Sit down, my children, and I'll tell you the rest of the story. It's a heartbreaking story, and a chilling one. It's a tale of the nuclear power, the Soviet regime, an enormous catastrophe, lives that will never be the same, and lives that are no longer. It's a tale of incompetence and bravery, of secrets and lies, of misinformation and lack of information, of illness and ill-use. It is the story of Chernobyl--specifically, the story of the April 25-26 explosion in the #4 reactor at the Chernobyl power plant.
Sit down, my children, and I'll tell you the rest of the story. It's a heartbreaking story, and a chilling one. It's a tale of the nuclear power, the Soviet regime, an enormous catastrophe, lives that will never be the same, and lives that are no longer. It's a tale of incompetence and bravery, of secrets and lies, of misinformation and lack of information, of illness and ill-use. It is the story of Chernobyl--specifically, the story of the April 25-26 explosion in the #4 reactor at the Chernobyl power plant.
::cut::
(link to Chernobyl Revisited: Part 1)
CHERNOBYL: THE EXPLOSION'S EFFECTS
Photo of house in Pripyat, Ukraine, in Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation. Taken from Kid Of Speed (site highly recommended for photos of the Ukranian evacuated zone), credited to Elena Filatova. Used for educational purposes only.
Now, my friends, let's take a trip to post-Chernobyl Belarus. Hold on tight, and keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times. Sounds like a roller coaster, you say.
In fact, it is a roller coaster, one that pulls at your heart and sends your stomach into your feet. So hop on board the Chernobyl Coaster, and strap in tight.
We'll be looking at Belarus, which received more than 60% of the radioactive contaminants spewed out of Chernobyl #4 after the explosion on April 26, 1986. For sheer amount of nuclear devastation, Belarus is the best example of the effects of Chernobyl. More than 32,500 squre miles of Belarus--23% of the country--were contaminated with fallout from the Chernobyl explosion, in varying concentrations.
Map of the rough distribution of radioactive fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl explosion. Copyright status unknown; used for educational purposes only.
Here's a useful fact: the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, has determined through studies that the safe-for-residency limit (of radiation) is 5 Curies (Ci) per square kilometer, or 5 Ci/km2. Good to know, right? It wouldn't be safe to live anywhere with a higher amount of radiation.
Two million people live in territory contaminated by Chernobyl fallout. The average level of contamination in the contaminated territories?
One hundred eleven to three hundred seventy times the safe-for-residency limit. That's 555 Ci/km2 to 1850 Ci/km2--when the safe-for-residency limit is only 5 Ci/km2. That's one hell of a lot of contamination, friends, and 2 million people have nowhere else to go. How do you evacuate 2,000,000 people? Where do you send them?
They tried, and they tried hard. Belarus decontaminated 500 settlements. Sixty percent of those were decontaminated more than once. They removed over 7 million cubic yards of topsoil. They asphalted dirt roads, streets, and sidewalks. They dismantled objects, removed roofs, shattered contaminated stones and bricks. They demolished 110 settlements. They buried over 3000 farms. They decontaminated 1300 pieces of industrial equipment and more than 500 ventilation systems in 23 enterprises. And then they dealt with the radioactive waste. (link) Like I said, they tried, and they tried hard.
It didn't work, and the government couldn't afford to resettle those 2 million people.
If you're a country as poor as Belarus, you've got no choice. You leave them there, because you might be able to make them leave, but you can't afford to put them anywhere safer. Here's some idea of what Chernobyl has cost the Belarussian government, financially speaking. In March 1995, the Minister for Extraordinary Situations and Protection of the Population from the Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe (no, I didn't make that up. I'm sure it's less of a mouthful in Russian/Belarussian) warned that the cost of Chernobyl mitigation, would amount to 32 times Belarus' annual budget (link). This claim, by the way, went uncontested by any government or international organization.
I don't know much about Belarus. Maybe you don't either. So I poked around Google and found this stat. As of 2001, the Chernobyl disaster had cost the country 25% of its annual national budget (link)
This means little to me, so I read a little further. And found that by the year 2015, the Chernobyl disaster is expected to have cost Belarus $235 billion. To put this in perspective, the 2005 estimated GDP of Belarus was $79.13 billion.
Economically, then, Chernobyl was truly a disaster.
From the standpoint of health, it was worse than a disaster. There's always more money out there somewhere. No one can loan you an extra life.
In the days after Chernobyl #4 exploded, all 10 million Belarussians were exposed to enormous amounts of iodine-131. Iodine-131 is one of the first radionuclides to be ejected from an exploding nuclear reactor. It's also one of the first to reach the surrounding population.
