transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Major funding for The Pulse is provided by a leadership gift from the Sutherland family. The Sutherland support WHOY and its commitment to the production of programs that improve our quality of life.

Speaker 2:
[00:19] This is The Pulse, stories about the people and places at the heart of health and science. I'm Maiken Scott. Imagine standing on your balcony in the middle of the night, watching a mysterious fire glow in the distance. It's strangely beautiful, blue, orange and purple, shimmering, mesmerizing. You see that some of your neighbors are on their balconies too. You point, shrug your shoulders. Nobody knows what's happening, so you just keep watching. It's April 26, 1986, in the city of Pripyat, near Chernobyl. A day that will completely change the lives of thousands of people and impact millions more around the world. Construction for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine began in 1970.

Speaker 3:
[01:19] By 1986, they had four giant 1,000-megawatt reactors online.

Speaker 2:
[01:25] Each one enough to power about a million homes. And the Soviet Union's vision for the site was ambitious.

Speaker 3:
[01:32] The largest nuclear power plant in the world.

Speaker 2:
[01:35] A symbol of Soviet autonomy, scientific ingenuity and strength, the site was going to have about a dozen reactors in total.

Speaker 3:
[01:44] But part of the problem with this extremely ambitious schedule was that it, like so much of Soviet industry and Soviet technology, was done in an extremely rushed and slipshored way.

Speaker 2:
[01:57] That's journalist Adam Higginbotham, the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, which chronicles the plant's history and its ultimate demise.

Speaker 3:
[02:06] So from the very beginning, the director of the plant, Victor Brehanov, who arrived on the scene when it was just an empty field in Ukraine, you know, he discovered that the materials that he ordered were not sufficient for the job. Many things that he ordered didn't show up at all.

Speaker 2:
[02:23] Yet Victor was expected to stick to this very unrealistic construction schedule.

Speaker 3:
[02:29] And so he had to kind of improvise and cook the books in order to to make things happen at all. And by 1986, there had been an extremely long record of faults and design problems with the reactors themselves.

Speaker 2:
[02:47] The pressure, the high expectations and cutting corners all came to a head on April 26, 40 years ago. Reactor number four at the plant was scheduled for a routine maintenance shutdown. And the staff had arranged for a safety test, which was more than two years overdue. It had already been postponed several times, and now it was once again delayed.

Speaker 3:
[03:14] The original team of operators in the reactor control room, who had been expecting to conduct the test, were sent home and the test was handed off to the night shift.

Speaker 2:
[03:25] The nuclear engineers on the night shift were less experienced. They didn't know a lot about this safety test. The senior engineer who took over the controls of the reactor was only 25 and had been on the job for about two months.

Speaker 3:
[03:40] And during the course of the test, they placed the reactor into an extremely unstable condition.

Speaker 2:
[03:46] Soon, a series of bad decisions and mistakes made in a high pressure situation combined with the plant's poor design and lack of safety redundancies resulted in disaster.

Speaker 3:
[03:59] The reactor began to run out of control. A massive explosion took place, which blew the lid of the reactor off, destroyed the roof of the reactor building and started fires not only around the reactor itself, but on the roofs of adjacent buildings and in the grounds of the power plant.

Speaker 2:
[04:22] The core of the nuclear reactor was completely destroyed. A mixture of radioactive gases and particles was released into the atmosphere, carrying some of the most hazardous radionuclides known to man.

Speaker 3:
[04:37] Oh, it was an absolutely colossal amount of radiation. I mean, it was absolutely unprecedented. And the graphite that was part of the construction of the reactor and the uranium fuel itself, you know, was vaporized by the force of the explosion. And that just dissipated into the air in a massive cloud. And then the fallout from that began to be dispersed across not only, you know, the area immediately around the reactor and over farmland and towns and cities, hundreds of miles away.

Speaker 2:
[05:09] As the radioactive cloud spread across Europe, people were going to work and school, totally unaware of what had happened. It would take days for news to trickle out. As it did, people were horrified and worried. Was it safe to go outside? Was the air, water and food now poisoned? And could this happen again at other nuclear plants? On this episode, 40 years after the Chernobyl disaster, a look at its legacy and the impact on the future of nuclear energy. In his book Midnight in Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham details what happened in the hours immediately following the explosion. The plant's director, Victor Burhanov, was called out of bed to come to a bunker in the facility to take charge of the situation.

Speaker 3:
[06:07] But refused to believe, as did most of his senior staff, that it was even possible that the reactor could have exploded. And although he tried to gain control of the situation and reported to his bosses in Moscow, he continued to kind of mislead them about the scale of the accident.

