by Matteo Cavallito<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nearly 40 years after the nuclear disaster<\/strong> that caused its widespread contamination, thousands of hectares of agricultural soils located in the Chernobyl area in northern Ukraine<\/strong> could be returned to farming. This is the opinion of researchers from the University of Portsmouth <\/strong>and the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology<\/strong> who, in a recent study<\/a>, developed a method for re-evaluating land abandoned after the 1986 accident.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a need in Ukraine<\/strong> for re-evaluation of the status of lands outside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone which were abandoned in the years<\/strong> after the accident,\u201d says the research published in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. \u201cSince the 1991 criteria for zoning were put in place, there has been no re-classification of abandoned lands even though radionuclide contamination density and, for radiocaesium isotopes, mobility have both declined.\u201d<\/p>\n