Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its environmental impact

Chernobyl Nuclear Incident

During the Cold War, it was understood by the citizens of the world that the United States and the Soviet Union were competitors economically, politically, and militarily. Part of the economic health of both super powers was their nuclear energy programs. Nuclear energy was perhaps even more vital to the frozen stretches of the Soviet Union, which, during the Cold War years, had yet to realize its own wealth in oil production. It is safe to say that most of the world's citizens, while they did not like the idea of nuclear power, because they associated it with dangers like fallout, and the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh reminders of the horrors of the misuse of the energy; nonetheless felt like there were few alternatives to the nuclear energy power source as regarded providing energy and heating homes and businesses. Most people were well versed in the dangers of disaster associated with nuclear power, but there was a prerequisite trust factor in the government of the super powers who were telling their citizens that nuclear energy was safe, and that there was no viable alternative. Nuclear energy, the world discovered, was only as safe as the government and businesses behind it were willing to invest in making it safe.

That trust was betrayed when, in the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear disaster since Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred in the remote regions of Chernobyl, in the Soviet Union. It was the worst of fears coming to fruition. As the news of the incident slowly made its way around the world, there was the sense that the Soviet Union was minimizing the damage, and the existing threat that it posed to the people in and around the plant. It raised the question in the minds of the public world-wide: What is a nuclear reactor accident?

Using the existing body of research and studies, this essay will look at the question of what is a nuclear reactor accident, and what does it mean to the world in general. What is interesting about Chernobyl is that there are journal articles every five years from the date of the accident forward that speak to the changes, and the side affects of the people in the area, and the environment. These articles will inform this essay, and will be used for comparison with the progression of time and the subsequent articles.

Every effort will be made here to understand how Chernobyl happened, and what are the lessons learned from that event. This paper will look at how the lessons learned are being put to use to prevent future accidents from occurring. We'll also examine the current and continued use of nuclear energy as a viable renewable source of energy moving forward into the future. Examined here, too, will be whether or not there is really a way to have catastrophic-proof nuclear energy. All of this information will come to light by examining the Chernobyl nuclear reactor incident, and understanding how that came about, and what it means to the world.

Before the Incident

E.L. Quarantelli (1998) said that to be concerned with what the term "disaster" means, is to be concerned with the phenomenon of the disaster, and to focus on the disaster in a fundamental way that leads to the defining characteristics of the disaster being studied. The premise upon which scholars and experts engage in the discussion is one that will attempt to understand the consequences of the disaster. It might be added to Quarantelli's statements that to understand the consequences of the disaster leads to the efforts to circumvent or prevent the disaster from recurring or duplicating the disastrous consequences. Perhaps Quarantelli stops short of saying this, because it is presumed. However, when speaking of nuclear reactor disasters, this is something that must be said, because not to say it would putting the responsibility for requiring that it not be allowed to happen again on a supposition that may or may not be made by government, scientists, and the public at large. For this reason alone, it must be stated, because that, indeed, is the expectation. Had this been said before April 26, 1986, perhaps Chernobyl would not have become the disaster that it was.

Quarantelli says that the most efficient means for controlling complex systems is to manipulate their lodestar. He applies this concept to any complex system, religious, political, or scientific.

In religious systems, it might be the deity's will revealed by the priesthood. In feudal systems, it might be the fief, distributed by the nobility, and, in modern times, it might be the status based on the money that people have available. The advantage of controls by the top algorithm is the extreme efficiency: the alteration of one factor alters the whole system."

The point that Quarantelli is making, is that with the control over manipulating the lodestar, one has total control of the system. Total control of the system means that there are no accidents. Accidents would reflect an inability to manipulate the lodestar. Quarantelli says that a system where the people operating the system do not understand the entire operational system is an inability to manipulate the lodestar. There is a lack of control, and Quarantelli says that it is madness to intervene in a system that depends on people without knowing how the system works and will react. That includes the people who are as much mechanisms in the system as are the computers and programs that are a part of it. Quarantelli says that Chernobyl is an example of the inability to control the system, because there was not an understanding of the system by the people who had the ability to manipulate it. Without getting into the issues of who pushed what button, where, and when, Quarantelli sums it up so succinctly that it no longer matters what button, by whom, when, or where.

