Radioactive Russian dust cloud escapes

CLASS 10

ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF ENERGY

Before you read:

1. What alternative sources of energy do you know?

2. What are their advantages and disadvantages?

3. Have you ever heard about Chernobyl?

4. What is the future of nuclear energy like?

1.1 Read the text. What happened in Chernobyl in 1986? Why can’t it be compared with the Three Mile Island disaster in the USA?

How was affected the rest of Europe? What was ignored by the British?

Radioactive Russian dust cloud escapes

Major nuclear power accident reported at Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union

Anthony Tucker
April 29, 1986
The Guardian

A major nuclear power accident in the Soviet Union yesterday sent a cloud of radioactivity drifting across much of Scandinavia. The alarm was first raised at a Swedish nuclear plant at Forsmark, on the Baltic coast, where staff at first thought their own reactor was leaking. But as further reports of unusually high radioactivity began to come in from Stockholm, Helsinki and elsewhere the Soviet authorities admitted than an accident had occurred at one of their plants in the Ukraine. A nuclear power reactor had been damaged and there were casualties.

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Although the Tass news agency report was slightly ambiguous, the Chernobyl plant which has suffered the accident is believed to be one of a complex of four light water reactors built by a lake just north of Kiev - about 800 miles from the Scandinavian coastlines where the radioactive plume was being monitored.

Helsinki reported six times the normal background level, Stockholm twice the usual level and Oslo 50 per cent higher than normal. Swedish scientists compared the abnormal readings with those recorded during the 1970s, when China was testing nuclear bombs in the atmosphere. But analysis of the isotopic content of the Scandinavian dust samples confirmed the Tass statement that a nuclear power reactor was the source, probably as a result of cooling failure and severe overheating.

For the Russians to admit to an accident of any kind sets a precedent, which may be a reflection of Mr Gorbachev's policy of greater openness. But Tass sought immediately to put the incident in perspective by listing several foreign nuclear disasters, including the near meltdown of the American Three Mile Island reactor in 1979. The Chernobyl accident, the Soviet news agency said, was the first to have occurred in the Soviet Union, ignoring reports reaching the West of a serious accident in the Urals in 1958 which is believed to have killed many people and contaminated a vast area when a nuclear waste dump exploded.

Yesterday's announcement said simply: 'An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as one of the reactors was damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to those affected. A government commission has been set up. '

In Sweden, 700 workers at the Forsmark plant north of Stockholm were evacuated and radio warnings were broadcast for other people to stay away, before it became clear that the radioactive plume was drifting in across the Baltic with the south-easterly winds.

At first, suspicion was directed towards the Soviet Baltic republic of Lithuania, where the Ignalina power station is reckoned to be the world's largest nuclear plant. Finally, the Soviet announcement put the source in the Ukraine, whose distance from the Baltic suggests that the Russians have a major disaster on their hands.

Three Mile Island was a disaster as far as the American nuclear industry was concerned, but it did not release large amounts of radioactivity as this accident has evidently done.

Accidents like this are extremely difficult to disguise or hide because even the smallest sample of wind-blown dust, when put through a gamma ray spectrometer, will indicate that the level of radioactivity is unusually high, and that the source is either a nuclear explosion, a leaking reactor, or an accident involving a reprocessing plant for spent power station fuel.

The Chinese nuclear tests conducted in the atmosphere during the 1970s, for example, were readily identified within a couple of weeks by laboratories attached to British nuclear power stations as well as Swedish ones. All that was needed was a scrap of sticky muslin stretched on the roof and a spectrometer - admittedly a highly sophisticated piece of scientific equipment - to analyse the gamma rays given off by the minute particles of dust it collected.

If the Soviet plume begins to drift towards Britain - and there have been easterly winds - the National Radiological Protection Board will quickly pick up the signs from its fallout monitoring stations in Glasgow, London, Belfast, Bridgend, Shrivenham, Glos, and Chilton in Oxfordshire.

Sweden's Environment Minister, Birgitta Dahl, said yesterday that while the contamination reaching her country was not considered harmful to health, her government was concerned that it had not been given any warning by the Soviet authorities, and had still not been given any real information about the source, or whether the leakage must be expected to continue. Despite her reassurance, however, it was clear last night that many Scandinavians intend to stay indoors until they are certain it is safe to go outside.

Britain has no need to fear the radiation, the Protection Board said. The fall-out reaching Scandinavia was only twice the natural background level of radiation. This was so low that it should not cause any harm if it was ever carried to Britain. There was no need for any special precautions to be taken in this country.

2.1 Read the text and say how different parts of the former USSR were affected? What were the economic costs?

Death toll from Chernobyl was over-estimated: report
By Times Online and agencies

Only 56 people have died as a direct result of radiation released in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, and the final death toll could be thousands fewer than originally feared, the UN nuclear watchdog said today.

However, anxiety caused by fear of death and illness from radiation poisoning is causing major mental health problems among the affected population and such worries "show no signs of diminishing and may even be spreading," the agency said, citing a new report compiled by 100 scientists.

