[Devil]

The Chernobyl Forum is made up of 8 UN specialized agencies, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and the World Bank, as well as the governments of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. It consists of over 100 scientists, all experts in radiation, the effects thereof etc.

They have issued a report which states essentially that the total deaths which have happened or are likely to happen because of radiation from this terrible accident is about 4,000. There was no evidence to show radiation exposure in the areas around Chernobyl had had any effect on fertility, pregnancy problems, stillbirths or the overall health of children.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4216102.stm

I must admit pleasant surprise at these scientific findings, as I imagined it to be worse than that.

[ChumpusRex]

Thanks for the link.

I've had a chance to read through some of the report, and it appears to be very thorough and well researched.

I was slightly dissapointed that they don't give details of how they calculated the 4,000 potential deaths in the digest summary (the health volume of the full report doesn't appear to be available yet).

Nevertheless the main conclusions - no evidence of radiation effects on the general population outside of the immediate vicinity are very reassuring. Human activities (cleaning, rebuilding) in those areas which have been repopulated has led to a rapid decrease in RA contamination, to insignificant levels - are reassuring.

However, it does clarify the many problems that exist around the site itself:
a) Poorly constructed containment of the destroyed reactor - requiring urgent repair
b) Undocumented, unplanned, poorly constructed dump sites for the waste removed from the site
c) Relatively heavy contamination of the immediate vicinity by long-lived radioactive materials (concentrated in the immediate area, because they were too heavy to be transported by wind/weather).

[Aedo]

Thanks for that link Devil.

For a sobering look at Chernobyl now this link is well worth a visit Chernobyl Revisited.

[peaknik]

I just received this by email, I'll paste it while I sort out from where it came...

At a press conference today, the IAEA presented its conclusions of a set of scientific reports on the impacts of Chernobyl by several UN bodies. The report: "Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts" examines the effects of the disaster as its 20th
anniversary approaches. The report is itself a digest of another, 3-volume, 600-page report by hundreds of scientists, economists and health experts.

The report highlights that the casualties' toll was limited to 50 workers and the eventual number can be expected to reach about 4,000.

Remarkably, these conclusions are not substantiated by these reports, or even contradicted by them. Often, research has been omitted and where
scientific uncertainty exists, the conclusion is simply that there is no impact. A more careful reading of the 600-page report, as well as
previous published research by UN-bodies leads to very different conclusions. A few examples:

* WHO refers to a study on 72,000 Russian workers of which 212 died as the result of radiation. The total number of 'liquidators' (in Belarus,
Russia and Ukraine) is estimated at some 600,000;

* The number of 4,000 deaths of the IAEA only relates to a studied population of 600,000, whereas radiation was spread over most of Europe.
The IAEA is omitting the impacts of Chernobyl on millions of Europeans;

* The IAEA tries to make strict distinction between health impacts attributable to radiation and other health impacts attributable to
stress, social situation etc. However, the WHO is referring to numerous reports which indicate an impact of radiation on the immune system,
causing a wide range of health effects;

The IAEA states today that previous researchers who have estimated the number of deaths in the range of 10 to hundreds of thousands have
exaggerated the impacts. This is not correct.

The WHO rightly refers to 2 different methodological approaches to assess the health impacts of radiation.

* The first one - and scientifically the most accepted approach - is based on the standards set by the International Commission on Radiation
Protection (ICRP) and which assumes that there is a lineal relationship between radiation dose and effect, without a threshold. This means that
if a very large population is subjected to a very low dose, the collective impact can still be very serious. In the case of the
Chernobyl accident, this leads to estimates in the range of 10 to hundreds of thousands of casualties.

* The other approach is based on epidemiology and tries to report the actual number of casualties and use statistical methods to estimate the
total number of casualties for a population. This approach is valuable in well controlled situations, but can become very problematic in
complex situations such as in Europe, where were it will be absolutely impossible to relate individual cases cancer e.g. in Belgium or France
to the Chernobyl fallout.

The Chernobyl explosion occurred April 26, 1986, when an out-of-control nuclear reaction blew off the roof of the steel building and spewed tons
of radioactive material into the air. It was the worst nuclear accident in history.

"It is appalling that the IAEA is whitewashing the impacts of the most serious industrial accident in human history," said Jan Vande Putte,
Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner. "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 is also leads to dangerous recommendations, to relocated people in contaminated
areas."