When the powers of the world begin allowing nuclear reactors to be manipulated by individuals without the knowledge of those systems, including the people who are as much the mechanisms of the systems as are the other components of the system, then we must consider that force one that is, likewise, out of control. We have to accept that up until the moment of the incident at Chernobyl, it was a system that was being properly manipulated. Then it stopped, and there was disaster. This is how we define "disaster."

The Aftermath of Chernobyl

Eleven days after the Chernobyl incident, on May 6, 1986, radiation from the meltdown was detected on the west coast of the United States.

It was reported by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the levels were "way, way below" levels harmful to the residents of the west coast. The White House backed the statement, and the Russians, saying that the meltdown posed no threat to Americans. The problem here, of course, is that Americans, or Europeans, or any other people in the world, have no way of knowing whether or not this is true. Like Quarantelli says, when the system fails, it denotes a lack of control, and there is no doubt that the people of the world have no control over their systems. Any disinformation that would be provided to the American public would be classified as a matter of national security, and the American public would have no way of knowing until someone perhaps stumbled upon information to the contrary, a wayward memo, discovered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information. So it was that the American and Russian governments said that there was no danger.

The level reported on the west coast, in Washington state, was 500 picocuries per liter of iodine 131. Federal guidelines say that the danger level begins reading at 15,000. A reactor core the size of the one that melted down at Chernobyl contains more than a thousand times the radiation that was released on the Japanese at Hiroshima.

In downwind Europe -- particularly in Poland and parts of West Germany, where readings in the days right after the accident were extremely high -- the damage will be horrifying. Most serious will be the harm done to fetuses now in utero, infants and small children; and the prime culprit will be iodine 131. Iodine is naturally ingested by the thyroid gland; radioactive iodine emits particles that damage or destroy that gland. I-131 can cross the placenta of pregnant women and travel directly to the thyroids of their fetuses, causing severe problems, including brain damage and respiratory difficulty at birth. This devastating process almost certainly caused the inordinate number of infant deaths in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area after the Three Mile Island accident [see Ernest J. Sternglass, "The First Casualty at T.M.I.,' the Nation, February 28, 1981, and "The Lethal Path of T.M.I. Fallout,' March 7, 1981], and may have been responsible for the abnormally high infant death rate in the United States following atmospheric nuclear testing in Nevada from 1951 to 1963."

Some experts say that limits of 500 picocuries are harmful, especially to developing fetuses. When we have conflicting information at this level, then it becomes hard to know what information is the best information. To ere on the side of caution, however, when one is facing harmful radiation levels, would logically be the course of action to follow. Except for cleanup at Chernobyl, there was nothing to be done about the accident. The question is, what kind of oversight was done to ensure that Chernobyl was cleaned up?

Chernobyl was not the first nuclear reactor the world has experienced. The first such accident happened in the United States, at Three Mile Island (TMI). In early 1979, a nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania was the site for the worst (known) accident in American history. Today, that reactor remains closed down, and the site at Three Mile Island, stands as a stark reminder to the American public of what happens when, for whatever reason, things go horribly wrong at a nuclear energy site.

A the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in the United States occurred at the Three Mile Island (TMI) Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania. "Like certain other functional structures on the modern American landscape -- the bridge at Selma, Alabama; the Watergate complex; the Texas Schoolbook Depository in Dallas -- the towers at 'TMI' have slipped into an unprojected half-life as reminders of steep depressions in our national lifeline, " a report on the accident observed in 1980. "Three Mile Island is a big deal; something important happened here. " 5 Few would question this assertion; judging the response to and evaluating the effects of the "something important" that happened are matters of greater ambiguity."

Three Mile Island is visible to the public, and if the reactor were to be started again, the public would be aware of it. In its aftermath, there was an intense campaign to cover up the extent of the damage - and, ostensibly, the potential harm to the public.

