Episode 15 - Professor Jim Smith

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Episode 15 - Professor Jim Smith, Environmental Scientist

The effects of Chernobyl radiation on wildlife 

Professor Jim Smith

This episode sees Callam and Jim meet Professor Jim Smith, Environmental Scientist at the School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences at the University of Portsmouth.

Jim started his career as a physicist, and has spent the last 30 years working in the Chernobyl disaster zone in Ukraine and Belarus. His work is somewhat unusual in combining physics and the science of radioactive decay, with environmental science and the effects of said radiation on wildlife populations.

Jim's something of an expert on what happens to nature when humans are taken out of the picture - as they have been in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and, to an extent, in much of the rest of the world by the Covid-19 lockdown.

Oh, and he's also developed Atomik Vodka, the first spirit made from wheat grown in the exclusion zone.

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