Speaker 2:
[06:24] Information about the accident was tightly controlled, especially around Pripyat and Adamgrad, or Adam City, as they were known in the Soviet Union, where the plant workers and their families lived.

Speaker 3:
[06:38] One of the first acts that the KGB operatives in the city took after the explosion took place was to cut off the local telephone network, so that even if people in Pripyat found out about what was going on, they couldn't phone out to tell anybody about it. And in quite quick succession, they also threw a police roadblock around Pripyat, so people couldn't leave if they wanted to. But certainly nobody in the town was immediately notified of what had happened. And it wasn't until late the following afternoon as word began to leak back from friends and relatives who had been at the plant at the time of the accident that anything under order had happened at all. And the immediate response of the authorities in Pripyat, in the city, was to make sure that everybody went about their business as normal on Saturday morning. So all Soviet schools used to go to school on a Saturday, so all of the school children were sent into school as normal. They had organized a fun run around the city that morning, and there was debate in the town council about whether or not that should just go ahead as usual. And when you see the film that was shot in the town that morning, you can see that it was a normal spring day. People were walking out on the streets with their kids, playing in parks, walking beside the river.

Speaker 2:
[07:57] In your interviews with people, did you get a sense whether or not they were aware of the potential risks, even just by living so close to the power plant, or any potential dangers that they were exposed to?

Speaker 3:
[08:13] I heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that people were certainly not afraid of it, and had no reason to believe, given the information that had been shared with them, that there was really any danger of living or working there. You know, I remember that one of the guys that worked on the plant told me that he'd been told that radiation was so safe, you could spread it on bread. There were other stories I heard about people who were very proud of the fact that they'd taken glassware, like sort of vases and glasses and things, and left them in the cooling pond that was adjacent to the plant for a few days, and when they took them out, they discovered they had these kind of wonderful rainbow effects in the glass. The radiation in the cooling ponds had transformed the glass and its appearance into these kind of, you know, multicolored psychedelic patterns, and they used this glassware to drink out of at home. So there were certainly people there that were not afraid of radiation at all. And you know, the people that lived in Pripyat had been aware that there had been previous mishaps and previous accidents of the plant. But the way that they had been treated by the authorities in Pripyat, you know, had led them to believe that these accidents had really been no big deal at all. But when you go back and look into the KGB records of what exactly happened during the course of these accidents, and the level of radiation that had been released during these previous accidents, you can see that it really was quite dangerous, but the authorities had just extremely successfully covered them up. So nobody in Pripyat had any suspicion that even when this accident took place in 1986, that it was necessarily going to be life-threatening.

Speaker 2:
[09:53] And what was the official line of what had happened? What was being communicated to the population early on?

Speaker 3:
[10:01] Well, for that first day, nothing at all. It wasn't until the evening of that day that the authorities sent around people from door to door, apartment to apartment in Pripyat, handing out stable iodine tablets, which were a prophylactic against radiation exposure, that anybody had any firm sign that anything had gone wrong at all. And it wasn't until 36 hours after the explosion that the authorities began evacuating the population of Pripyat.

Speaker 2:
[10:30] Who were the people who were most affected by the radiation and by being exposed to all of that?

Speaker 3:
[10:38] Definitely the first responders and the operators who were in the plant at the time of the accident. Because those are the people who went directly into the most extreme fields of radiation within minutes of the explosion taking place. So there were firefighters who were sent to deal with the fires on the roof of the plant. There were operators within the plant who had to deal with oil leaks and fires inside the plant itself. And also to try to get control of what they thought was a reactor that was still intact, but needed to be cooled and to be brought under control. And those are the people who were among the first to die in hospital number six in Moscow, because they received such enormous doses of radiation.

Speaker 2:
[11:26] There are some debates surrounding the number of people who died from the long-term effects of the radiation at Chernobyl. But approximately 30 plant operators and first responders died in the immediate aftermath. In the weeks following the accident, what were the cleanup efforts on the ground? Who took care of that work? What happened next?

