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April 26, 2017 by Nukewatch 3 Comments

Chernobyl’s Fallout Spread to “Wherever it rains in the United States”

“Liquidators” getting ready with lead aprons to climb onto the  roof of Chernobyl reactor No. 4 after the initial explosions and fire. (RIA Novosti) Half-a-million military conscripts were ordered to work in severely radioactive areas. Ukrainian Health Minister Andrei Serdyuk estimated in 1995 that Chernobyl’s death toll was 125,000 from illnesses traced to radiation exposure.

 

Commercial Media Forgets Chernobyl Spread Radioactive Fallout Across Hemisphere, and “Wherever it rains in the United States”

By John LaForge, 25 April 2017

Commercial media recollections of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe almost always minimize its global impact. A New York Times editorial last Dec. described the April 26 explosions and fires as “a volcano of deadly radioactivity that reached Poland and Scandinavia.” This picture is both factually true and grossly understated — because Chernobyl’s carcinogenic fallout went far beyond northern Europe and all around the world — a fact that is easy to verify.

For example, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) concluded in 2011 that the disaster “Resulted in radioactive material becoming widely dispersed and deposited … throughout the northern hemisphere.” Then, hammering the lesson home like a drill sergeant, UNSCEAR’s report (“Health effects due to radiation from the Chernobyl accident”) repeats the phrase “throughout the northern hemisphere” at least five times on pages 310, 311, 315, 316, and 343. Chernobyl’s hemispheric contamination was well known long before the UNSCEAR review, noted in hundreds of books, journals and scientific papers. The March 30, 2005 Oxford Journals reported, “The releases of radioactive materials were such that contamination of the ground was found to some extent in every country in the Northern Hemisphere.” An Environmental History of the World (2002) by Donald Hughes says, “There were measurable amounts throughout the Northern Hemisphere.”

Yet trivialization is the mainstream media rule, especially after three simultaneous reactor melt-downs at Fukushima-Daiichi have contaminated the whole of the Pacific Ocean. On April 23, Abu Dhabi’s “The National” said about Chernobyl: “Half a million ‘liquidators,’ mostly military reservists from all over the Soviet Union, tried to clean up the affected area.” This is flatly untrue, because no one decontaminated the entire Northern hemisphere. Soviet conscripts worked only the region knows as the “exclusion zone” around Chernobyl reactor No. 4 in Pripyat, Ukraine.

Understatements rewrite history, deceptively misinform

Understatements were the rule in the 1990s. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, on April 27, 1998, described “a deadly cloud of radiation across large sections of Russia and Europe.” ¶ The Appleton, Wisc. Post Crescent, April 26, 1998, said, “Ukraine and parts of Russia were hard hit.” ¶ The New York Times, on April 23, 1998, depicted the disaster as “a poisonous radioactive cloud north of Kiev.” ¶ The Los Angeles Times, on April 27, 1995, limited the fallout to   “a radioactive cloud across Ukraine, Russia and parts of Europe.” ¶ A June 1, 1998, Associated Press story restricted the “deadly cloud of radiation” to “large sections of Russia and Europe.”

The website GlobalVoices.org reported this April 19: “Chernobyl… caused radioactive material to be spewed into the atmosphere, exposing hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe to extremely high doses of radiation.” In fact, half of Chernobyl’s total fallout was spewed far beyond the three hardest-hit states, going to every corner of the hemisphere.

Of course it misinforms the public to ignore the fact that reactor disasters have poisoned the whole earth, but why?

One reason is that downplaying the severity of Chernobyl — and Fukushima-Daiichi as well — sugar-coats the threat posed today and every day by operating power reactors beyond their original license limits, or near earthquake faults, volcanic regions, or tsunami zones. The hidden agenda behind the profit-driven media’s deliberate belittling of reactor accidents — and the dangers of radiation — is to protect significant advertising revenue. Big utilities, big pharma, big mining, big universities, and big weapons labs makes billions of dollars from increasing the “background” level of radiation. Official background exposure was 170 millirems per-year for decades; 18 months after Chernobyl it doubled to 360 mR/yr; and it nearly doubled again a few years ago to 620 mR/yr.) “Nuclearists” intend to keep it this way, even if it means buying pricey ads claiming that reactors are safe and small radiation doses are harmless.

Chernobyl Doused the Whole Hemisphere

Early on in Chernobyl reporting, it was common for the Associated Press and others to broadcast its global impact using plain language. On May 14, 1986, AP noted, “An invisible cloud of radioactivity… has worked its way gradually around the world.” On Oct. 9, 1988, it said flatly, “Chernobyl … spewed radiation worldwide.” And it reported in the Duluth Herald, May 15, 1986: “Airborne radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident is now so widespread that it is likely to fall to the ground wherever it rains in the United States, the EPA said.” This warning should never stop being flabbergasting, and should have been the death knell for nuclear power.