In March 1979, Metropolitan Edison, the owner of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, tried in every possible way to cover up the extent of T.M.I.'s radiation releases-- so much so that seven years later Pennsylvania's Republican Governor, Richard Thornburgh, would compare their behavior to that of Mikhail Gorbachev during the Chernobyl crisis."

After TMI, there should have been a conference of every reactor owner and site where one existed around the globe to conduct a study of what happened, and how to prevent that from happening again. Nuclear reactor meltdown should have received as much attention, and corrective action, and rehearsal for corrective action as possible. This is not what happens, at least not in America, where the public was, and is, already weary of nuclear energy. The downplay of the harm caused by Chernobyl, and the harm that would befall the public and the planet for decades following the incident, are not an issue that has been extensively dealt with. Nuclear energy is an energy source that has been forced upon the world, and it stands as an ominous warning as to how vulnerable we are, and as a reminder of how the public is consistently misled by the government and business in the name of profit. The public saw, in California, what happens when people try to inform the public of the dangers of nuclear energy. It is the life and demise of Jack Goodell, the nuclear engineer, whose death served as the story behind the acclaimed film, the China Syndrome. Following a near accident at a nuclear power plant in California, Goodell was killed by a swat team when he locked himself inside the plant control room and threatened to flood it with radiation unless he was given access to news people to tell his story - which was that he was so concerned about the vulnerability of the plant that he was willing to do anything to prevent it going back online.

At the time of the T.M.I. near-meltdown, however, Thornburgh's Secretary of Health, Gordon MacLeod, warned that pregnant women and small children should be immediately evacuated from the reactor area, and that potassium iodide should be distributed to area residents. But Thornburgh was unwilling to "create a panic' by ordering an immediate evacuation. It was not until two days after the accident that he did so, and by then it was too late to avoid the worst of the health hazards.

MacLeod was later fired for being an "alarmist.' Since his departure the state's Department of Health has scoffed at studies by Sternglass and others indicating that the infant death rate in the Harrisburg area had tripled in the months after the accident. More recent research by Jane Lee has shown that the cancer rate in certain areas downwind of the site is five times what would have been expected if the accident had not occurred. Such studies have also been given short shrift by state authorities."

What this suggests, is that Chernobyl, which has been declared by scientists as a worse disaster than TMI, is probably more harmful to the planet and to the life inhabiting the planet than anyone is willing to tell us. Of course, informing us about the potential disaster from the disaster would serve little purpose; because there is no way that we can comb the atmosphere and remove the harmful radiation from it. What informing us would do, however, is to make the public more diligent about not supporting the building of additional nuclear power plants.

Five years after Chernobyl, there was a thirty kilometer zone that was forbidden to anyone to access. Referred to as the "Forbidden Zone," it is as close as anyone is perhaps willing to come to make a statement as to the severity of the Chernobyl meltdown. Where once there stood a forest at the parameter of the facility, there is now empty space where the radiation intensity remains so high that it prevents growth of plants, or other life.

A in April 1986, the most intensely radioactive smoke and vapor cloud in history drifted over and into that forest, roasting it to death not with heat but with awesome amounts of nuclear radiation. Remote-controlled bulldozers and hundreds of thousands of young soldiers labored during the weeks and months following the disaster to do the only thing that could be done: every tree and every twig lies buried beneath the desolate surface of that plot of tortured land."

From the first leaks of the news of the disaster to the public, Soviet officials began downplaying the severity of the incident at Chernobyl. It was more aggressive a denial of facts than in the United States following TMI. It is ironic when a government uses the term "control" to describe the aftermath of an incident that is a reflection of a lack of control. The Soviets said that the radiation danger to cleanup workers was under control, and that their risk was minimal.

