Listen to the birds of Chernobyl - they may be making the case for nuclear power

Animals have returned and the cooling ponds of the power station are teeming with fish

Of all the articles written to mark the 20th anniversary of the world's greatest nuclear disaster, at Chernobyl, the most significant appeared in Wednesday's Independent. Andrew Osborn had travelled to the site of the explosion and revealed that it had become an unplanned nature reserve. Animals have returned of their own accord, including 7,000 wild boar and a similar number of elk; it is now the home of 280 species of birds, many of them rare and endangered.

Even the cooling ponds of the power station are teeming with fish. One of the former inhabitants who has returned, Maria Shaparenko, said: "It's very nice here in summer, everything blooms. In fact nothing is wrong here, it's just that people have been scared off by the radiation."

Article Length: 1027 words (approx.)