At the time of the Chernobyl accident, it was believed that iodine-131 had little carcinogenic potential. It just goes to show you, even scientists can be wrong. Within a year of the accident, the incidence of childhood thyroid cancer, which is very rare in "clean" countries, has multipled by 5,000 percent.
So let's stop for some math. (Disclaimer: I suck at math. Check my figures.) In the "clean" country of England, childhood thyroid cancer has a rate of 0.5 cases per million children under the age of 15. (link.) As of 2006, there are an estimated 1.6 million children in Belarus (under the age of 14).
If Belarus was a "clean" country like England, and had the same incidence of childhood thyroid cancer, you would expect just under 1 case of childhood thyroid cancer per million children. The post-Chernobyl rates of childhood thyroid cancer would change that number from 1 (we'll round up, just to make the math easier for me) to 5,000. The reason is simple, in view of the iodine-131 contamination.
If you asked a human thyroid, "Excuse me, sir, which of these two types of iodine is radioactive?" and showed it a) some iodine-131 and b) some normal iodine...well, you'd get no answer. Then you'd be carted away by the little men in white coats. But you'd have sacrificed your outward sanity for a point: the human thyroid doesn't understand the difference between radioactive and regular iodine, and it sucks that iodine-131 right up. In children, the most common result seems to be thyroid cancer. It's not the only one.
Children's hospitals in Belarus can be a nightmare to visit. Check out this article for a more detailed description of the sights and sounds--to be honest, I can't type it for my heart aching and my stomach turning in pity.
However, just as iodine-131 isn't the only radioactive contaminant, children aren't the only victims of the fallout. Caesium-137 and strontium-90 have been found in soil all over Belarus, and these contaminants have made their way into the food supply of Belarus, a fact that affects people of all ages in Belarus.
Today in Belarus (according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), life expectancy has fallen. Nearly equivalent in the 1960's, Belarussian life expectancy by 1999 had fallen 12-14 years (men) and 7-9 years (women).
The years a Belarussian has on this earth, however, might not be as easy as we have things, generally speaking, in the US or western Europe. Nearly half (45-47%)the teenagers in Belarus have serious health problems: gastrointestinal anomalies, weak hearts, and cataracts. Forty percent have chronic blood disorders and malfunctioning thyroids. And in the last 10 years, the number of handicapped adolescents has tripled. (link)
Belarus is a country under attack by an invisible enemy. Suicides are up 1,000 percent in the contaminated zones. Thyroid cancer overall has risen 2,400 percent. (link) Childhood thyroid cancer has risen 5,000 percent. (link) Congenital birth deformities have risen 250 percent. (link)
And the government, in an attempt to lighten its financial load, is looking to change laws regarding Chernobyl victims, to cut off the modest compensation they receive.
Humans are taking a terrible beating from Chernobyl's deadly gift of radioactive contamination. Nature, however, has fared surprisingly better. Rare species are returning to the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. There has been an overall increase in the diversity of plant and animal life in the zone. Generally, species that roam wild, such as moose, boar, otters, and lynx have become well-established. Species that depend on man--rats, house mice, and sparrows--have declined. There is no hard evidence of any increase in birth defects among animals.
If only humans were so lucky.
The official death toll of the Chernobyl accident stands at 56 (link), and that number could rise to as many as 4000 additional deaths. (link). This number is disputed. A Greenpeace report, based on Belarus cancer statistics, projects the eventual total number of deaths at nearly 100,000 (link).
Whatever the total number of deaths, it is clear that the Chernobyl disaster was a killer--of people, of communities, and of ways of life that cannot be repaired or replaced.
CHERNOBYL: STILL A HAZARD?
Yes. Skip the rest of this section.
Just kidding.
That's the short answer. In its current state, Chernobyl reactor #4 is a hazard. In an improved state, it will still be a hazard. There's no getting around the reality of half-life and contamination, of core material and eroding concrete and weather. But if you want more than the short answer, here's what I came up with.
Liquidators on their way to the Chernobyl power plant, 1986. Photo by Lu Taskey. Copyright status unknown. Used for educational purposes only.
The concrete sarcophagus at Chernobyl #4 was built hastily. The work was done by "liquidators" brought in by the Soviet government, and by remote robots. It was begun shortly after the April 26 explosion at Chernobyl #4 caused a failure of containment and blew a hole in the reactor building's roof. It was completed in December 1986 (The Social Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster, 1988, p166, by David R. Marples, ISBN 0333481984). The sarcophagus was never meant to be a permanent containment structure; it was built as a stop-gap, to eliminate the problem of escaping radiation. The breakup of the Soviet Union and the financial resources of the resulting independent nations have prevented the sarcophagus from being replaced.
