I don't think there is any question that we should stop using it and urge other nations to do the same. Please take the time to read this..

You are watching the control panels and gages for rector two. Sitting comely you think
about how easy your job is. It is a joke! All day you sit around and watch the gages for
reactor number two just to make sure they maintain their settings. You don't even
need to look at the gages either because a computer automatically regulates them
without you. Life is so good. Suddenly all the sirens go of and the gages and displays
spin wildly in every direction. The ground shakes and you can hear the sound of a deep
rumble. Unknown to you, the reactor's cooling pumps have failed to cool the reactor's
core and in 3 seconds the temperature went from 280 degrees centigrade to 4,000
degrees centigrade. The water that was in the reactor is instantly turned to steam
which creates tremendous amount of pressure in the reactor core. Above the reactor
core there is a 5 foot thick lead plate and above that there is a meter thick floor
composed of iron, barium, serpentine, concrete, and stone. The exploding steam fires
the floor up like shrapnel. The metal plate goes through the four foot thick concrete
roof like butter and reaches and altitude of sixty meters. You can hear ripping, rending,
wrenching, screeching, scraping, tearing sounds of a vast machine breaking apart. L.
Ray Silver, a leading author who covered the disaster at Chernobyl, said that within the
core, steam reacts with zirconium to produce that first explosive in nature's arsenal,
hydrogen. Near-molten fuel fragments shatter nearly incandescent graphite, torching
chunks of it, exploding the hydrogen. The explosion breaks every pipe in the building
rocking it with such power that the building is split into sections (11-13). You look
down at your body and notice that it feels hot and your hands look different. Unknown
to you a tremendous amount of neutrons are hitting your cells and taking chucks out of
your skin. Suddenly everything goes black.

The paragraph above describes the scene of what happened at Chernobyl nuclear plant
a few years ago. From that time until the present many other smaller accidents have
happened. From these accidents many people have died and millions have been
indirectly affected. Nuclear energy has far to many negative problems than
advantages. From the mining of uranium to disposal of nuclear waist there are problems
of such magnitude that no scientist on this earth has an answer for. Nuclear energy
has so many problems associated to it that it should be banned from the earth.

To understand the threat of nuclear energy we must first understand what happens in
a nuclear reaction. Ann E. Weiss, who has written several books on the subject of
nuclear energy, described what happens inside a nuclear power plant. In a nuclear
reaction the nuclei of its atoms split, producing energy in the form of heat. The heat
makes steam which powers a turbine. Fission takes place in a nuclear reactor. The fuel
used is pellets of uranium. In a modern reactor, half-inch long pellets of uranium are
packed into 12 or 14 foot tubes made of an alloy of the metal zirconium. About 50,000
zircalloy fuel rods make up the reaction core. To control a nuclear reaction control rods
made of cadmium is used which absorbs neutrons. With the control rods in place in the
core, a chain reaction cannot begin. When the plant operators want to start the chain
reaction they activate machinery that pulls the control rods away from the core. Once
this is done a single free neutron is enough to set off the reaction. As the reaction
continues, a moderator slows the neutrons down enough to ensure that they will
continually split more uranium atoms. At the same time, the moderator acts as a
coolant. It keep the overall temperature about 300 degrees Celsius. Since the
temperature at spots inside the fuel rods may be as high as 1,100 degrees Celsius,
enormous amounts of coolant are continually needed to keep the core temperature at
the proper level. When the plant must be must be shut down the control rods are
lowered all the way back into the core. That brings the chain reaction to a standstill.
The core cools, and steam is no longer produced (23-24). In all nuclear reactions use
uranium and produce some plutonium.

Since nuclear reactions produce a considerable amount of plutonium there are
considerable hazards that come along with it. Nader and Abbotts, two men who have a
great amount of experience in the nuclear industry, comment that:

Plutonium's major dangers include the fact that it is weapons-grade material, that it is
highly toxic, and it is extremely long-lasting: it will take 24,000 years for half of it to
decay. In addition to the possibility that plutonium could contaminate the environment
or the population in an accident, there is also the danger that a terrorist group could
steal plutonium for the purposes of fashioning an illicit nuclear weapon. (63)