Speaker 3:
[11:55] So, they very quickly mobilized an enormous effort to not only stop the radioactive emissions from the plant itself, but to, you know, what they called liquidate the consequences of the accident. So, to kind of try and clean up and to cover up the ruins of reactor number four. And, you know, initially, they took a very sort of ineffective approach, because their initial conviction was just that they needed to be seen to be doing something, regardless of whether it was effective or not. So, one of the first things they did was realizing that they wanted to try and put out this graphite fire that was burning in the remains of the reactor. They mobilized these teams of helicopter pilots to fly in relays over the remains of the burning reactor and drop a combination of sand, boron and lead into the more of this blazing reactor. And the idea of that was that they would stop the possibility of any further nuclear reaction within the ruins of the reactor core, and the lead would cool down the fire and the sand would suffocate it of oxygen and put it out. And this operation, which was incredibly dangerous and exposed the helicopter crews to enormous doses of radiation, went on for days. But in the aftermath of the accident, when people were finally able to get inside the reactor building and begin an investigation of what remained there, they found that that helicopter operation had been almost completely pointless, because almost all of those loads of sand and lead and boron had missed the hottest part of the reactor and fallen uselessly into other parts of the building.

Speaker 2:
[13:41] And as it continued to burn, did it continue to release radioactive substances?

Speaker 3:
[13:48] Yes, for days and for weeks, actually. A cloud of radionuclides continued to roil into the atmosphere into the early days of May.

Speaker 2:
[13:58] How does the rest of Europe and the world first find out about this accident?

Speaker 3:
[14:04] The Soviet authorities are very efficient at keeping word of what had happened closed down for the first day and a half it happened. And it wasn't until a few days after the explosion itself had happened that the radioactive cloud of all these radionuclides that had escaped from the reactor reached the shores of Sweden. And it wasn't until the contamination was picked up inside a Swedish nuclear plant at Foschmark, which was 800 miles from Chernobyl, that anybody in the West began to find out what had happened. And it wasn't until the workers inside Foschmark saw that radiation alarms inside their own power plant were being set off by this mysterious contamination. Initially, they thought they'd got a leak in their own plant, but when they analyzed the contamination, they realized that it had come from a kind of reactor that was completely unlike the reactor at Foschmark. And then they began to realize that the wind was blowing from the direction of the Soviet Union.

Speaker 2:
[15:11] And then what? Like, how did that story sort of get pieced together early on?

Speaker 3:
[15:17] Well, then Swedish diplomats went to their Soviet counterparts in Moscow and literally said, listen, have you guys had an accident at one of your nuclear plants? And the Soviet counterparts just immediately said, no, no, we don't know what you're talking about. And it wasn't until, you know, some time later that they eventually admitted that there had been an accident. And that was eventually announced on the Soviet nightly TV news show. And then they admitted that an accident had happened, but they certainly didn't admit to the severity of the accident or indeed ask for help from the West.

Speaker 2:
[15:58] And most people in Europe who were exposed to the fallout really didn't know anything about this until things were already pretty bad. Like it rained, which probably brought down a lot of this fallout, but people still weren't quite aware.

Speaker 3:
[16:18] They weren't aware of the levels of contamination, and it wasn't helped by the fact that even some Western governments weren't completely honest about what was going on. And also, you know, people didn't really know what the potential effects of radioactive fallout of this kind were. So it just created an enormous atmosphere of fear that endured for months and years afterwards. Because people weren't sure, you know, whether their food or their water was contaminated, and they weren't sure if it was contaminated, you know, what potential harm it could cause.

Speaker 2:
[16:52] And what were some of the harms that this could cause?

Speaker 3:
[16:57] One of the most insidious and well-documented is when milk becomes radioactively contaminated from cows and cattle eating radioactively contaminated grass. And if that gets into the food chain, and children in particular drink irradiated milk, or milk that has been contaminated with radionuclides, then it can cause thyroid cancer. While the overall effects on the populations affected by the disaster have been extremely hard to pass in the years since 1986, one that has been documented very clearly is the effect on children. And so there was a spike in thyroid cancers in children in Ukraine and Russia, in the territories that were affected by the contamination from the explosion, and in Belarus in the months and years after the accident took place.

Speaker 2:
[17:56] How did the world react in the aftermath of Chernobyl, having had this massive scare and a lot of uncertainty about what the real impact would be? And again, there were already concerns about nuclear energy. So what happened next?

Speaker 3:
[18:15] Well, you know, eventually contamination from the Chernobyl accident encircled the entire Northern Hemisphere. I mean, it stretched from hill farms in Wales in the United Kingdom to lakes in Japan. And the anti-nuclear movement that had emerged in the United States and in the West in the 1970s, which just became absolutely turbocharged by the terror that was generated by the Chernobyl accident. And as a direct result of it, many countries around the world mothballed or completely terminated their nuclear programs. So it led to the end of nuclear power generation in many countries around the world.

Speaker 2:
[19:01] How did the Soviet Union approach the topic after this accident?