[Starvid]

What is the source of those comments? I sure hope it is Greenpeace, since their credibility is close to zero.

[Kooka]

Check out America's incidents (and subsequent cover-ups):

US Nuclear Accidents

This would be a great source for the forum topic on where to live

[julianj]

What is the source of those comments? I sure hope it is Greenpeace, since their credibility is close to zero.

My view is I'd trust Greenpeace above any government or quango or uber-government source.

Hey, virtually nobody got killed in Chernobyl and it didn't have any after effects, whoo-hoo

[Devil]

What is the source of those comments? I sure hope it is Greenpeace, since their credibility is close to zero.

My view is I'd trust Greenpeace above any government or quango or uber-government source.

Hey, virtually nobody got killed in Chernobyl and it didn't have any after effects, whoo-hoo

I would never trust Greenpeace for anything, unless there was a substantiated independent and scientific corroboration. I have seen too many stupidities committed by their so-called experts in many fields. Believe it or not, a well-known spoof of mine was actually taken seriously by Greenpeace who actually seriously thanked me for having published it and they were bringing it to the attention of their international scientific committee. http://www.bnellis.com/msc/ and http://www.bnellis.com/msc/MSC_MSDS.htm

[Devil]

May I suggest that, before criticising the UN report from what has been published in the press, other media or by NGOs such as Greenpeace, everyone downloads the digest of the report at http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/Ch ... rnobyl.pdf

Any persons criticising will therefore be able to quote the points they disagree with verbatim, along with links to contradictory statements from established scientific sources. Maybe not so much fun as publishing unsubstantiated opinion, but it will make for a more serious debate on a very important subject.

[Starvid]

What is the source of those comments? I sure hope it is Greenpeace, since their credibility is close to zero.

My view is I'd trust Greenpeace above any government or quango or uber-government source.

Hey, virtually nobody got killed in Chernobyl and it didn't have any after effects, whoo-hoo

I would never trust Greenpeace for anything, unless there was a substantiated independent and scientific corroboration. I have seen too many stupidities committed by their so-called experts in many fields. Believe it or not, a well-known spoof of mine was actually taken seriously by Greenpeace who actually seriously thanked me for having published it and they were bringing it to the attention of their international scientific committee. http://www.bnellis.com/msc/ and http://www.bnellis.com/msc/MSC_MSDS.htm

Bwaaahahahaha!

For a split second I was like "Monosodium chloride, sounds dangerous, what is it?" And then the coin dropped into the slot.

They actually fell for that one? Ahahahahahahaha!

[Aedo]

I would never trust Greenpeace for anything, unless there was a substantiated independent and scientific corroboration. I have seen too many stupidities committed by their so-called experts in many fields. Believe it or not, a well-known spoof of mine was actually taken seriously by Greenpeace who actually seriously thanked me for having published it and they were bringing it to the attention of their international scientific committee. http://www.bnellis.com/msc/ and http://www.bnellis.com/msc/MSC_MSDS.htm

Outstanding!

[oiless]

Dihydrogen monoxide:
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

About the Chernobyl report, I'm going to take that with a grain of salt. (Or maybe a whole shaker full.)
I like how they gloss over all other reported health effects as being in peoples heads, stress induced, unprovable. Thousands of children reported to have non-cancerous thyroid problems, people with circulatory system problems, intestinal poblems, nervous system disorders.

This report strikes me as something that proved exactly what it set out to prove, by careful selection of the existing facts.

Blaming people for their health problems seems to me to be particularly low:

"In addition, individuals in the affected population were
officially given the label “Chernobyl victims”, thus
frequently taking on the role of invalids. It is known that
if a situation is perceived as real, it is real in its consequences.
Thus rather than perceiving themselves as “survivors,” the affected individuals
have been encouraged to perceive themselves as helpless, weak and lacking control over
their future."

There may very well be psychosomatic illness involved, I don't doubt it for a minute, but tarring everyone with that brush is disingenuous.

No one seems to doubt that PCB's are a health hazard, and yet I know and have known numerous old electricians that used to get shoulder deep in them adjusting transformer taps back in the day. They'd be covered in the stuff, wipe off with a rag and eat their sandwiches for lunch. They show no overt health problems. They were informed post-exposure that PCB's had been found to be extremely hazardous to health, and that they should not be surprised to experience future health problems. By the above logic at least some of them should be mopeing around displaying psychosomatic illness.
Of course you could also take the tack that based on my particular sample of "PCB victims" PCB's are safe.

