, with the resulting lump of melted materials becoming known as the elephants foot.
This giant blob which was once the core of the reactor is supposed to weight hundreds of tons, even though the amount of materials on their own wouldn’t weigh anywhere near that. The matter went through some strange nuclear smelting process and ended up compressing into a huge lump.
The Elephants foot contained enough radiation after the initial explosion to kill someone close to it in less than 30 seconds. Today if you were to stand close to it you would receive a fatal does within 500 seconds which would manifest itself in the form of a very aggressive cancer.
2) Hanford, USA
The United States is supposed to have more nuclear weaponry than any other country by a huge amount, and making all this world ending weaponry doesn’t come without its costs, most notably in the form of nuclear waste.
No one really understood radiation and nuclear materials until the last 2 or 3 decades, and before that it was pure experimentation. After realising that making atomic bombs creates large amounts of radioactive waste that cant be destroyed or processed, the government was left with a choice. Either stop creating super weapons and save the plant, or carry on making even bigger super weapons and brush all that left over nuclear waste under the carpet, or in this case in a series of holes in an area “a bit out the way.”
The Hanford site is believed to have over 50 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste and over 20 million cubic feet of solid waste. Burying all this didn’t really help as now 200 square miles of ground water has been contaminated, yet they carry on making bombs. Since the site is a military owned facility of quite high clearance and its also radioactive, i wouldn’t bother trying to find out how you can go on a tour round it.
3) Somalian Coast Line
There hasn’t been a central government in Somalia that’s had control of the whole country for almost 30 years. For some reason this country is constantly at war with itself, a self proclaimed government will pop up somewhere, then a militant group will pop up somewhere else and the two will fight. One side will win and then another armed group turns up and the cycle continues, and all this accompanied with disease, starvation and some of the worst health care on the planet.
Because of the countries lack of a decent government there’s no one to actually govern things, such as who can fish in their waters or dump waste in their ocean. For many years fishing trawlers have gone to the Somalian coast and poached their fish stocks, and the only response from the country itself is a load of pirates on motorised fishing boats with AK’s.
This was a fairly good sign that you could dump pretty much anything you like in Somalian waters and no one would do a thing about it, and that’s exactly what numerous countries did. Every now and then a barrel baring the nuclear warning sign on it or a strange piece of metal that makes people sick washes up on the shore. Since the country is so dangerous and any Westerner who goes there will likely be kidnapped, its difficult to get accurate figures on exactly how radioactive this place is.
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