Speaker 3:
[19:05] Well, I mean, part of the impetus to clean up the site and effect what they called the liquidation was because they wanted to prove that they continued to have mastery over the atom. So they wanted to entomb the ruins of reactor number four, at least in part, so they could get reactors numbers one, two and three up and running and generating electricity again, which they did within 12 months. But as a result of the accident, they staged a very Soviet style investigation of the causes of the accident. So they found some convenient scapegoats and they blamed the operators of the plant for what had happened. And the reports that they circulated and published immediately after the accident tried to minimize the known design faults that had directly contributed to what happened and really were the thing that were the proximate cause of the accident taking place in the first place. And although they affected design changes to this model of reactor at nuclear plants throughout the rest of the Soviet Union, they didn't really undertake very thorough going reforms of the nuclear industry. And before anybody had an opportunity to do that, the Soviet Union disintegrated. The Chernobyl accident was one of the catalysts of Ukrainian independence and more widely the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. And part of the reason for that was that the Chernobyl accident became a focal point of Ukrainian anger about the way in which they'd been dominated by Moscow, because the nuclear industry was run and imposed on each of the Soviet republics from Moscow. So the rules were made, the staff were sent down and appointed from Moscow. And so when Ukraine eventually gained its own independence, the new Ukrainian government imagined that one of the first things they wanted to do was to close down all of the nuclear power plants in the country, because they were potentially very dangerous. But it was only after they decided this that they began to realize that if they did that, they would find it extremely hard to generate the electricity that they needed to keep the country running. So they had to reverse that idea and kept the plants running as long as they possibly could.

Speaker 2:
[21:35] We're talking about the Chernobyl disaster, which happened 40 years ago with journalist Adam Higginbotham. He's the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, the story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster. Coming up, a Soviet ghost town and what has emerged in its shadows.

Speaker 3:
[21:54] I was completely on my own in this utterly silent abandoned city, and I got a real sense of what it might be like if humanity ever became extinct. It was like being the last man on earth.

Speaker 2:
[22:06] That's still to come on The Pulse.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 2:
[23:50] This is The Pulse. I'm Maiken Scott. We're talking about the legacy of the Chernobyl disaster, which happened 40 years ago. Journalist Adam Higginbotham did extensive research for his book Midnight in Chernobyl, and he took several trips to the exclusion zone, an area around the plant roughly the size of Rhode Island. It was evacuated after the disaster, and access remains restricted due to contamination. When was the first time you traveled to Chernobyl? And what did you see?

Speaker 3:
[24:24] I went there to report a magazine story that was timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the accident, right at the beginning of 2006. You know, that was in the years before the Ukrainian authorities opened the exclusion zone up to tourism, and it was the winter. So it was very much the kind of post-apocalyptic environment that you might see in your mind's eye if you try and imagine what the Chernobyl exclusion zone looks like. It was an extremely grim, snowbound scene with this kind of, you know, malevolent looking building on the skyline, and broken power pylons with the wires sagging to the ground between each one marching off to the skyline. It was a pretty forbidding, grim place, I have to say.

Speaker 2:
[25:14] What about Pripyat? What happened to that city?

Speaker 3:
[25:17] Pripyat was completely evacuated 36 hours after the accident happened, so the entire population was removed in a matter of hours. And then the only people that remained there were people who had to stay to look after the plant. There was a skeleton crew. And, you know, then after that, it really became a ghost town. And, you know, to go there back in 2006 was a kind of fascinating and sort of terrifying experience, because in the 20 years since the accident, the place had just been kind of reclaimed by nature. So trees growing from the steps of the town hall, the Yerspilkom, the streets had been often torn up by looters by that point, because it had been looted by people who just wanted to come in and reclaim copper wiring and pipes from the streets. But otherwise, a lot of what had been left behind in April 1986 was still there. So you would see children's toys and piles of gas masks. It was like a frozen snapshot of Soviet life. And one reason that I found it very spooky indeed, was that it gives you a real sense of what life might be like after humanity leaves this planet for one reason or another. You know, one of my most memorable experiences in Pripyat was during the spring. I went back, I think actually on the actual anniversary of the accident. So it would have been late April one year. And the city was really kind of in bloom because by that time, you know, nature had really kind of reconquered the place. Plants everywhere, butterflies, you know, blossom blowing on the breeze. And I was there as usual with a couple of other people. I had a translator with me and a fixer with me. And also you had to have an official guide whenever you went anywhere inside the exclusion zone. So the four of us were wandering around and we're walking through one of these big courtyards between apartment buildings. And I stopped to take some notes. And this place is kind of like, you know, waist deep in grasses and reeds and wild plants. And I finished taking my notes and looked round and my three companions had just disappeared around a corner or something. I didn't know where they'd gone. And I was completely on my own in this utterly silent abandoned city. And I got a real sense of what it might be like, you know, if humanity ever became extinct. It was like being the last man on earth.

