It could be recalled that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the town of Pripyat, Ukraine, north of Kyiv, experienced a meltdown in 1986 that resulted in a huge amount of radiation escaping into the surrounding atmosphere, as well as the surrounding forest, farmland, and living beings from animals to humans.
Radioactivity from the incident spread as far west as France, with many farm animals in affected areas born with deformations in the following years, Gizmodo reported.
The disaster was the worst that happened in Europe in the 1980s, with a repeat of it happening in the 21st century with Fukushima, and due to recent events, might also come full circle with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant just downstream from Chernobyl.
However, a team of scientists tested wild boar meat from southern Germany and found that radioactivity in the hogs was not because of the Chernobyl disaster, but from nuclear weapons testing from a few decades prior.
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Radiation by Nuke Testing?
While the radioactive boars of the German region of Bavaria were affected by Chernobyl, new research published in Environmental Science & Technology suggested that nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War was also a contributing factor, though it was not possible to know which nation or group was responsible.
The researchers said there was an "enormous upward drift" after an explosion, and by the time the fallout fell down to earth, the radioactive material was "evenly distributed" in the higher atmosphere, thus the difficulty in detecting who was responsible.
Most of the radioactive cesium floating around Europe is cesium-137, but some of it is the long-lived isotope cesium-135. Both were produced by nuclear fission, the same process used in the production of both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. While cesium-137 levels have generally decreased across the continent, it has remained in the southern German pigs, which the researchers have been credited with inventing the term "wild boar paradox."
The researchers have also determined that the radioactivity of the wild boars stemmed from its appetite for deer truffles, which is typically an underground source that once absorbed cesium-137 prior to being buried.
While other animals' radioactivity has decreased, boars have kept their numbers afloat due to their truffle-heavy diet; buried underground, these truffles act as a repository for "downward migration" cesium-137, the researchers additionally wrote.
Radioactive Meat
The research team also measured boar meat samples collected across southern Germany using a mass spectrometer. They found that the ratios of radioactive cesium in the meat suggested that 10% to 68% of the animals' contamination was due to nuclear weapons testing and not nuclear reactors.
"The 88% of 48 samples are not representative of the population because we had asked the hunter to get us as highly contaminated samples as possible," Vienna University of Technology research contributor Georg Steinhauser said, indicating that a majority of the samples were above the regulatory limit for radioactivity in Germany. He added that all samples were also above Japan's regulatory limit.
He added that the boar's diet defined their radioactivity over the course of the year, being less radioactive in the winter, where food is scarce and they would have to dig for deer truffles, and more radioactive in the warmer seasons like summer or autumn.