The final death toll attributed to radiation could reach 4,000, said the report, compiled on behalf of the Chernobyl Forum. The Chernobyl Forum includes the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, as well as seven other UN agencies and the governments of Ukraine, where Chernobyl is located, neighbouring Belarus and Russia.

Ukraine has previously said it had already registered 4,400 deaths related to the accident, and early speculation following the radiation release predicted tens of thousands would die.

But Dr Burton Bennett, the chairman of the forum, said that previous death tolls had been inflated, perhaps "to attract attention to the accident, to attract sympathy".

The report and a two-day scientific meeting to discuss it, which starts tomorrow, aim to "reach a consensus on the various issues so that we can go forward in a more positive way," Dr Bennett told a news conference.

Environmental organization Greenpeace condemned the report and accused the forum of "whitewashing" the impacts of the accident.

"Denying the real implications is not only insulting the thousands of victims, who are told to be sick because of stress and irrational fear, but it also leads to dangerous recommendations, to relocate people in contaminated areas," said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner.

The 600-page UN report says a lack of accurate information about the accident’s consequences has made the mental health impact "the largest public health problem created by the accident."

"These problems manifest as negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative and dependency on assistance from the state," the agency said in a statement.

"Persistent myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation have resulted in ’paralyzing fatalism’ among residents of affected areas."

Teachers and others with influence must receive better information so they can counter false fears by replacing mythology with facts, said Kalman Mizsei of the UN Development Programme.

"The health and environmental effects... have been relatively and surprisingly minor," Mr Mizsei said. Residents in the region had received no understandable information about the accident’s effects, and "people still don’t know what the effect is".

Mr Mizsei advocated that support programmes to Chernobyl victims should be altered to concentrate only on the groups affected by high levels of radiation. As of now, 5 million to 7 million people receive benefits and support, while only 200,000 people were exposed to higher levels of radiation.

Belarus in 1991 spent 22 percent of its national budget on Chernobyl-related expenses, but the figure has since fallen to 6 percent, according to UNDP statistics. Ukraine spends 5 percent to 7 percent of its budget on costs related to the accident.

"Pushing millions of people into this dependency is not helpful," Mr Mizsei said. By moving away from the illusion that the accident still had a ruinous effect, people could begin improving their lives.

The report also says there is no evidence of decreased fertility following the accident, nor of any increase in congenital malformations.

The survival rate of the about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer caused by the accident has been almost 99 percent, the report said. Nine of the 56 deaths recorded so far were children who succumbed to thyroid cancer.

Thyroid cancer patients and thousands of workers exposed to high levels of radiation in the days following the accident suffered "major health consequences", Dr Bennett said. "The majority of workers and population received fairly low doses."

Lung cancer caused by smoking was expected to kill three times as many as Chernobyl-related cancers, he added. Among other findings was that poverty, "lifestyle diseases" such as illnesses caused by smoking, drinking and stress "pose a far greater threat to local communities than does radiation exposure," the statement said.

Dr Fred Mettler, one of the scientists behind the report, said that the report offered lessons for any future cases - including any potential radiation release by terrorists - by emphasising issues such as the need for early and accurate information. "It’s a timely document for learning lessons to apply to other areas," he said.

3.1 Read and sum up the text. That was the day trip like? Explain the title.

Strange and unsettling: my day trip to Chernobyl

It was the scene of one of the world's worst modern disasters, now visitors can experience this radioactive wasteland on a guided tour. Sarah Johnstone signs up

October 23, 2005
The Observer

I wonder if Nikolay has seen Mad Max too many times, as he floors the accelerator and our Lada rattles along the crumbling asphalt road. Rusty fencing and unkempt grass whizzes by as we barrel towards swaying birch trees. Yuriy and I yell above Shake Your Booty on the radio. Across this broad expanse of plain, not another soul is to be seen.

For a second, it feels like taking a spin through gloriously uninhabited countryside. Then we turn and the world's deadliest nuclear reactor looms up on the horizon. Nikolay and Yuriy are my driver and guide on one of the world's strangest day trips - to the 'exclusion zone' around Chernobyl.

While it sometimes looks like benign wilderness, actually the area has been abandoned, homes lie bulldozed into the poisoned soil and radioactive moss sprouts in crevices.

After Chernobyl reactor No 4 in northern Ukraine (then still part of the Soviet Union) exploded on 26 April 1986, the surrounding 30 kilometres were declared too contaminated for human habitation. Only the scientists slowly shutting down the other three reactors and decommissioning the plant were allowed within its perimeters.

Now this empty landscape, with its occasional eerie ghost town and frozen-in-time buildings, has become Ukraine's most talked-about tourist attraction. With radiation levels having decreased, limited guided tours were begun in 2002. Last year, one leather-clad Ukrainian female motorcyclist's sensationalised online accounts of her experiences here (see kiddofspeed.com) made the tours famous and the zone has since lured more visitors.

Some 130km north of Kiev, Chernobyl slowly emerges from the surrounding countryside like a horror movie. Traffic drops off, the road worsens and a deathly quiet descends, before we reach the first of two military checkpoints.