Speaker 2:
[28:01] Forty years later, what remains the legacy of this accident? How do you think about it? How does the world think about it? It's certainly one of the ones that continues to stand out in people's minds.

Speaker 3:
[28:17] Yeah, I think that people remain sort of grimly fascinated by it, partly because of the nature of radiation itself, as an invisible, intangible but potentially lethal force. It seems to verge on the supernatural. And the fact that you can be exposed to radiation to a lethal degree without even knowing what's happened, you know, only emphasizes that. And I think that people have an almost atavistic fear of it. And also, the way in which the accident engulfed the local population and affected the citizens of Pripyat because of the Soviet impulse to cover up and to secrecy. And all of those people had to leave in a matter of hours and were never able to return. And I think that also is something that has a real hold on people's imaginations.

Speaker 1:
[29:16] Where did people go?

Speaker 3:
[29:18] They were sent all over the Soviet Union. Many of them ended up in one particular area of Kiev called Troishina, which became known as Little Pripyat and has been in the news recently because it has been repeatedly targeted by Russian drone and missile attacks.

Speaker 2:
[29:39] So the descendants, or even people who were children when all of this happened, could now be experiencing all of that.

Speaker 3:
[29:49] Yes, in fact, one of the last people that I interviewed for the book, the widow of the first victim of the accident who was killed in the initial explosion of the reactor was killed last year by a Russian missile strike on Troishina.

Speaker 2:
[30:10] Adam Higginbotham is the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, the story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is probably among the strangest places on Earth. It's heavily militarized and suffered a lot of damage during the war between Russia and Ukraine. It's also part industrial site, where robotic cranes are managing thousands of tons of radioactive waste, part abandoned Soviet ghost town, and part accidental wildlife sanctuary and reemerging wilderness. In the late 80s and 90s, when scientists first started to explore the site more closely using remote-controlled robots, they discovered that a black mold or fungus was growing inside of reactor 4. This fungus, a sign of life in such an unlikely place, has since captured scientists' interest and people's imagination.

Speaker 5:
[31:18] Strange things are happening with fungus at Chernobyl. Inside one of the reactors, this organism seems to be feeding off the radiation and thriving. Since 1986, a 30-kilometer exclusion zone has been established around Chernobyl.

Speaker 6:
[31:31] This incredible fungus seems to eat radiation, converting harmful gamma rays into chemical energy through a process known as radiosynthesis. Its secret weapon?

Speaker 7:
[31:42] A black fungus coating fractured concrete and rusting metal, growing in silence where almost nothing else can survive. It clung to the walls of a place that should have been lifeless. For a long time, it seemed like just another stain left behind by disaster. But as the ruins were examined more closely, something unsettling emerged. The fungus was not drifting without purpose. It was aligning itself toward the radiation, creeping in the direction almost everything else tries to escape.

Speaker 2:
[32:11] And quickly, people began to speculate that this fungus had a superpower.

Speaker 8:
[32:16] There is black mold in Chernobyl that eats radiation.

Speaker 9:
[32:20] No, this isn't from Stranger Things, but real life.

Speaker 2:
[32:23] That, it turns out, is not true.

Speaker 10:
[32:26] That is a common misconception that this fungi can absorb radiation and basically remove it. That would require nuclear fission or fusion of radioactive isotopes. That is nothing that biology is capable of. Biochemistry can't do that.

Speaker 2:
[32:43] That's biomedical engineer Niels Eversch. He is a co-investigator for the NASA Space Technology Research Institute Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space. So here is what we do know about this fungus. Niels says, for starters, it's very common.

Speaker 10:
[33:03] And it's found in soil and on plants and in refrigerators.

Speaker 2:
[33:06] The specific strain found inside of the reactor is part of a species called cladasporium spherospermum.

Speaker 10:
[33:13] Which is known to be strongly melanized. Basically, that's why they call it a black mold, because melanin is the biochemical compound in their cell wall that gives them their really black appearance.

Speaker 2:
[33:26] And the melanin plays a key role in why this fungus thrives under such unusual circumstances.

Speaker 10:
[33:34] So it is not better at shielding radiation than other compounds, really just by itself. But what it does is it can take up electrons that basically makes it so that it reduces the impact of radiation, and which produces reactive oxygen species. So it basically acts as a buffer for the fungus more than actually a shield.