The Duluth News-Tribune & Herald reported May 22, 1986:  “For the second time since the [Chernobyl disaster] last month, a slightly elevated level of radioactive iodine has been found in a Minnesota milk sample, state health officials said.” Western officials were precautionary. The AP reported May 15, 1986 that “State authorities in Oregon have warned residents dependent solely on rainwater for drinking that they should arrange other supplies for the time being.”

Again, author Donald Hughes notes, “For example, an increase of [radiation in rainwater] recorded on May 12 in Washington State was more than 140 times the background level measured immediately before the Chernobyl cloud reached the USA.”

Today, remember to read corporate minimization of Chernobyl’s effects with a radioactive grain of salt.

Filed Under: Chernobyl, Fukushima, Nuclear Power, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste, Weekly Column

December 10, 2016 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Visit “Postapocalyptic” Chernoyl for “$5,495 and Up”

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2016-2017

A hair-raising ad in the Travel section of the Nov. 20 New York Times features the claim that “nature has managed an impressive comeback” in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. This debunked story might fool vacationers eyeing the so-called Science & Nature tour—with prices starting at $5,495—called “Chernobyl, 30 Year Later.”

Pripyat Hotel (above), in the radioactive exclusion zone around the devastated Chernobyl reactor site in Ukraine, is a tourist destination.

For 8 days beginning May 27, 2017, up to 25 people are invited to “explore the postapocalyptic Chernobyl zone … with a New York Times expert and a range of specialists.” No large-print in the ad uses the word “radiation,” which explains only that, “In 1986, the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, USSR, experienced a cataclysmic disaster, a cautionary tale of science gone awry.” A list of tour spots designed to excite the adventurous traveller notes these high points:

“• Explore the restricted Chernobyl exclusion zone, staying overnight in the Pripyat Hotel, the only one in the town of Chernobyl. • See the sarcophagus surrounding the reactor, and the new safe confinement structure currently under construction. • Learn what became of the many plants and animals in the Chernobyl area following the disaster, and how nature has managed an impressive comeback. • Visit Slavutych, home of the Center for Radioecology, which coordinates environmental research in the exclusion zone to study the long-term biological and ecological effects.”

A packing list was not included, but make sure to bring along disposable booties, water filter and replacement lungs.

Filed Under: Chernobyl, Environment, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure

October 7, 2016 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Chernobyl

chernobyl Chernobyl after the number 4 reactor exploded.

chernobyl cover

The Chernobyl barrier constructed immediately after the explosion.

Nukewatch Fact Sheet (PDF Download) – Chernobyl: How much radiation was released?

Nukewatch Quarterly articles

April 23, 2011

WALK FOR A NUCLEAR-FREE FUTURE
Coverage on Fox 11 News from the Wisconsin Fox Valley
Marchers Remember Chernobyl

http://www.fox11online.com/dpp/news/marchers-remember-chernobyl

Marchers remember Chernobyl

25 years since Chernobyl

Saturday, 23 Apr 2011, 9:24 PM CDT
Published : Saturday, 23 Apr 2011, 6:33 PM CDT

FOX 11, WLUK-TB Green Bay, Wisconsin reporter: Beth Jones

KEWAUNEE – Protesters hit the streets in Kewaunee County opposed to the area’s two nuclear power plants.

Saturday’s action follows ongoing troubles with damaged nuclear plants in Japan.

It also marks the approach of the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine.

It’s been almost exactly two and a half decades since the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown.

Those who lived near the plant in the Ukraine back then say it was a tough time for everyone.

“I just remember the emotional impact it had on people and even to this day, 25 years ago, I’m keenly aware of the radiation being in the fallen leaves in the fall, in the tap water,” explained former Ukraine resident, Natasha Akulenko.

Natasha Akulenko lived through that disaster and now is marching in protest of nuclear power plants to prevent another.

More than two dozen people from all over the state protested peacefully around the Kewanee Power station and Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant.

Members of the non-profit group, “Nukewatch,” say they want to promote a nuclear-free future, in remembrance of what happened at Chernobyl, and what is ongoing at damaged plants in Japan.

“We just think the risks are too high to justify operation of nuclear reactors,” said Nukewatch Co-Director John LaForge.

The two nuclear power plants combined produce enough electricity to power more than one million homes in Wisconsin.

But marchers feel there are better alternatives to nuclear power.