[Russian_Cowboy]

There was no evidence to show radiation exposure in the areas around Chernobyl had had any effect on fertility, pregnancy problems, stillbirths or the overall health of children.

The main fallacy of this conclusion stems from the assumption that the effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the people living in the "high contamination" area adjacent to the plant are much higher than on the people farther away from the plant. Here is an illustration:
http://www.economist.com/science/displa ... id=4370135

However, the explosion in Chernobyl was so powerful that it sent tons of radionuclides, including plutonium, into the stratosphere and these radionuclides circled the Earth. I talked to people in the Dept.of Meteorology in Norman, OK. They with their devices registered a spike in radiation and radioactive dust on the other side of the globe in the Spring of 1986. Hence everybody on earth was affected. I doubt that those living 100 km from the plant have a much higher chance of contracting Chernobyl-related diseases that those living 1000 km away from Chernobyl.

Also the amount of research discovering a global runup in all sorts of radiation-related pathologies after the disaster is just too enormous to be ignored. Addidionally, I've read a report concluding that the most profound effect of the Chernobyl on human health is the manifold increase in neurological and psychiatric disorders. These consequences have been completely ingnored in the report by IAEA.

[PhilBiker]

There was no evidence to show radiation exposure in the areas around Chernobyl had had any effect on fertility, pregnancy problems, stillbirths or the overall health of children.

The main fallacy of this conclusion stems from the assumption that the effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the people living in the "high contamination" area adjacent to the plant are much higher than on the people farther away from the plant. Here is an illustration:
http://www.economist.com/science/displa ... id=4370135

However, the explosion in Chernobyl was so powerful that it sent tons of radionuclides, including plutonium, into the stratosphere and these radionuclides circled the Earth. I talked to people in the Dept.of Meteorology in Norman, OK. They with their devices registered a spike in radiation and radioactive dust on the other side of the globe in the Spring of 1986. Hence everybody on earth was affected. I doubt that those living 100 km from the plant have a much higher chance of contracting Chernobyl-related diseases that those living 1000 km away from Chernobyl.

Um......

The open-air nuclear testing done by the US and USSR in the 50s and 60s released many thousands (probably millions, possibly billions or trillions) of times the amount of radionuclides into the atmosphere than Chernobyl. Using your logic applied to Chernobyl the whole world should have been be a wasteland in the 60s. It travelled around the world and fell out everywhere.

Look it up, quite interesting! And definitely adds perspective about one tiny conventional "dirty" explosion compared to all those massive nuclear bombs going off left and right.

[Russian_Cowboy]

There was no evidence to show radiation exposure in the areas around Chernobyl had had any effect on fertility, pregnancy problems, stillbirths or the overall health of children.

The main fallacy of this conclusion stems from the assumption that the effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the people living in the "high contamination" area adjacent to the plant are much higher than on the people farther away from the plant. Here is an illustration:
http://www.economist.com/science/displa ... id=4370135

However, the explosion in Chernobyl was so powerful that it sent tons of radionuclides, including plutonium, into the stratosphere and these radionuclides circled the Earth. I talked to people in the Dept.of Meteorology in Norman, OK. They with their devices registered a spike in radiation and radioactive dust on the other side of the globe in the Spring of 1986. Hence everybody on earth was affected. I doubt that those living 100 km from the plant have a much higher chance of contracting Chernobyl-related diseases that those living 1000 km away from Chernobyl.

Um......

The open-air nuclear testing done by the US and USSR in the 50s and 60s released many thousands (probably millions, possibly billions or trillions) of times the amount of radionuclides into the atmosphere than Chernobyl. Using your logic applied to Chernobyl the whole world should have been be a wasteland in the 60s. It travelled around the world and fell out everywhere.

Look it up, quite interesting! And definitely adds perspective about one tiny conventional "dirty" explosion compared to all those massive nuclear bombs going off left and right.

In the case of Chernobyl, we are talking about TONS of uranium-235, plutonium, cesium, and other LONG-LIVING ALPHA-RAY emitting radionuclides dispersed all over the planet. If only a few atoms of this stuff get into your lungs, you are almost guaranteed to contract a sarcoma a few years down the road. If somebody has it in the testicles or uterus during conception, the baby will almost certainly have serious birth defects. A nuclear or hydrogen bomb explosion mostly generates SHORT-LIVING radionuclides emitting GAMMA-RAYS (much-much less dangerous to living organisms) during the fission. More than 99% of the radionuclides, generated during the cold-war nuclear tests, are already gone. The heavy radionuclides from Chernobyl will be around for decades.