In the years since the completion of the sarcophagus, radiation (from the inside) and weather (obviously, from the outside) have caused holes and leaks in the structure. Air seeps in, stirring radioactive dust. Water seeps in, creating high-level radioactive waste that has the potential of seeping into groundwater. The structure of the sarcophagus itself is unstable--its two monster steel I-beams rest on the partially-destroyed wall of the power plant itself. Additionally, the upper biological shield, a massive concrete plate that capped the nuclear reactor, has been displaced and rests at a 15-degree angle to the reactor. This plate rests partially on the side of the reactor, partly on a pile of firefighting debris dumped by helicopter over the reactor following the explosion. Should the plate become dislodged completely or slide further, the remaining core material will be further exposed, and greater contamination is possible.
Image from Spaceman.ca of the construction of the Chernobyl reactor #4 sarcophagus. Copyright status unknown; used for educational purposes only.
A robot has also been used to explore the area inside the #4 reactor at the plant. This robot, Pioneer, was equipped with three-dimensional vision, radiation detectors, a gripping arm, and a bore for sample-taking. It was built by Carnegie Mellon University and Redzone Robotics. It conducted an in-depth exploration of the reactor in order to create a virtual-reality mockup of the reactor building. This was an essential step in making plans to repair the current sarcophagus, and in helping to design a new solution for Chernobyl.
Construction of a new sarcophagus has been a multinational effort. The (take a breath, quick) Chernobyl Sarcophagus Project of the French-German Initiative (I guess it's my day for long-winded titles in a diary) is a multinational sarcophagus project to collect, analyze, and verify all relevant safety data regarding the sarcophagus (link). Money has been raised to build a new shelter over the reactor by 28 countries, and according to new President Viktor Yushchenko, a new sarcophagus could be in place by 2010. (link).
No matter when the new Chernobyl sarcophagus is finished, the nuclear material inside the reactor building will be a hazard for hundreds of years. The contamination of the fields of Belarus, the Ukraine, and extreme western Russia will be problematic for similar periods of time, and are possibly more crucial, as they affect the food supply and the ability of the affected areas to survive.
Photo of abandoned cabin in the Ukraine, in Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation. Taken from Kid Of Speed (site highly recommended for photos of the Ukranian evacuated zone), credited to Elena Filatova. Used for educational purposes only.
CHERNOBYL REVISITED: WEB REFERENCES
Summaries
The Chernobyl disaster wikipedia article.
At pripyat.com -- Pripyat was the town about 10km from the reactor plant where plant workers and their families lived.
Georgia State University Chernobyl page.
Effects
Chernobyl Fallout Data
Chernobyl Dose Estimates, page by the NEA
UN Chernobyl Report - PDF warning!
UN Chernobyl Page.
Orion Online article on post-Chernobyl Belarus.
World Bank page on Chernobyl's effect on Belarus.
Greenpeace Chernobyl Report. PDF warning!
Article by Harvard Med School doctor, concerning effects of Chernobyl radiation. PDF warning!
Radiation and the Chernobyl disaster
Green Facts Chernobyl page.
Raleigh-Durham News Observer article on the health effects of Chernobyl.
Chernobyl Health Effects article at Atomic Insights.
International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA)'s Chernobyl page
Impact on Ukrainian forests
NYT Article: Impact of Chernobyl (Sept. '05).
Effects on Belarus at Common Dreams.
Interviews
With Alexander (Sasha) Yuvchenko, Senior Engineer-Mechanic at Chernobyl on 26 April, 1986, at newscientisttech.com
With Alexander (Sasha) Yuvchenko, Senior Engineer-Mechanic at Chernobyl on 26 April, 1986, at guardian.co.uk
Photographs
Silent Graveyards, at bbc.co.uk.
Kid Of Speed, Elena Filatova's pictures of her alleged motorcycle tours throughout the Alienated Zone. (For more on the controversy surrounding the taking of the pictures, see the wikipedia article on same.
Reactor photos, including some graphics.
Photos from a Russian-language site, mainly of the contaminated-vehicle dumping ground.
Multimedia
National Geographic has an excellent multimedia feature on Chernobyl, 20 Years Later. Sound and pictures. Possibly some video, can't remember.