Speaker 2:
[34:01] Niels is studying if the unique properties of this fungus strain found in the reactor could be used in space exploration.

Speaker 10:
[34:10] I'm a biochemical engineer. I'm looking for solutions to problems. And one big problem in space exploration is the high radiation in space. So I was wondering if the fungus could play a role there because it is able to survive and still thrive and grow even when the radiation is high.

Speaker 2:
[34:27] So what could it do? Explain that a little bit more. What happens when somebody travels to space? How much radiation are they exposed to?

Speaker 10:
[34:36] Yeah, so space radiation is much different to what we commonly understand under radiation here on Earth. Here on Earth, most radiation is alpha, beta and gamma radiation. And alpha and beta doesn't travel very far. You can shield that with a piece of paper or some air. Gamma radiation is what you know from your X-ray machine. It goes basically through everything.

Speaker 2:
[34:58] Space radiation consists of extremely high-energy ionized particles.

Speaker 10:
[35:03] And those can be very destructive because they are large and very fast, so they carry a lot of energy. So those will penetrate into any material and go through it and cause a lot of structural damage on the molecular level.

Speaker 2:
[35:19] These particles can pass through the most dense materials, or worse, they can smash into those materials and create more radiation at the same time. Effective shielding requires a lighter and hydrogen-rich material to slow down these high-energy particles. Neil says a material like water can be effective in blocking space radiation, and NASA has already researched storing water in the walls of future spacecraft. Neil says this fungus could be a good addition.

Speaker 10:
[35:53] Since the fungus is able to withstand high radiation, you could think about self-replicating radiation shields. Basically, walls made of fungus that have a lot of water content, high water content, and therefore shield sufficiently against space radiation.

Speaker 2:
[36:10] So if I want to set up some kind of space station, I could take this fungus and then build myself essentially a protective shield. But I don't have to take all of the protective shield with me because I can grow it there.

Speaker 10:
[36:25] Basically, yeah, so the structural components. Think of it like the poles of your tent. That is what the fungus could be useful for. You'll still have to have a double wall, double tent, and fill that with water. But really, if there's nothing in there, the water will slosh around. If you use the fungi to grow mycelium in these walls, they could basically keep the water in place and thereby be a part of a self-regenerating radiation shield. Because if parts of the fungus die due to high radiation, other parts might just regrow there.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] Researchers sent a sample of this type of fungus to the International Space Station to test out how it would react.

Speaker 10:
[37:07] And what we found was that the fungus grew well in space. So that gave me careful confidence that there was actually something observable there.

Speaker 2:
[37:20] Niels says there is a lot more to learn about this fungus, and scientists are still in the beginning stages of understanding how it can be used. Niels Eversch is a co-investigator for the NASA Space Technology Research Institute Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space. He's also an assistant professor of space biology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. You're listening to The Pulse. I'm Maiken Scott. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up, Chernobyl had a chilling effect on the nuclear power industry. But now, 40 years later, opinions have changed and with major investments from tech companies, nuclear energy may be making a comeback.

Speaker 11:
[38:08] And I cannot wait for the day till we push the button and go back online, and you start seeing water vapor come out of those cooling towers once again.

Speaker 2:
[38:17] That's next on The Pulse.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 2:
[39:29] Hey, it's Maiken here. I've been doing a little spring cleaning in my closet because I don't have a lot of space, and I just want to focus on quality as opposed to quantity. I want things that are well-made, that are versatile, that I can wear every day and still look put together for the office. That's why I love shopping at Quince. The fabrics and styles, they feel elevated, the fits are wonderful, and the pricing makes sense. They use great materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton, and super soft denim, and the styles start around $50 or below, honestly. I just got this really cute lightweight sweater for the spring. It's so soft. It just has like a half sleeve, and it's so comfortable, and yet it looks stylish and chic. Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/pulse for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Go to quince.com/pulse for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com/pulse. This is The Pulse. I'm Maiken Scott. We're talking about the legacy of the Chernobyl disaster, which happened 40 years ago in April of 1986. A few years before that, in 1979, the US had its own nuclear scare when a reactor on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania partially melted down. It is the most serious accident in the history of nuclear power plants in the US. In the years following these two events, Gallup polls found that an increasing number of Americans were against building more nuclear power plants. Seventy-three percent of people polled in 1986 opposed building one in their community. But public opinion has shifted. A poll from last year found that a slight majority of Americans is now in favor of using nuclear energy in the US. And tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are investing in nuclear energy to power data centers for artificial intelligence, including a plan to restart a reactor on Three Mile Island. So is nuclear power making a comeback? Alan Yu looked into it.