“We’re asking for the phase out of nuclear, and its replacement with renewables like wind, and solar and energy efficiency,” said “Beyond Nuclear” group member, Kevin Kamps.

Marchers say they don’t want what happened in Chernobyl or Fukushima to happen here, and they believe it could.

The Associated Press reported earlier this month that both plants drew extra attention several years ago from regulators because of spotty safety records.

However officials say operating under new ownership the plants have improved those safety grades.

Point Beach officials say safety remains their number one priority.

“It’s about having redundant systems in place,” said Point Beach Communications Manager, Sara Cassidy. “It’s about having back up diesel generators that are ready in case we need them. It’s all about doing what we can to make sure we’re promoting public health and safety.”

The Kewaunee Power Station is licensed to 2033.

Point Beach is licensed to 2030 and 2033.

And in addition to federal regulators, these protesters say they too will continue to keep a watchful eye on the plants.

FOX 11 did contact the Kewaunee Power Station, however no one was available for comment.

Contact us for related articles and information.

 

Filed Under: Chernobyl Tagged With: chernobyl, nuclear power

July 11, 2016 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Radiation Harm Deniers?

Pro-Nuclear Environmentalists and the Chernobyl Death Toll
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2016
By Dr. Jim Green 

When it comes to the long-term death toll from the1986 reactor meltdown at Chernobyl, most self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalists conflate uncertainty with a mortality rate of zero. Denying the deadly impact of a nuclear disaster because the exact science is uncertain is a position just as indefensible as denying the existence of climate change for similar reasons.

Before considering the pro-nuclear environmentalists’ misinformation, here is a brief summary of credible positions and scientific studies regarding the Chernobyl cancer death toll (for detail see the April 26, 2014 article in The Ecologist).

Epidemiological studies are of course important, but they’re of limited use in estimating the overall Chernobyl death toll. The effects of Chernobyl, however large or small, are largely lost in the statistical noise of widespread cancer incidence and mortality.

The most up-to-date scientific review is the TORCH-2016 report written by radiation biologist Dr. Ian Fairlie. Dr. Fairlie sifts through a vast number of scientific papers and points to studies indicative of Chernobyl’s impact:

  • An increased incidence of radiogenic thyroid cancers in Austria;
  • An increased incidence of leukemia among sub-populations in ex-Soviet states (and possibly other countries—more research needs to be done);
  • Increases in solid cancers, leukemia and thyroid cancer among clean-up workers;
  • Increased rates of cardiovascular disease and stroke that might be connected to Chernobyl (more research needs to be done);
  • A large study revealing statistically significant increases in nervous system birth defects in highly contaminated areas in Russia, similar to the elevated rates observed in contaminated areas in Ukraine; and more.
So what else have we got?

Without for a moment dismissing the importance of the epidemiological record, let alone the importance of further research, suffice it here to note that there is no way that one could even begin to estimate the total Chernobyl death toll from the existing body of studies.

Estimates of collective radiation exposure are available. For example, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates a total collective dose of 600,000 person-Sieverts over 50 years from Chernobyl fallout. And the collective radiation dose can be used to estimate the death toll using the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model.

If we use the IAEA’s collective radiation dose estimate, and a risk estimate derived from LNT (0.1 cancer deaths per person-Sievert), we get an estimate of 60,000 cancer deaths. Any number of studies (including studies published in peer-reviewed scientific literature) use LNT to estimate the Chernobyl death toll. These studies produce estimates ranging from 9,000 cancer deaths (in the most contaminated parts of the former Soviet Union) to 93,000 cancer deaths (across Europe).

Those are the credible estimates of the cancer death toll from Chernobyl. None of them are conclusive—far from it—but that’s the nature of the problem we’re dealing with.

Moreover, LNT may underestimate risks. The 2006 report of the US National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) states: “The committee recognizes that its risk estimates become more uncertain when applied to very low doses. Departures from a linear model at low doses, however, could either increase or decrease the risk per unit dose.”

So the true Chernobyl cancer death toll could be lower or higher than the LNT-derived estimate of 60,000 deaths—a point that needs emphasis and constant repetition since the nuclear industry and its supporters frequently conflate an uncertain long-term death toll with a long-term death toll of zero.

A second defensible position, taken by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), is that the long-term Chernobyl cancer death toll is unknown and unknowable because of the uncertainties associated with the science.

Pro-nuclear environmentalists

A third position—unqualified claims that the Chernobyl death toll was just 50 or so, comprising some emergency responders and a small percentage of those who later suffered from thyroid cancer—should be rejected as uninformed or dishonest spin from the nuclear industry and some of its scientifically-illiterate supporters.

