Environmental impact of nuclear power materials decay, they release particles that can damage the body and lead to cancer, particularly cesium-137 and iodine-131. In the Chernobyl disaster, releases of cesium-137 contaminated land. Some communities, including the entire city of Pripyat, were abandoned permanently. One news source reported that thousands of people who drank milk contaminated with radioactive iodine developed thyroid cancer. The exclusion zone (approx. 30 km radius around Chernobyl) may have significantly elevated levels of radiation, which is now predominantly due to the decay of cesium-137, for around 10 half-lives of that isotope, which is approximately for 300 years. Due to the bioaccumulation of
Radiation effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster Iwate), in Saku, Karuizawa and Sakuho (prefecture Nagano, in Tabayama (prefecture Yamanashi) and elsewhere. Based on radiation measurements made all over Japan between 20 March and 20 April 2011, and the atmospheric patterns in that period, computer simulations were performed by an international team of researchers, in cooperation with the University of Nagoya, in order to estimate the spread of radioactive materials like caesium-137. Their results, published in two studies on 14 November 2011, suggested that caesium-137 reached up to the northernmost island of Hokkaido, and the regions of Chugoku and Shikoku in western Japan at more than 500 kilometers