Plutonium-239 is a man-made reactor by-product which emits highly energetic alpha
particles. Even though alpha particles can be stopped by a piece of paper that can be
very dangerous to tissue if they are taken into the body by ingestion or inhalation.
Expressing extreme concern over the issue of plutonium getting into the human body
Nader and Abbotts write:

Experiments with dogs show that the inhalation of as little as three millionths of a gram
of Pu-239 can cause lung cancer. John Gofman has reported that plutonium and other
alpha-emitters, such as curium and americium [other products of a nuclear reaction],
when in a form that cannot readily be dissolved by body fluids, 'represent an inhalation
hazard in a class some five orders of magnitude [100,000 times] more potent, weight
for weight, than potent chemical carcinogens.' The fact that plutonium has a very long
half-life, 24,000 years, makes it one of the deadliest elements known and one of the
most difficult to manage. (78)

The reason why plutonium is so dangerous when it gets into the lungs is because
plutonium releases radiation to a small mass of the lung at a very short distance. This
effect of radiation from plutonium giving a concentrated dose to one small area is much
greater than if the same amount of radiation had been uniformly distributed throughout
the lung. Another problem with plutonium is its toxicity. Plutonium is the most toxic of
all elements. Fred H. Knelman, who was a senior executive on the nuclear control panel
in Washington D.C., wrote, "One pound of plutonium-239, distributed to the lungs of a
large population, could cause between ten and fifteen million lung-cancer deaths" (32).

Plutonium is rapidly becoming more and more common throughout the world because it
is being produced all the time in nuclear reactions. The Nuclear Control Institute, in
Washington D.C., published a paper on the Internet describing the problem of plutonium
production.

By the turn of the century, 1,400 metric tons of plutonium will have been produced in
the spent fuel of nuclear power reactors, and some 300 tons of it will have been
separated into weapons-usable form. Less than 18 pounds (8 kilograms) is needed to
build a Nagasaki-type bomb. The amounts will continue to grow rapidly. By 2010, there
will be 550 tons of separated plutonium in commerce, more than twice the amount now
contained in the world's nuclear arsenals. By that time, Japan will have acquired an
amount of plutonium equivalent to the present U.S. military stockpile. ("The Problem",
2)

The quote above has a few hidden statements behind it. First it predicts that soon
other nations will have a greater nuclear arsenal than the U.S.A. Also the quote says
that plutonium is growing to be an excess product from nuclear reactions and thus
other countries who are not economically stable will have a greater tendency to want
to sell some plutonium to power hungry politicians for money to help the economy of
their own country.

The subject of plutonium directly relates to nuclear terrorism. The terrorists' holy grail is
to build a nuclear bomb. It is becoming increasingly easy to find the knowledge on how
to build a nuclear bomb. The only thing that is holding terrorists back is getting their
hands on some plutonium or weapons-grade uranium.

Christopher K. Mitchell, a student under professor J. Ruvalds, wrote a research report in
physics 177N class that stated that when constructing a nuclear weapon, there would
be two main issues for a terrorist. The first issue would be the knowledge required
about building the bomb and making it work. Essentially, this knowledge is not a great
problem. For instance, anyone can purchase a copy of "The Los Alamos Primer" for
approximately twenty-three dollars. This book details the work of scientist who
participated in the Manhattan Project tests in New Mexico. Inside the book, a terrorist
could find the amount of uranium needed to create a successful nuclear explosion. In
addition, the book details the different types of nuclear bombs and how to construct
them. According to Carson Mark, a nuclear weapons specialist, a terrorist group would
need some specialist, such as a nuclear physicist, a chemist, and an explosives
engineer to build a nuclear weapon. In addition, some specialized equipment would be
required. The second issue of building a nuclear weapon is the material needed to fuel
the chemical reaction. Of the two issues, this one creates a much larger problem. Until
recently, it was nearly impossible for a terrorist to even consider obtaining either bomb
grade plutonium or uranium. In the past, these bomb grade fuels would have been
nearly impossible to steal and the price to purchase such materials was far above the
budget of any terrorist group. Many experts feel that it would cost at least five to ten
million dollars to purchase enough plutonium to make a nuclear weapon. Others place
the estimate as high as twenty or thirty million dollars (2). The problems of obtaining
money and scientists are not big. The Soviet Union has left many of its top nuclear
scientists without jobs and money. Many would be happy to get out of their crime
ridden country to work for a terrorist group or another country associated with
terrorism like Iran or Iraq. Money is not a problem for these two countries who hold
some of the world's biggest oil reserves. This paragraph represents only one type of
terrorism that can be done with money and talent but what can other terrorist groups
do who don't have very much money?