The radioactive plume rose an estimated 8 kilometres, and the graphite core burned for days. Five thousand tons of quenching materials were dropped from helicopters but increased the temperature of the nuclear core and spread the radioactive cloud over an even vaster area. Eighteen days later, Gorbachev acknowledged the accident on Soviet television. Tens of thousands of people had by then been exposed to radioactive iodine-131, resulting in a massive incidence of thyroid cancers, many of which might have been avoided had iodine pills been distributed in the first week. In the years that followed, more than 600,000 military and civilian personnel were put at risk in the course of clean-up operations and the construction of a 'sarcophagus' to entomb the reactor, which is now surrounded by a 30-kilometre exclusion zone. Nearly 9 per cent of the territory of Ukraine (and 23 per cent of neighbouring Belarus) is considered contaminated; around 5 per cent of its population (3.5 million people) are classified as 'sufferers' and more than half a million were resettled. Estimates put the death-toll from Chernobyl-related illness between 1993 and 1996 at over 100,000."

Five years after Chernobyl, and the poorly designed reactors that were used only in the Soviet Union, continued to operate. "The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSGEAR) was established in 1955, with a mandate from the United Nations General Assembly to assess and report levels and health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation." UNSGEAR did not issue a report that directly addressed Chernobyl until 2000. Before this time, the UN, like other governments and reporting bodies around the world, was forced to accept the official Soviet statements on the accidents and the conditions afterward. It was never really necessary to rely on the Soviets for information at all, since every major power in Europe and in North America has the ability to monitor the actual data. When we say the Soviets covered up the truth, the rest of the world was complicit in that cover up, because the technology exists with which to measure the actual radiation and fall-out.

The decision to remain silent on the subject of Chernobyl is akin to an unspoken agreement not to give the public enough information with which, if not to defend their rights against. Then, at least, enough information could be gained for civilians to pursue damages for having been subjected to the worst disaster in world history. That kind of a response from the people live around Chernobyl would have fallen on deaf ears in the Soviet Union, and they would not be anymore loud upon the ears of the Russian government post Soviet fall.

Of the 600 workers present on the site during the early morning of 26 April 1986, 134 received high doses and suffered from radiation sickness. Of these, 28 died in the first three months and 2 soon afterwards. In addition, about 200,000 recovery operation workers received doses between 0.01 and 0.5 Gray. This group is at potential risk of late consequences, such as cancer, and their health will be followed closely."

The recovery workers at Chernobyl were poorly advised as to what they were doing, and the severity of it. Many of the workers did not use the proper equipment in the aftermath, because they were young, felt invincible, and just did not understand the nature of the poison they were dealing with. The radionuclides that caused radiation exposure were mainly iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137, which attack the body in different ways. However, at the level of exposure in the cleanup process, there was no reason to distinguish between what, or how much, because the workers who were improperly dressed or ignored the use of proper equipment would have been exposed in lethal enough doses that they would succumb to the effects of the exposure quickly, and painfully.

Besarus, the Ukraine, and the Russian Federation were impacted such that 15 years after the incident, medical cases continue to be attributed to Chernobyl. Fifteen years following the incident, 1800 cases of thyroid cancer have been reported in the three most severely impacted areas. Experts say that there is a tendency to want to attribute all forms of cancer to the incident, but that is not the way to identify the victims of the Chernobyl incident. It is important, since the people of the impacted areas have become involuntary studies in the study of radiation contamination. There is a need to be sure of the poison from radiation at Chernobyl, because it helps us to understand the body's reaction to radiation, and the degrees and increments during which the manifestations occur. The list of conditions that were identified thirteen years post Chernobyl, and directly associated with the exposure to the poisons, are:

Spontaneous miscarriages as a result of developmental disturbances in fetuses.

Retarded mental development in children resulting from disturbances during fetal development of the central nervous system.

Damage to the immune system leading to higher susceptibility to usual infectious and noninfectious diseases in adults and children. Loss of immunity in the contaminated areas has been dubbed "Chernobyl AIDS."

Disturbances to human endocrine systems.

Cancers that increase in incidence several years after the onset of exposure to radiation.

Accelerated aging of individual organs as well as the entire human body.

Increases in cataracts, viral infections such as hepatitis, thyroid cancers, diseases of the blood, and diseases of the respiratory system, including tuberculosis."

Retarded sexual development and irregularities in the menstrual cycle.

