Chernobyl Science — Consequences for People and the Environment

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Yablokov et al, eds, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-57331-757-3 US $150/CDN $180, 400 pages, ppb. Also available as Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 1181, www.nyas.org

Reviewed by Anna Tilman and Gordon Albright

Physicians were restricted from calling any medical findings radiation-related unless the patient had been a certified “acute radiation sickness” patient during the disaster.

See also this excellent free documentary video which does a fair job of describing and visualizing the whole scope of that disaster, coverup and personal sacrifice, for activists who were still young at the time: The Battle of Chernobyl
The explosion of one of the reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986, almost 25 years ago, could well have been the beginning of the end of the nuclear industry. It most certainly was a watershed for millions of people, changing their lives and their environment in the most dramatic way, essentially forever. Emissions from the explosion of this one reactor alone were a hundred times greater than the radioactive contamination from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fallout has covered the entire Northern hemisphere.

In April 2005, just prior to the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published the Chernobyl Forum. Advertised as “the fullest and objective” review of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, this report was based primarily on about 350 western research papers. It virtually ignored the findings of some 30,000 scientific papers prepared by scientists working and living in the stricken territories. Instead, it relied on input from “experts” representing international bodies (WHO, IAEA, the United Nations Scientific Commission on the Effects of Nuclear Radiation (UNSCEAR)), and the nuclear energy industry.

The report greatly downplayed the effects of the Chernobyl explosion both locally and worldwide. Its shortcomings were too egregious to be left unchallenged.
This motivated a group of scientists who were heavily involved in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster to begin the enormous task of assembling the findings of thousands of published articles that were for the most part available only within the former Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc countries, and were not accessible in the West.

The culmination of this work is Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 1181). The senior editor and author is Alexey Yablokov (Centre for Russian Environmental Policy, Moscow), with co-authors Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko (Institute of Radiation Safety, Minsk, Belarus), all very eminent scientists.

This volume is based on more than 5000 published articles, primarily in Slavic languages, by researchers who observed and documented the Chernobyl catastrophe. Although the authors modestly acknowledge that this volume is not comprehensive, since new studies are continually being published, they still felt it should be released because “…it is necessary for humankind to deal with the conse-quences of this, the largest technological catastrophe in history…” Nevertheless, this volume is the most comprehensive review of the health and environmental consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster to date.

At the time of the Chernobyl disaster, Vassily Nesterenko was Director of the famous Institute of Nuclear Physics of Minsk, Belarus. The day after the accident, he flew over the burning reactor. He was also one of the eight hundred thousand “liquidators” brought in to the site to contain the escaping radiation. Together with the Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, he ended his professional nuclear career to work tirelessly, against enormous government resistance, to protect people, children above all, from Chernobyl’s radioactive dangers.

More than three billion people inhabit areas contaminated by Chernobyl’s radionuclides. Radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl meltdown spread over 40% of Europe and wide territories in Asia, northern Africa, and North America. Nearly five million people (including more than one million children) still live with dangerous levels of radioactive contamination in Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia.

In the words of the authors, “There is no reasonable explanation for the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization (Chernobyl Forum, 2005) have completely neglected the consequences of radioactive contamination in other countries, which received more than 50% of the Chernobyl radionuclides, and addressed concerns only in Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia.” The authors systematically explain the secrecy conditions imposed by the government, the failure of technocrats to collect data on the number and distribution of all of the radionuclides of major concern, and the restrictions placed on physicians against calling any medical findings radiation-related unless the patient had been a certified “acute radiation sickness” patient during the disaster, thus assuring that only 1% of injuries would be so reported. Government technocrats also did not mention many serious diseases caused by the Chernobyl accident, such as nasopharyngeal problems caused by burning uranium, the radioactive fallout that resulted in general deterioration of the health of children, wide spread blood and lymph system diseases, reproductive loss, premature and small infant births, chromosomal mutations, congenital and developmental abnormalities, multiple endocrine diseases, mental disorders and cancer.

This report vividly documents the immediate effects of radiation exposure on many millions of people, and the contamination of their land. “More than 20 years after the catastrophe, by virtue of the natural migration of radionuclides the resultant danger in these areas has not decreased, but increases and will continue to do so for many years to come.” But the report also demonstrates that the spread of deadly radionuclides from this single nuclear accident will harm life throughout the world for centuries.

In her review of the book, Dr. Rosalie Bertell stated that “this book is a ‘must read’ for all of those bureaucrats currently promoting nuclear power as the only solution for climate change. Those who seek information on the disaster only from the official documentation provided by the IAEA, WHO and UNSCEAR need to broaden their reading to include the reality check from those scientists who have access to local findings and are simply telling the truth, with no hidden propaganda agenda.”

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Watershed Sentinel, Summer 2010

Anna Tilman is an activist and researcher who has written the Yellowcake Trail series for the Watershed Sentinel.

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