One very vulnerable terrorist target is the nuclear powerplants. Scott D. Portzline, who
has a Ph.D. is nuclear physics, writes that :

Considering the fact that a nuclear plant houses more than a thousand times the
radiation as released in an atomic burst, the magnitude of a single attack could reach
beyond 100,000 deaths and the immediate loss of tens of billions of dollars. The land
and properties destroyed (your insurance won't cover nuclear disasters) would remain
useless for decades and would become a stark monument reminding the world of the
terrorists' ideology. With more than 100 reactors in the United States alone, if one is
successfully destroyed, just threatening additional attacks could instill the sort of
high-impact terror which is being sought by a new breed of terrorists. (1)

For years, what has caused concern for many observers and several federal oversight
committees is a report on the potential for damage from truck bombs.

Unacceptable damage to vital reactor systems could occur from a relatively small
charge at close setback distances, and from larger but still reasonable-sized charges at
large setback distances, greater than the protected area for most plants. ("Nuclear
Terrorism", 2)

This represents the Nuclear Report Committee's most feared result. At some plants, a
large bomb detonated offsite can cause enough damage to lead to a deadly release of
radiation or even a meltdown!

The release of radiation can come from different areas in the nuclear cycle. One of the
biggest radiation threats is uranium mill tailings. "After the uranium ore is separated, the
tailings are left behind. Tailings contain radioactive thorium which remains dangerous for
over 100,000 years" ("Nuclear Waist: The Big Picture", 2). Thousands of tons of
uranium mill tailings are being produced each year. Abbots and Nader comment that
uranium mill tailings is a byproduct of the enrichment process. Less than one fifth of the
amount of potential uranium is extracted in a given amount of rock or sand. (90) This
leaves four fifths of the uranium that was inside the rock deep in the earth, on top of
the ground in the form of sand. This sand can blow across large amounts of land. "By
1986 2.7 billion cubic feet of tailings were blowing in the wind, damaging native crops
and human life" (Nuclear Waist, the Big Picture 2). This is one of the biggest
environmental hazard that we face today. Expressing their concern about uranium dust,
Nader and Abbotts write :

Uranium dust represents a respiratory hazard to mine and mill workers, but most of the
problems with uranium mining and milling are associated with uranium's decay products.
They present a much greater radiation hazard. Through a series of nuclear reactions,
uranium undergoes radioactive decay to radium, which in turn decays ro radon gas. The
radon gas in turn decays to isotopes which in turn can cause serious biological damage,
particulary when inhaled. (82 - 84)

The serious results of having mill tailings open to the environment are just being felt
now. Since the beginning of the nuclear age to the late 1960's there has been no
official record kept on where mill tailings have been stored. Many towns in the middle of
the United States have been built on mill tailings. Some people unknowingly have used
mill tailings as building materials. Corinne Browne and Robert Munroe, who are very well
internationally known authors, state that :

In some places, such as Grand Junction, Colorado, people used the mill tailings as
landfill and construction material. In Grand Junction, five thousand houses, a school, a
church, a supermarket, and a hospital were built on tailings, thus creating situations
where people live and work in buildings emitting radioactivity. (81)

In towns that have been built on mill tailings there is a great increase in health related
costs because of an increase in cancers and radiation induced diseases. Corinne
Browne and Robert Munroe go comment on the effects of living in an environment that
has radiation.

In the early 1970s, a pediatrician in Grand Junction noticed an abnormally large number
of children being born with cleft lips and cleft palates. A study showed that there was
a far higher incidence of leukemia, hydroencephalitis, and subtle birth defects in the
Grand Junction area than in surrounding counties. (81)

A person could then conclude that the nuclear industry is mostly to blame for the
nation wide increase of cancers and deaths. Is the nuclear industry really benefitting
the nation or is it just making the world into a radioactive dump which takes thousands
of years to clean up?

One last major problem with nuclear energy that needs to be touched on is the storage
of nuclear waste. Nuclear waste includes all contaminated parts that have had contact
with any source of nuclear energy and all products of a nuclear reaction that was
discussed at the beginning of the paper. There are several problems that relate to the
storage of nuclear energy.

