50 Items Tagged

Radioactive

A mural celebrating Russian space exploration remains on the wall at Prypiat's abandoned post office, which once served nearly 50,000 residents.

Tragedy Lingers Inside Chornobyl's Abandoned City

It’s been nearly 40 years since a reactor exploded at this Soviet nuclear power plant, but disaster has a long half-life.

Matthew Christopher December 11, 2024

Upton, New York

Brookhaven Gamma Forest

Starting in 1961, Brookhaven National Labs regularly irradiated a section of forest with a canister of Cesium-137 to study the effects of hard gamma radiation on an ecosystem.

Maralinga Tjarutja, Australia

Woomera Ground Zero for British Atomic Tests

This remote site in the Australian Outback is where the British government conducted atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.

Merry Widow Health Mine

What if the cure for all that ails you was as simple as repeated exposure to low-dose radon?

Radium Onsen

This bathhouse includes an option to soak in radioactive water.

Punta Gorda, Florida

Radioactive Fountain of Youth

Some believe Ponce de León's mystical spring lurks right under a public drinking fountain.

Chemist and physicist Marie Curie works in the lab with her husband Pierre in 1896. Curie would go on to win two Nobel prizes for her groundbreaking research on radioactivity.

Marie Curie As You’ve Never Met Her Before

The world’s first two-time Nobel Laureate was a nerd’s nerd who broke the law for knowledge.

Sarah Durn April 20, 2023

Prypiat, Ukraine

Jupiter Radiotechnology Factory

A huge Soviet-era robotics factory in the outskirts of Prypiat, now long-abandoned.

Could we genetically engineer cats to glow when exposed to radiation, thus warning future generations about nuclear waste sites?

Can Glowing 'Ray Cats' Save Humanity?

There are some strange ideas about how to send a warning to our descendants 100,000 years from now.

Kate Golembiewski October 25, 2022

The "sarcophagus" covering the fourth block of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 2018.

Chernobyl's Strange Black Fungi Have a Superpower

The organisms, growing at the Ukrainian site amid invasion and occupation, may one day help keep space travelers safe.

Eden Arielle Gordon April 1, 2022

Curators worried a fallout detection device in the Cold War-era bunker that now houses the Diefenbunker Museum might be radioactive. Instead, they found radiation coming from an everyday object in their collection.

The Canadian Team on the Hunt for Radioactive Artifacts

Historic objects made with dangerous elements are lurking in museum collections.

Emma Jacobs October 15, 2021

Podcast: Big Bertha Drum

Join us for a daily celebration of the world’s most wondrous, unexpected, even strange places.

The Podcast Team August 31, 2021

Uranophane from the German site of Menzenschwand in Baden-Württemberg.

A DIY Guide to Collecting Radioactive Rocks Gets Glowing Reviews

The free how-to dispels myths and minimizes the hazards of hunting and hoarding these special specimens.

Sarah Scoles May 20, 2021

Bees, pictured here flocking to wild fennel, could have gotten more than they're bargaining for.

Radioactive Honey Preserves the Legacy of Nuclear Testing

Cesium 137 shows up in small amounts still detectable today.

Susan D’Agostino May 18, 2021

A small uranium-glass pitcher (left) and uranium glass plates (right).

The Collectors Who Hunt Down Radioactive Glassware

Their tools are black lights and Geiger counters.

Amiee Maxwell May 17, 2021

Uravan, Colorado

Uravan

Only a few signs remain of the buried Colorado mining town that supplied the uranium for the first atomic bomb.

Specimens in the "wet archive" were known primarily by number.

The Saga of Midori Naka

How and why the harvested body parts of atomic bomb victims spent decades abroad before being returned to Hiroshima.

Colin Dickey September 24, 2020

Ubiquitous throughout the USSR, Palaces of Culture, such as this one in Pogonnoe, were used to host theater, concerts, and films. The events usually contained explicit Soviet political messages.

Exploring Chernobyl's Imprint on Neighboring Belarus

The Polesie State Radioecological Reserve is close to Ukraine's Exclusion Zone, but a world away.

Darmon Richter September 22, 2020