The legacy of Chernobyl.(Science)

APART FROM BEING a major industrial accident, the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986 was a significant socio- and geo-political incident. It helped to break up the Soviet Union and accelerated the ending of Moscow's Cold War regime. When I flew from London to Kiev with radiation measuring equipment in an old Tupolev aircraft in 1987, all the seats carried a welcoming Glasnost and Perestroika booklet prepared for Western visitors. There was some irony in the fact that I was the only passenger.

The accident, which occurred on April 25 and 26, 1986, was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel and without proper regard for safety. The resulting steam explosion and fire released around 5 per cent of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere and into the local and global environment.

The short- and long-term consequences were that twenty-eight people died within four months from thermal and radiation burns. Subsequently there were nineteen further deaths from the same causes and there have also been nine deaths from thyroid cancer apparently due to the accident. So far the total death toll is fifty-six. An authoritative United Nations report in 2000 concluded that there is no scientific evidence of serious radiation-related health effects to most people exposed--and certainly no long-term prognosis for thousands of deaths and genetic mutations and malformations.

Australians, and especially the Australian media, should take careful note of the final Report of the Chernobyl Study Forum published in September 2005. One hundred top scientists from all United Nations organisations involved with radiation studies, as well as from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, helped to dispel the pseudo-science which has been used in reporting this event over the last twenty years.

A brief paraphrased summary of the study states, "the impact was much smaller than anyone could have predicted" and now "the danger of radiation has largely passed". The report also says:

 
   people in the area have suffered a paralysing 
   fatalism due to myths and misperceptions about the 
   great threat of radiation. This has contributed to a 
   culture of chronic dependency. Mental health 
   coupled with smoking and alcohol abuse is a very 
   much greater problem than radiation, but 
   worst of all at the time was the underlying 
   poor level of health and nutrition. 

The Chernobyl accident occurred in the fourth unit of a four-reactor power station near Kiev in Ukraine. The Chenobyl reactors are of the water-cooled graphite-moderated (LWGR) type, specifically known as RBMK-1000. Their design is substantially different from anything that exists in the Western world.