At a nuclear storage facility, there are security officers, technicians, scientists, and
regular staff which make sure the facility is safe. In the paper, "Uranium: Its Uses and
Hazards", it states the half-life of some radioactive isotopes. Uranium-238 which has a
half-life of 4.46 billion years and that uranium-235 which has a half-life of 704 million
years represent most of nuclear waste stored at nuclear waist facilities. (1) This means
that people will have to be monitoring these facilities for about ten billion years. Fred H.
Knelman is very concerned about the time and man power required to run these storage
facilities. Knelman wrote :

There must always be intelligent people around to cope with eventualities we have not
thought of....Reactor safety, waste disposal, and the transport of radioactive materials
are complex matters about which little can be said with absolute certainty. Is mankind
prepared to exert the eternal vigilance needed to ensure proper and safe operation of
its nuclear system? (39)

The searching for proper storage facilities and places has always been one of the top
priorities of the nuclear industry. The problem is that no one wants a nuclear waste
facility in there back yard. Literally billions of dollars has been spent just on looking for
places to store nuclear waste.

Nuclear energy has many short term benefits but many more short term and long term
problems. If anyone of the lethal potential problems develop and get out of control than
the world is in serious trouble. Can the world afford to be dancing with death? Just
think if a nuclear plant exploded because of a terrorist attack how our lives would be
changed forever. Are we unselfish enough live without a few comforts now so that our
children can have a brighter future? A nuclear disaster is the worst thing that can
happen to this planet because it threatens the whole future of the human race. Nuclear
energy is not worth the risk. The problem of nuclear energy such as terrorism,
plutonium production, uranium mill tailings, and waste storage problems make nuclear
energy too risky for humans to even experiment with. Nuclear energy holds our future in
a tight grip so we must do something about it.

Works Cited
Corinne Brown, and Robert Munroe. Time Bomb, Understanding the Treat of Nuclear
Power. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc, 1981
Knelman, Fred H. Nuclear Energy The Unforgiving Technology. Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers,
1976.
Mitchell, Christopher K. "Nuclear Terrorism." 14 Nov. 1996 Available :
http://www.nucl.com/terror.html.
"Nuclear Waste: The Big Picture." 10 Nov. 1996. Available:
http://www.sfo.com/~rherried/waste.html.
Portzline, Scott D. "Nuclear Terrorism." 10 Nov. 1996. Available:
http://www.nci.com/terrorism.html.
Ralph Nader, and John Abbotts. The Menace of Atomic Energy. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company Inc, 1977.
Silver, L. Ray. Fallout From Chernobyl. Toronto: Deneau Publishers & Company LTD, 1987.
"The Problem." 10 Nov. 1996. Available: http://www.wideopen.igc.org/nci/prob.htm.
"Uranium: Its Uses and Hazards." 20 Nov. 1996. Available :
http://www.ieer.org/ieer/fctsheet/uranium.html.
Weiss, Ann E. The Nuclear Question. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers,
1981.

------------------
Red 86 GT

I said in the other thread that I'd find articles on the studies linking TMI to increased cancer rates. Here's one that I found...if you want more, I'll keep looking - turns out they're incredibly easy to find.

Study Suggests Three Mile Island Radiation May Have Injured People Living Near Reactor
CHAPEL HILL -- Exposure to high doses of radiation shortly after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island may have increased cancer among Pennsylvanians downwind of the plant, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say.

Dr. Steven Wing, associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC-CH School of Public Health, led a study of cancer cases within 10 miles of the facility from 1975 to 1985. He and colleagues conclude that following the March 28, 1979 accident, lung cancer and leukemia rates were two to 10 times higher downwind of the Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor than upwind.

A paper Wing and colleagues wrote appears in the January issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, scheduled to appear Feb. 24. They first presented their findings last July at the University of Portsmouth in Portsmouth, United Kingdom, at the International Workshop on Radiation Exposures by Nuclear Facilities.

"I would be the first to say that our study doesn't prove by itself that there were high-level radiation exposures, but it is part of a body of evidence that is consistent with high exposures," Wing said. "The cancer findings, along with studies of animals, plants and chromosomal damage in Three Mile Island area residents, all point to much higher radiation levels than were previously reported. If you say that there was no high radiation, then you are left with higher cancer rates downwind of the plume that are otherwise unexplainable."

