USA Today article re: Chernobyl

["Jim Hardeman" <Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us>]

RADSAFE colleagues -

I thoguht you might be interested in the following article, which appeared in yesterday's edition of USA Today, concerning Chernobyl.

Jim Hardeman
Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20001214/2915928s.htm 

Page 23A 


Many people fear that more fallout from nuclear disaster is yet to come 
By Peter Shard
Agence-France Presse


PARIS -- Among the most alarming statements in the lead up to the final shutdown of the Chernobyl nuclear plant came in an aside made by a manager at the site.

Valentin Kupny broke what many saw as a conspiracy of silence when he admitted that no one could guarantee that the 160 tons of radioactive material inside the ill-fated No. 4 reactor was stable.

Nearly a decade and a half and an estimated tens of thousands of deaths after the explosion on April 26, 1986, the last surviving reactor, No. 3, will be shut down on Friday.

An engineer will flick a switch on the orders of Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma, control rods will be inserted into the reactor and the huge turbines will fall silent.

The process will be eerily like the moment when the disaster happened -- albeit in a different reactor. 

The accident occurred during a test shutdown of Reactor No. 4. A design fault caused a huge surge of power to course through the reactor, blowing the lid off and spewing radioactive dust.

The shutdown will take just moments, but the legacy of the explosion will endure for many years, with ongoing health, environmental and social consequences.

British and Dutch experts have suggested that food-growing areas badly hit by the fallout should be restricted for up to 30 years to allow residues of Caesium 137 in soil and water to dissipate.

Soil contaminated by the fallout is able to wreak genetic mutation in plants, according to Swiss and Ukrainian researchers. 

Scientists planted identical crops of wheat in a heavily contaminated plot within the 19-mile exclusion zone around the plant and at a clean site just outside. In the space of one generation -- just 10 months -- the wheat grown in the contaminated soil had developed mutations. According to the findings, there is a risk that flawed or damaged genes grown in contaminated soil could be handed on to subsequent generations.

Further research by an Israeli group that has airlifted hundreds of Jewish children from regions devastated by the disaster shows that health risks remain high. 

''This is the only disaster of its kind that actually gets worse with time rather than better,'' says Jay Litvin, medical liaison for Chabads Children of Chernobyl. ''It is the insidious nature of radiation. The fact that levels of radiation that still exist there are affecting the health of children today, even those born today, means people cannot be allowed to forget.'' 

Meanwhile, there are no signs that the exclusion zone around the plant will be lifted, and the job prospects for 5,500 employees who will be laid off when the plant closes on Friday look bleak. Farmland in parts of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus will be unusable.

In the soil and in the water tables of the areas surrounding the reactor, high levels of Caesium 137, Strontium 90 and Plutonium 139, 140 and 141 from radioactive fallout are concentrated in the topsoil to a depth of 6 inches.

There will be political fallout, as well. Ukrainians are concerned that the closure will make them more dependent on Russia for power.

Another problem is the increasingly frail ''sarcophagus,'' the concrete shell that stands between the world and an estimated 160 tons of radioactive material inside the broken reactor. Experts say 10% of the shell's surface is cracked and warn that the structure is in danger of collapse, an event that would trigger a new catastrophe.

The greatest concern here is with the continuing impact of the disaster on health.

Thyroid cancer in children, caused by radioactive fallout, has soared to epidemic proportions, while deaths among the 600,000 cleanup workers brought in from across the former Soviet Union are thought to be considerable.

However, there is no evidence to support claims there has been an increase in the incidence of genetic malformation within the immediate area or in Western Europe. 

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