Other conditions have been found to be directly associated with Chernobyl. Of the area affected, it was found that 14 to 20 of the mammals of the area were unaffected by the radiation. Ten to 20% had a hypersensitive reaction to exposure to the radiation.

There is the problem that is associated with how to dispose of the radioactive waste from Chernobyl and other reactor sites around the globe. It is a problem that has long been warned about, but warnings at a time when there is not a problem, about an impending problem, are seldom heeded in government. Today, forty years later, there are indeed problems associated with radioactive waste and cleanup. Radioactive waste lasts long after the generation during which it was created is gone. It is an inherited problem, one our grandchildren's children will still be faced with, and perhaps their children too. At this point, Chernobyl should be considered a nuclear wasteland, uninhabitable, but should continue to be studied.

Lessons Learned

Looking to lessons learned from Chernobyl, and even TMI, pacts against nuclear proliferation have been put into place that limit above ground nuclear testing, and nuclear testing or exploding nuclear devices in space and in the oceans. The problem with the agreements that were hammered out in the post TMI and Chernobyl era, is that many of the players who are today nuclear capable were not participants in those agreements. Nations like Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and India are all players in the nuclear programs that have not yet experienced - at least not that we know - nuclear disasters as have the U.S. And Russia. One of the most important lessons learned from the world's nuclear disaster experiences, is that we must bring the new players into the fold of understanding that helps these players understand that nuclear disasters and waste prevail long after disputes and even people are gone and subsided.

Environmental justice is concerned first and foremost with the distribution of environmental risks and harms across individuals and social groups. Normally the issue can be captured in spatial terms; somebody, somewhere is getting dumped on, and somebody, somewhere else is benefiting. That dumping may come in the form of toxic waste disposal, the sting of noxious facilities, destruction of local ecosystems through mining, logging or intensive export oriented agriculture, the expropriation of local biological knowledge, and so forth. The theory of democracy suggests that if the people being dumped on can achieve political equality with those who benefit from the harms inflicted upon them, then they are more able to take preventive action."

The environment has suffered as a result of nuclear testing and disasters. Chernobyl will remain for decades to come.

Chernobyl still casts a shadow over the entire post-Soviet nuclear sphere. The accident continues to burden Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine with contaminated farms, forests, and waters, and Ukraine with a collapsing nuclear tomb. Ukraine claims that it has spent $14 billion on Chernobyl cleanup. 2 Thirty-one people, mainly firefighters, died as a direct result of the Chernobyl accident. Some 135,000 residents were permanently displaced. A population of 17 million people, mainly in Belarus and Ukraine, was exposed to radiation. 3 Evidence of chronic health effects is obscured by the quality of public health records and "increased ascertainment," a statistical distortion explained by the fact that one finds more cancer cases when one aggressively searches for them. 4 Thyroid cancers have increased measurably in the region, with some 700 cases occurring since 1988 in the affected areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. An increase in leukemia, however, has not been detected, and some specialists are hopeful that the disease toll will not be as severe as expected. 5 This effect may stem from the relative immobility of cesium in soil caused by the fact that the element adheres to elements in the dirt. Nuclear advocates point to the low confirmable death toll as good news, arguing that Ukrainian coal mining each year kills more people than died as a direct result of the Chernobyl accident. On the other hand, nuclear opponents and some public health experts fear an epidemic of cancer cases in the making. Russian experts criticize western studies for having, in their opinion, seriously understated the health consequences of the accident."

Today, there is little doubt that people and government leaders understand very well the side affects of nuclear disasters. The people of the world look to these leaders to act ethically and in good conscience when the trust of the world's nuclear health is put into their hands as world leaders. The challenge for Russia today is to closely examine the other facilities in the country that have the same design and reactor model as the Chernobyl plant. It is imperative that nuclear plant operators go back to the simplicity of Quarantelli's control model: that the people who own and operate the nuclear power plants know these plants inside and out, bolts to nuts, and know the people behind the controls. They must know how the structure is going to respond to stressors, and how the people operating those structures and controls are going to respond to the same stressors.