Not only Chernobyl These are the most radioactive places in the world

Some places in the world make it clear what dangers nuclear energy poses to people and nature. They serve as memorials, but have also led to a rethink of how we deal with nuclear power.

Nuclear bomb tests, radioactive accidents or super-GAUs - nuclear power offers potential, but also involves many risks. If something goes wrong, entire regions become uninhabitable.

The biggest nuclear disaster of all time occurred in Chernobyl in 1986. The second largest was in Fukushima in 2011. Both places are symbols of the dangers of nuclear power.

But there are also other regions where nuclear accidents or nuclear bomb tests have caused alarmingly high levels of radiation that most of us are completely unaware of.

Some of the places listed are still exclusion zones, others are largely decontaminated, others are the homes and workplaces of many people whose health is sacrificed for commercial and military purposes. We take you on an extraordinary journey to these very areas.

Today, Chernobyl is located in Ukraine, near the city of Pripyat. When the nuclear disaster occurred there, the town was still part of the Soviet Union.

The explosion of a reactor in 1986 released a huge amount of radioactivity that killed at least 30 people immediately after the event, but tens of thousands in the long term, and had an impact on almost the whole of Europe. Many people died from secondary diseases caused by radiation exposure, such as cancer.

There is an exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which can now be partially entered as part of a guided tour. However, the war in Ukraine has put an end to disaster tourism around Chernobyl for the time being.

40 years after ChernobylThen the cloud came - but not to the GDR

The earthquake off the east coast of Japan on March 21, 2011 was particularly devastating. It triggered a tsunami that hit the Japanese coast with devastating force just 30 minutes after the quake. Not only did it destroy countless houses and roads, but it also hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The power at the plant failed and the disaster took its course. As a result, the reactors were no longer cooled and overheated. Core meltdowns and explosions occurred in several reactors.

Eventually, large amounts of radioactivity escaped, which also reached the sea via the water. Tens of thousands of people had to leave their homes and many fell ill as a result of the radiation exposure. There is still an exclusion zone around Fukushima.

Another major nuclear accident is hardly known to us Europeans. It occurred in 1957 at the Soviet plutonium reprocessing plant Mayak near Osjorsk, where a tank exploded.

The Soviet government kept the disaster secret and accepted that the population would fall ill. The fact that the water in the Techa River was also contaminated was particularly problematic.

The Soviet government took a similarly questionable stance in Semipalatinsk, a former nuclear weapons test site that is now located on the territory of Kazakhstan.

Over 450 nuclear tests were carried out on the site up until 1991. Here, too, the population was not informed about the radioactive radiation to which they were exposed in the region.

You really can't tell the islands from their sad history. Bikini Atoll, which is part of the remote Marshall Islands, looks like a tropical picture-book paradise.

However, the islands have not been habitable for almost 80 years, as the USA carried out atomic bomb tests here from 1946 to 1958. The inhabitants evacuated for the tests never returned home.

Hanford Site on the Columbia River in the US state of Washington is a nuclear complex that played an important role in plutonium production during the Second World War.

The site's surroundings and the Columbia River were heavily contaminated due to the incorrect storage of waste. Even in the 21st century, traces of radioactivity could still be detected in certain animals and plants.

There have been repeated leaks and incidents at the Sellafield nuclear power plant in the UK - from fires to leaks of radioactive liquid.

The outdated plant was finally shut down in 2005. However, large quantities of nuclear waste are still stored there. Sellafield sparked numerous debates and protests and repeatedly highlighted the risks of nuclear energy.

It's hard to believe what happened in Goiânia, Brazil, in 1987: A medical radiotherapy machine was stolen from a decommissioned clinic and then sold on to a scrap dealer. The caesium-137 it contained was removed without knowledge of its danger, resulting in severe radiation, some of it fatal, and the contamination of numerous buildings.

Highly radioactive waste from the Mayak plant was dumped in Lake Karachay in Russia for years. The lake is so heavily contaminated that even a short stay on its shores leads to death - this is said to be the case even now, although the lake has since been covered in concrete.

Here too, the Soviet government has exacerbated the health consequences for the population by covering them up.

The mushroom clouds from the atomic bomb tests in the Nevada desert could be seen as far away as Las Vegas. From 1951 to 1992, the Nevada Test Site was the most important location for nuclear weapons testing in the United States. Both underground and above-ground tests left behind significantly increased radiation levels, which led to an above-average number of cancer cases in the region.

What Sellafield is to the UK, Three Mile Island is to the USA: a symbol of the dangers of nuclear power and the source of much debate.

In 1979, an accident occurred at the nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, which was followed by a partial meltdown. Although only a comparatively small amount of radioactivity escaped, the incident led to a rethink among the population.

Here, too, the Soviet Union has left behind a dirty legacy: In the industrial city of Mailuu-Suu in what is now Kyrgyzstan, where uranium was mined during the Soviet era. Radioactive waste was improperly stored, resulting in the area and the river of the same name, Mailuu-Suu, becoming heavily contaminated. Kyrgyzstan is still struggling with this nuclear legacy.

The nuclear power China also carried out nuclear weapons tests from 1964 to 1996 - at the Lop Nor salt lake, which has since dried up.

A total of 40 tests were carried out without any consideration for the approximately 20 million people who lived in the region. Many of them belonged to the Uyghur minority. The cancer rate around Lop Nor is significantly higher than in the rest of China.

Fort d'Aubervilliers is a district of Paris and even here - in the middle of the lively French capital - radioactive materials have left their mark.

During research work with radium in the 1920s and 1930s, a lot of contaminated material escaped over the years, heavily polluting the soil. The research site has now been largely decontaminated.

Jadugoda in the Indian state of Jharkhand is the flip side of India's nuclear power. The largely indigenous population of the town suffers massively from the high radiation levels caused by uranium mining and the improper disposal of nuclear waste in Jadugoda. Many children fall ill and die young as a result of the contamination of soil and water.

In Mounana in Africa, too, the interests of people and nature have long taken second place to economic interests. A French company mined uranium there, in the jungles of Gabon, and simply dumped radioactively contaminated waste in the rivers.

Similar things are happening in uranium mines in South Africa and Namibia, where nature and the safety of the miners are also being neglected.

More videos from the department