Co-authors of the report are Dr. Douglas Crawford-Brown, professor of environmental sciences and engineering, and Dr. Donna Armstrong and David Richardson, former and current doctoral students in epidemiology, all at UNC-CH.

The new study involved re-analyzing data from a 1990 report that concluded the nation's worst civilian nuclear accident was not responsible for slightly increased cancer rates near the plant because radiation exposures were too low. Wing and colleagues re-examined data from that report using what they believed were better analytic and statistical techniques.

"Several hundred people at the time of the accident reported nausea, vomiting, hair loss and skin rashes, and a number said their pets died or had symptoms of radiation exposure," he said. "We figured that if that were possible, we ought to look at it again. After adjusting for pre-accident cancer incidence, we found a striking increase in cancers downwind from Three Mile Island."

The scientists do not believe smoking and social and economic factors were responsible for the increased cancers found in the downwind sectors.

Many earlier researchers, as well as government and industry officials, accept as fact that only small amounts of radiation were released into the atmosphere, Wing said. But it is known that plant radiation monitors went off scale when the accident started. Plumes containing higher radiation could have passed undetected, he said.

Findings from the re-analysis of cancer incidence around TMI is consistent with the theory that radiation from the accident increased cancer in areas that were in the path of radioactive plumes, the scientist said.

"This cancer increase would not be expected to occur over a short time in the general population unless doses were far higher than estimated by industry and government authorities," Wing said. "Our findings support the allegation that the people who reported rashes, hair loss, vomiting and pet deaths after the accident were exposed to high level radiation and not only suffering from emotional stress."

The UNC-CH scientist said he found it ironic that U.S. District Court Judge Sylvia Rambo dismissed more than 2,000 damage claims filed against the power plant by nearby residents last year citing a "paucity of proof" to support their cases.

"Judge Rambo spent a year or more throwing out scientific evidence presented by the plaintiffs," he said. "After she threw out the evidence that people had been injured by the accident, including part of our work, then she ruled that there wasn't enough to proceed with the case."

He also noted that the court gave attorneys for the nuclear industry the right to review the earlier health effects research before it was made public. "I think our findings show there ought to be a more serious investigation of what happened after the Three Mile Island accident," Wing said.

Limitations of the new study, like the earlier work, include the continuing difficulty of determining precise wind direction for several days following the accident.
http://www.tmia.com/wing4.htm

------------------
"I have no regrets. Regret only makes wrinkles." - Sophia Loren

Again, here is the World Nuclear Organization's report on the Chenobyl accident.

Information Paper # 7
March 2001

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Chernobyl accident in 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 about five percent of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere and downwind.
30 people were killed, and there have since been up to ten deaths from thyroid cancer due to the accident.
An authoritative UN report in 2000 confirmed that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine (see map of regions surrounding Chernobyl) was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the operators of the plant in the context of a system where training was minimal. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.

NB: "Chernobyl" is the well-known Russian name for the site; "Chornobyl" is preferred by Ukraine.

click to enlarge
Source: OECD NEA

The accident destroyed the Chernobyl-4 reactor and killed 30 people, including 28 from radiation exposure. A further 209 on site were treated for acute radiation poisoning and among these, 134 cases were confirmed (all of whom recovered). Nobody off-site suffered from acute radiation effects. However, large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and beyond were contaminated in varying degrees, though the pattern of this bore little relationship to the 30km radius "exclusion zone" around Chernobyl.

The Chernobyl disaster was a unique event and the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power where radiation-related fatalities occurred.*

* There have been fatalities in military and research reactor contexts, eg Tokai-mura.

The accident

On 25 April, prior to a routine shut-down, the reactor crew at Chernobyl-4 began preparing for a test to determine how long turbines would spin and supply power following a loss of main electrical power supply. Similar tests had already been carried out at Chernobyl and other plants, despite the fact that these reactors were known to be very unstable at low power settings.

A series of operator actions, including the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms, preceded the attempted test early on 26 April. As water flow diminished, power output increased. When the operator moved to shut down the reactor from its unstable condition arising from previous errors, a peculiarity of the design caused the power to surge dramatically.