Speaker 8:
[42:05] I arrive at Three Mile Island after crossing the Susquehanna River outside Harrisburg. I go through the gate and meet my tour guide, Dave Marcheski.

Speaker 11:
[42:15] I want to take you down by the cooling towers because this is, you know, for most people, the symbol of what nuclear energy is, right? A cooling tower.

Speaker 8:
[42:23] Dave is a Community Relations Manager for Constellation Energy, a company investing $1.6 billion to restart the Unit 1 reactor here. He takes me to the base of one of the 370-foot-tall massive gray cooling towers with their familiar shape.

Speaker 11:
[42:43] I will say when the plant is operational and being next to the cooling towers, the water that trickles down has a waterfall effect. It comes down on level, so it's almost soothing.

Speaker 8:
[42:53] Unit 1, the cooling tower and reactor Constellation operates, were not part of the infamous accident in 1979. That happened in another reactor, Unit 2. A mechanic or electrical failure stopped sending water that removes heat from the reactor, causing a partial meltdown. Tens of thousands of people in the surrounding area had to evacuate. The incident led to stricter regulations. The reactor that did not meltdown, Unit 1, was restarted in 1985. Over the years, it was owned and operated by different companies. Eventually, Constellation Energy bought it. But in 2019, the company shut down the reactor because electricity from natural gas was cheap. The nuclear plant just could not compete. For years, the site was empty.

Speaker 11:
[43:51] Let me take you inside the main access facility here. There's one thing I want to show you.

Speaker 8:
[43:54] Dave had only worked for Constellation for two years when the reactor shut down. And now that the company is back at Three Mile Island, he sees a lot of familiar faces.

Speaker 11:
[44:05] Hey, how are you doing? Good to see you. Like I said, it's a reunion. You get to see people all the time.

Speaker 8:
[44:11] He says back when the plant closed in 2019, he and his colleagues thought they would never see each other again.

Speaker 11:
[44:18] People spend their entire lives here. Not just the professional careers. You have parents and then their sons or daughters work at the same plant.

Speaker 8:
[44:28] So there was a lot of excitement when Microsoft announced a deal with Constellation in 2024 to reopen the reactor and buy power from the plant for 20 years. The federal government backed the deal with a $1 billion loan. Dave was the MC for the press conference a year later to celebrate.

Speaker 11:
[44:50] On behalf of those folks, as a former Unit 1 employee myself, let me just say, it feels so good to be back.

Speaker 8:
[44:59] Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro came to speak.

Speaker 12:
[45:02] Folks shouldn't sleep on nuclear. They should be aware of the important clean role it plays in our energy portfolio. I'm excited about how this power plant will reopen, bringing more energy onto the grid. And by creating more energy, we will create more opportunities for all Pennsylvanians.

Speaker 8:
[45:23] These days, the plant newly rebranded as the Crane Clean Energy Center is bustling with hundreds of employees again. But getting to a point where this reactor is ready to generate power could take longer than expected. In the afternoon of the same day I visited, Constellation said that the power grid needs transmission upgrades to connect to the plant. Those upgrades may not be done until 2031, which puts it four years behind schedule. But Dave says he's eager for this to happen.

Speaker 11:
[45:59] And I cannot wait for the day, till we push the button and go back online and you start seeing water vapor come out of those cooling towers once again, that'll be an even happier day.

Speaker 9:
[46:10] Yeah, it's a nice story. It just doesn't make business sense.

Speaker 8:
[46:13] Tim Judson is the executive director of a non-profit called the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which has advocated for decades against nuclear power. He says this project is expensive.

Speaker 9:
[46:27] Microsoft could have bought cheaper power from one of Constellation's other nuclear plants at a lower price and Constellation would have still made more of a profit by selling that power at an above-market price, but lower than what it's going to cost to restart Three Mile Island.

Speaker 8:
[46:41] Tim says the high cost of nuclear power is known and documented. He pointed to two nuclear power plants that opened recently in Georgia, which led to higher energy bills for consumers. He questions why companies would want to spend so much money on nuclear power on Three Mile Island and elsewhere.

Speaker 9:
[47:03] The former limit of battery storage are the cheapest energy sources on the grid today worldwide. So why aren't we putting our emphasis there, but instead putting it on restarting a 50-year-old nuclear power plant that was uneconomical seven years ago and spending billions of dollars to try to restart that thing?