[ChumpusRex]

In the case of Chernobyl, we are talking about TONS of uranium-235, plutonium, cesium, and other LONG-LIVING ALPHA-RAY emitting radionuclides dispersed all over the planet. If only a few atoms of this stuff get into your lungs, you are almost guaranteed to contract a sarcoma a few years down the road.

This is a misconception, which is clarified with figures, in the report.

Very roughly speaking the chernobyl explosion released radioactive isotopes equivalent to about 100 small atomic bombs - however, this is an estimate based on total radioactivity - the vast majority emitted was in the form of very short lived (hours) isotopes and inert gases, which would have dissipated relatively safely in the atmosphere.

There was also a big difference between the two explosions - the chernobyl explosion was a low temperature steam explosion - an atomic bomb produces an extremely high temperature blast which vapourises everything in its vicinity and carries the contents high into the atmosphere. This includes the plutonium and uranium that the bomb is made of.

The report explains, materials like uranium and plutonium are not voltaile, do not vapourise (except under extreme conditions) and are extremely hard and tend to remain in large particles. The vast majority of the plutonium simply remained in the reactor, or was ejected as complete fuel modules. Of the plutonium that did escape (estimated at approx 10 kg - or one bomb's worth) the vast majority simply fell to earth over the Chernobyl site itself.

Caesium (a beta/gamma emitter) is definitely a problem - Cs is volatile and was carried by the wind and deposited all over Europe. Precautions taken by local agencies minimized the effects on the population. Buildings were washed down (usually by rain), and where farmland was contaminated, milk and produce was marked unfit for consumption. This greatly reduced the impact on the general population. However, it is right to be concerned over caesium (which is relatively long lived - and is also the major fallout component of nuclear weapons testing).

Strontium (also a beta/gamma emitter) is also a problem but less so. Sr is only slightly volatile, so contamination was restricted only to 30 km or so around the plant.

[Devil]

As can be seen at
radiation from nuclear bomb tests is small compared with natural and medical levels. However, that from nuclear power generation - and this includes the effects of Chernobyl - is only 1/3 that of bomb testing. Both are easily lost in the natural levels, depending where you live.

There is a city in Iran where the background levels are 5o times higher than anywhere in the USA but the incidence of radiation related diseases is no higher, possibly even lower!

Look up hormesis.

[kmann]

In the case of Chernobyl, we are talking about TONS of uranium-235, plutonium, cesium, and other LONG-LIVING ALPHA-RAY emitting radionuclides dispersed all over the planet.

I don't think so.

[PhilBiker]

In the case of Chernobyl, we are talking about TONS of uranium-235, plutonium, cesium, and other LONG-LIVING ALPHA-RAY emitting radionuclides dispersed all over the planet.

I don't think so.

He must be getting his numbers from Greenpeace.

[Russian_Cowboy]

There was also a big difference between the two explosions - the chernobyl explosion was a low temperature steam explosion - an atomic bomb produces an extremely high temperature blast which vapourises everything in its vicinity and carries the contents high into the atmosphere. This includes the plutonium and uranium that the bomb is made of.

The explosion that blew off the roof of the reactor was low-temperature indeed. But the nuclear fuel inside the reactor was at a very high temperature as the reactor was outputting power at 30 times the design capacity. At the same time, the residents of Pripyat' were observing crimson-red shining fountain of nuclear fuel in plasma form (around 4000 C) blown out of the reactor into the atmosphere. Then it was falling on the earth in the immediate vicinity of the plant and spreading around the globe in the form of dust.

In the case of Chernobyl, we are talking about TONS of uranium-235, plutonium, cesium, and other LONG-LIVING ALPHA-RAY emitting radionuclides dispersed all over the planet.

I don't think so.

If you do not believe me, read Wikipedia:

Soviet scientists have reported that the Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor contained about 190 metric tons of uranium dioxide fuel and fission products. Estimates of the amount of this material that escaped range from 13 to 30 percent. Because of the intense heat of the fire, much of this was lofted high into the atmosphere (there not being a complete containment building to catch it), where it spread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_ ... te_results