The fuel elements ruptured and the resultant explosive force of steam lifted off the cover plate of the reactor, releasing fission products to the atmosphere. A second explosion threw out fragments of burning fuel and graphite from the core and allowed air to rush in, causing the graphite moderator to burst into flames. The graphite burned for nine days, causing the main release of radioactivity into the environment. A total of about 12 x 1018 Bq of radiation was released. See also appended sequence of events.

Some 5000 tonnes of boron, dolomite, sand, clay and lead were dropped on to the burning core by helicopter in an effort to extinguish the blaze and limit the release of radioactive particles.

click to enlarge
The damaged Chernobyl unit 4 reactor building

Immediate impact

It is estimated that all of the xenon gas, about half of the iodine and caesium, and about 3 to 5% of the remaining radioactive material in the Chernobyl-4 reactor core was released in the accident. Most of this was deposited as dust and debris close by, but the lighter material was carried by wind over the Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and to some extent over Scandinavia and Europe.

The main casualties were among the firefighters, including those who attended the initial small fires on the roof of the turbine building. All of these were put out in a few hours.

The next task was cleaning up the radioactivity at the site so that the remaining three reactors could be restarted, and the damaged reactor shielded more permanently. About 200 000 people ("liquidators") involved in the recovery and clean up over 1986-87 received high doses of radiation, around 100 millisieverts. Some 20 000 of them received about 250 mSv and a few received 500 mSv. Later, the number of liquidators swelled to over 600 000 but most of these received only low radiation doses.

Many children in the surrounding areas were exposed to radiation doses sufficient to lead to thyroid cancers (which are usually not fatal if diagnosed and treated early). Early radiation exposure in contaminated areas was due to short-lived iodine-131, later caesium-137 was the main hazard (both are fission products dispersed from the reactor core).

On 2-3 May, some 45 000 residents were evacuated from a 10 km radius of the plant, notably the town of Pripyat. On 4 May, all those living within a 30 kilometre radius of the plant - a further 116 000 people, were evacuated and later relocated. About 1000 of these have since returned unofficially to live within the contaminated zone. Most of those evacuated received less than 50 mSv radiation dose, though a few received 100 mSv or more. In the years following the accident a further 210 000 people were resettled into less contaminated areas, and the initial 30 km radius exclusion zone (2800 km2) was modified and extended to cover 4300 square kilometres.

Environmental and health effects

Several organisations have reported on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident, but all have found difficulties in assessing the significance of what they have observed because of the paucity of reliable information on public health matters prior to 1986. In 1989 the World Health Organisation (WHO) first raised concerns that local medical scientists had incorrectly attributed various biological and health effects to radiation exposure (this link illustrates the main environmental pathways of human radiation exposure).

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) study involving more than 200 experts from 22 countries and published in 1991 was more substantial. In the absence of pre-1986 data it used a control population to compare those exposed to radiation. They found significant health disorders in both control and exposed groups, but at that stage none was radiation related.

Studies in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus since have been based on national registers of over one million people possibly affected by radiation. These have confirmed a rising incidence of thyroid cancer among exposed children. Late in 1995, the World Health Organisation linked nearly 700 cases of thyroid cancer among children and adolescents to the Chernobyl accident, and among these some ten deaths are attributed to radiation from it.

So far no increase in leukaemia is discernible, but this is expected to be evident in the next few years along with a greater, though not statistically discernible, incidence of other cancers. There has been no increase attributable to Chernobyl in congenital abnormalities, adverse pregnancy outcomes or any other radiation-induced disease in the general population either in the contaminated areas or further afield.

Psycho-social effects among those affected by the accident are emerging as a major concern, and are similar to those arising from other major disasters such as earthquakes, floods and fires.

The most recent and authoritative UN report* has confirmed that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed to the Chernobyl disaster. The UNSCEAR 2000 Report is consistent with earlier WHO findings. The report points to some 1800 cases of thyroid cancer, but "apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality or in non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure." Not even leukaemia appears to be increased, even among clean-up workers where it might be most expected. However, these workers do remain at increased risk of long-term cancers.

* the United Nations Scientific Commission on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, which is the UN body with a mandate from the General Assembly to assess and report levels and health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation.