Speaker 8:
[47:21] But he says the nuclear industry spends a lot of money on public relations, and people now have largely forgotten the high-profile disasters. Fukushima in Japan, Chernobyl, and right here at Three Mile Island.

Speaker 9:
[47:37] Public opinion is more favorable now than it was 10 years ago, and I think that's largely because of the shortness of people's memories.

Speaker 8:
[47:47] Eric Epstein has not forgotten what happened here. He lives not far from Three Mile Island.

Speaker 13:
[47:55] I grew up here, was raised here. Most of the community was very supportive, of locating Three Mile Island in the area. It's also located close to an airport, probably closer to an airport than any other nuclear plant.

Speaker 8:
[48:10] He says in the early days, people cared a lot about jobs, and not as much about safety risks. He started a nuclear safety watchdog organization called Three Mile Island Alert in 1977, two years before the accident.

Speaker 13:
[48:27] It went from a community that was very pro-nuclear, to a community where trust was broken. However, we're three generations away. And so younger people are much more supportive of nuclear power than people that are older and experienced, what occurred.

Speaker 8:
[48:45] Eric has filed some lawsuits to try and stop permits for the Three Mile Island project, but says he knows the odds are against him.

Speaker 13:
[48:54] The country's split on this. Wants to revisit nuclear power because they look at it as some magical kryptonite. They don't look at the downside. Only that they purport to be clean, which it's not. I don't know how radioactive waste product, which is toxic for thousands of years, is clean. Plus there's a ton of emissions from nuclear power plants. Yes, it's cleaner than coal. Okay, bad comparison. You know, the decision's been made since the 60s. We're going nuclear. We're going, we got to go nuclear. Why? Because we want to beat the Chinese in data centers. That's insane.

Speaker 8:
[49:32] He says there have been some notable changes in how mainstream environmental groups see nuclear power as well. The Sierra Club remains opposed to nuclear power, but the Nature Conservancy now supports it. The Natural Resources Defense Council recently, for the first time ever, publicly supported a plan to reopen a nuclear power plant in Iowa. Kit Kennedy oversees the organization's advocacy around clean energy. She says, the organization decided to support this project because of a few things happening all at once. More demand for electricity for data centers, energy prices going up, and the Trump administration attacking renewable energy.

Speaker 14:
[50:19] I do think nuclear power is having a moment. There's a lot of bipartisan support and momentum. Nuclear power will continue to play a role in our electricity system. But I would expect that clean energy, solar, wind, battery, transmission, energy efficiency will play a larger role.

Speaker 8:
[50:41] But despite all the recent changes, nuclear energy researcher and policy expert Jessica Lovering says the current moment is actually not as big for the nuclear industry as one might think.

Speaker 15:
[50:54] It's a turning point, but maybe not as sharp of a turning point as it seems for maybe the outside, if you haven't been paying attention.

Speaker 8:
[51:01] She says both Democrats and Republicans have supported nuclear power for years now. What has changed is the big energy demand for data centers. And tech companies realizing they cannot meet their commitments to use clean energy with just renewable sources like wind and solar. The other change is that President Trump is a lot more ambitious with what he wants to see from nuclear energy in the US. He said in executive orders that he wants nuclear power capacity to quadruple by 2050 and for the US to start building 10 new reactors by 2030.

Speaker 15:
[51:41] There weren't a lot of new resources provided by the executive orders, but the ambition, I think, in that target was an important clarifying event for the industry and helping them get a fire under them to maybe move a little faster.

Speaker 8:
[51:55] However, Jessica and other experts pointed out one potential problem with moving so fast. NPR reported that the Trump administration has significantly cut nuclear safety regulations, so companies can get licenses for new reactors faster. The new orders lower security requirements for the new reactors, loosen environmental rules and increase how much radiation a worker can be exposed to before triggering an official accident investigation. Jessica says the industry has long asked for more streamlined regulations, but even they are worried.

Speaker 15:
[52:35] There is definitely a lot of concern, even within the industry, that too dramatic of a change could really harm public trust and just transparency around the process.

Speaker 8:
[52:47] She says the risk is that loosening regulations too much could make the American public lose trust in nuclear energy once again.

Speaker 2:
[52:59] That story was reported by Alan Yu. That's our show for this week. The Pulse is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Our health and science reporters are Alan Yu and Liz Tong. Charlie Kyer is our engineer. Our producers are Nicole Curry and Lindsay Lazarski. I'm Maiken Scott. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 16:
[53:25] Behavioral Health Reporting on The Pulse is supported by the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, an organization that is committed to thinking, doing and supporting innovative approaches in integrated health care.