Beyond these lies the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, but it's no memorial like Auschwitz. Its closest equivalent to Hiroshima's contemplative peace park is a small, ugly monument to the firemen (or 'bio-robots' as they were chillingly nicknamed; Chernobyl has its own jargon) who died during the accident's clean-up.

Instead, it has the 'sarcophagus', or hastily concrete-covered remains of reactor No 4. And after a quick briefing at Yuriy's office in the tumbledown former village of Chernobyl, south of the reactor, that's where we head first.

Strange to say, but the sarcophagus is something of a modern icon, like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben; I've seen it so often in photos, I feel I've already been here. Only Yuriy's Geiger counter insists I really am standing just a few hundred metres from the remains of the ruined reactor. Normal background radiation is around 14 micro-roentgens, but when the counter hits nearly 800 and is still enthusiastically clicking, I insist we move inside the adjacent viewing centre.

Protected by the thick walls, we find the serious-minded information officer Julia, frowning through the window at 'the monster which is always near'. While a new cover is planned to safeguard it, the reactor's current condition is alarming. Its columns are shifting, while the huge 'elephant's foot' of melted radioactive fuel inside is cracking, peeling and producing tonnes of toxic dust. 'The chance of a spontaneous chain reaction inside is very low,' says Julia. 'But it is not zero.'

Even the phlegmatic Yuriy seems skittish spending much time here and we proceed to the town of Pripyat. Once home to 47,000 nuclear workers and their families, this is now an atomic-era Pompeii. Tree branches hang heavily over the verges of the town's long, straight streets and burst through the empty shells of restaurants and hotels. Vines have attacked apartment complexes, the football stadium is overgrown and a huge, rusty Ferris wheel creaks ominously.

Classrooms lie with open books and you can still see the detritus of lives interrupted by the order to evacuate, which, thanks to Soviet denial and bureaucracy, came a criminal 36 hours after the explosion. Toys, washing and decorations remain where they were left. People were told they would only be away three days, but most knew otherwise.

Perhaps the most surreal thing about this post-apocalyptic no-man's land is that it has become the dominion of deer, wolves and other animals. Zooming along one of Pripyat's roads, we suddenly realise there's a herd of radioactive boar crashing through the undergrowth. 'Safari!' jokes Yuriy, as we set off in pursuit.

I don't think my companions are being disrespectful. This is their everyday workplace, after all, and Ukrainians do have a fine sense of gallows humour. But does this give casual visitors like me licence to carouse in this devil's playground? I'm not so sure. I laugh but squirm in my seat.

By the time we return to base for lunch, I think Yuriy is running out of things to say about nuclear power. 'Why did you take a job here?' I ask him.

'What should I tell you?' counters Yuriy, unimpressed. 'That I love nuclear power?' Of course, he earns more as a guide than he ever did as an English teacher, and with thorough medical monitoring, it seems worth the probably small risk.

There are currently 360 people living in the exclusion zone, most of them elderly. We visit Maria, 75, after lunch. After the accident, Maria was moved near Kiev, but was unhappy and returned to her bungalow. At her age, she says, she's unperturbed by radiation and even grows some vegetables in her garden. I ask her what it's like being here on her own without former friends and neighbours. 'Well, it's a bit boring sometimes,' she shrugs, 'but what can you do?'

On the way back from Maria's, we get demob happy, driving fast, playing loud music and laughing. It's a strange end to a strange and uncomfortable day.

My trip remains a painful memory long after I return home. Images like the graveyard of 2,000 helicopters, fire trucks and ambulances used by emergency crews at the disaster keep coming back to haunt me. I feel guilty that I wasn't more moved at the time. I had the excuse of researching a guidebook on Ukraine but did I really expect that to stop me from feeling voyeuristic?

I witter on like this to anyone who'll listen, until at a function I meet someone who's also LAUGHED WHILE AT CHERNOBYL. He feels a bit weird about it too, and it gets me thinking we can't be the only ones.

Several weeks later the true horror of the place finally floods in, as I'm reading extracts from Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl in the newspaper. I hang on every heart-wrenching word of lives long removed from the exclusion zone by death or resettlement. The newlywed fireman roasted inside out by radiation. The six-year-old dying girl who wants to live because she's 'still little'.

And that's when I start crying. For some things, I guess, you don't have to be there.

What are the risks?

Nearly 20 years after reactor No 4 exploded, spending a few hours near Chernobyl is quite safe. Much of the region now has only slightly elevated radiation: of about 22 micro-roentgens, as opposed to the usual 14. Even relative 'hot spots', such as around the reactor itself, pose no risk.

Dr Michael Clark, spokesman for the UK's Health Protection Agency, says you will receive no more radiation on a tour around Chernobyl than on a transatlantic flight.

However, he warns against eating food grown in the zone. (The food you eat at lunch comes from supplies shipped from Kiev for Chernobyl workers.)

In the zone, your guide carries a Geiger counter and will ask you to watch where you walk during your limited time out of the car, because the soil is still relatively highly contaminated. Some visitors can be seen with individual dosimeter badges, as worn by radiographers, to measure their personal exposure, but in any case tourists are screened for radiation before leaving the zone.

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