Some extravagant claims have been made regarding the death toll attributable to the Chernobyl disaster. A publication by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) entitled Chernobyl - a continuing catastrophe lent support to these. However, the Chairman of UNSCEAR made it clear that "this report is full of unsubstantiated statements that have no support in scientific assessments."

Copies of the November 1995 WHO statement and the Conclusions from the UNSCEAR 2000 report on the health effects of Chernobyl are appended, with the abstract of a major 1996 paper on long-term health effects.

Chernobyl today

The Chernobyl unit 4 is now enclosed in a large concrete shelter which was constructed quickly to allow continuing operation of the other reactors at the plant. However, the structure is neither strong nor durable and there are plans for its reconstruction. The international Shelter Implementation Plan involved raising US$ 715 million for remedial work including removal of the fuel-containing materials. Some work on the roof has already been carried out.

In March 2001 a US$ 36 million contract was signed for construction of a radioactive waste management facility to treat spent fuel and other operational wastes, as well as material from decommissioning units 1-3.

In tehe early 1990s some US $400 million was spent on improvements to the remaining reactors at Chernobyl, considerably enhancing their safety. Energy shortages necessitated the continued operation of one of them - unit 3, to December 2000 (Unit 2 was shut down after a turbine hall fire in 1991, and unit 1 at the end of 1997). Almost 6000 people worked at the plant every day, and their radiation dose has been within internationally accepted limits. A small team of scientists works within the wrecked reactor building itself, inside the shelter.

Workers and their families live in a new town, Slavutich, 30 km from the plant. This was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, 3 km from the plant.

The Ukraine is dependent upon, and deeply in debt to, Russia for energy supplies, particularly oil and gas, and these have been drastically reduced. Continued operation of its nuclear power stations, which supply 45% of its electricity, became even more important than in 1986. The country is also pursuing the development of nuclear fuel cycle facilities to increase its energy independence.

When it was announced in 1995 by the Ukrainian president that the two operating reactors at Chernobyl would be closed by 2000, a memorandum of understanding was signed by Ukraine and G7 nations to progress this, but its implementation remained in doubt until 2000. Alternative generating capacity was needed, either gas-fired, which has ongoing fuel cost and supply implications, or nuclear, by completing Khmelnitski unit 2 and Rovno unit 4 in Ukraine. Construction of these was halted in 1989 but has since resumed, with financing which had been contingent upon Chernobyl's closure.


What has been gained from Chernobyl's disaster?

Leaving aside the verdict of history about any role in melting down the Soviet iron curtain, there are some very tangible benefits. The main ones concern reactor safety.

While no-one in the West was under any illusions about the safety of early Soviet reactor designs, some lessons have been applicable even in the West. Certainly the safety of all Soviet-designed reactors has improved vastly, due largely to the development of a culture of safety encouraged by increased collaboration between East and West, and substantial investment in improving the reactors.

Since 1989 over one thousand nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union have visited Western nuclear power plants and there have been many reciprocal visits. Over 50 twinning arrangements between East and West nuclear plants have been put in place. Most of this has been under the auspices of the World Association of Nuclear Operators, a body formed in 1989 which links 130 operators of nuclear power plants in more than 30 countries.

Many other international programs were initiated following Chernobyl. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety review projects for each particular type of Soviet reactor are noteworthy, bringing together operators and Western engineers to focus on safety improvements. These initiatives are backed by funding arrangements. The Nuclear Safety Assistance Coordination Centre database lists Western aid totalling almost US $1 billion for more than 700 safety-related projects in former Eastern Bloc countries. The Nuclear Safety Convention is a more recent outcome.

In March 1996 the European Nuclear Council urged a fresh impetus to bring about further improvements in the safety of Soviet-designed reactors within three years. It suggested that with even US $200 million, a tenfold increase in safety could be achieved if the funds were made available directly to plant managers.

In 1998 an agreement with the USA provided for the establishment of an international radioecology laboratory inside the exclusion zone.


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SOURCES
Nuclear Energy Institute 1996, Info Bank briefing sheets and Source Book, 4th edn.
OECD NEA report Chernobyl Ten Years On, radiological and health impact, Nov 1995;
IAEA 1996, Ten years after Chernobyl: what do we really know? (from April 1996 conference);
UNSCEAR 2000 report, Annex J.
NucNet Chernobyl background papers & news.
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