Those illiterate supporters include every last one of the self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalists. We should note in passing that some pro-nuclear environmentalists have genuine environmental credentials while others—such as Patrick Moore and Australian Ben Heard—are in the pay of the nuclear industry.

James Hansen and George Monbiot cite UNSCEAR to justify a Chernobyl death toll of 43, without noting that the UNSCEAR report did not attempt to calculate long-term deaths. James Lovelock asserts that “in fact, only 42 people died” from the Chernobyl disaster.

Patrick Moore, citing the UN Chernobyl Forum (which included UN agencies such as the IAEA, UNSCEAR, and WHO), states that Chernobyl resulted in 56 deaths. In fact, the Chernobyl Forum’s 2005 report estimated up to 4,000 long-term cancer deaths among the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations, and a follow-up study by the World Health Organization in 2006 estimated an additional 5,000 deaths among people exposed to lower doses in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Australian “ecomodernist” academic Barry Brook says the Chernobyl death toll is less than 60. Ben Heard, another Australian “ecomodernist” (in fact a uranium and nuclear industry consultant), claims that the death toll was 43.

There doesn’t appear to be a single example of a pro-nuclear environmentalist—or a comparable organization—providing a credible account of the Chernobyl death toll. They’re perfectly entitled to follow UNSCEAR’s lead and argue that the long-term death toll is uncertain. But conflating or confusing that uncertainty with a long-term death toll of zero clearly isn’t a defensible approach.

Shaky understanding

Evidence of pro-nuclear environmentalist ignorance abounds. For the most part, pro-nuclear environmentalists had a shaky understanding of the radiation/health debates (and other nuclear issues) before they joined the pro-nuclear club, and they have a shaky understanding now.

James Hansen’s understanding of the radiation/health debates is shaky, to say the least. He falsely claims there is a “generally accepted 100 millisievert threshold for fatal disease development.” But the accepted scientific position is that there is no threshold. Thus, a 2010 UNSCEAR report states that “the current balance of available evidence tends to favour a non-threshold response for the mutational component of radiation-associated cancer induction at low doses and low dose rates.”

Barry Brook is another example of someone whose understanding was shaky before and after he joined the pro-nuclear environmentalist club. Brook says that before 2009 he hadn’t given much thought to nuclear power because of the “peak uranium” argument. By 2010, Brook was in full flight, asserting that the LNT model is “discredited” and has “no relevance to the real world.”

In fact, LNT enjoys heavy-hitting scientific support. For example the US National Academy of Sciences’ BEIR report states that “the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and … the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.”

Likewise, a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states: “Given that it is supported by experimentally grounded, quantifiable, biophysical arguments, a linear extrapolation of cancer risks from intermediate to very low doses currently appears to be the most appropriate methodology.”

Conspiracy theories

On Chernobyl, Brook said: “The credible literature (WHO, IAEA) puts the total Chernobyl death toll at less than 60. The ‘conspiracy theories’ drummed up against these authoritative organizations rings a disturbingly similar bell in my mind to the crank attacks on the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA and World Meteorlogical Organization in climate science.”

But the WHO, IAEA and other UN agencies estimated 9,000 deaths in ex-Soviet states in their 2005/06 reports, and more recently UNSCEAR has adopted the position that the long-term death toll is uncertain.

Brook repeatedly promotes the work of Ted Rockwell from “Radiation, Science, and Health,” an organization that peddles dangerous conspiracy theories such as this: “Government agencies suppress data, including radiation hormesis, and foster radiation fear. They support extreme, costly, radiation protection policies; and preclude using low-dose radiation for health and medical benefits that apply hormesis, in favor of using (more profitable) drug therapies.”

Brook promotes the discredited “hormesis” theory that low doses of radiation are beneficial to human health. …

Good for wildlife?

If Brook and contrarian scientists are right, Chernobyl (and Fukushima) have been beneficial by spreading health-giving, life-affirming ionizing radiation far and wide. And according to some pro-nuclear environmentalists, Chernobyl has been a boon for wildlife and biodiversity.

The region surrounding Chernobyl is one of Europe’s “finest natural preserves” according to Stewart Brand. Pro-nuclear environmentalist Mark Lynas says the Chernobyl “explosion has even been good for wildlife, which has thrived in the 30km exclusion zone,” and he says that restrictions on fishing around Fukushima “will improve the marine environment there.”

James Lovelock says the land around Chernobyl “is now rich in wildlife” and he follows this asinine argument to its logical conclusion: “We call the ash from nuclear power nuclear waste and worry about its safe disposal. I wonder if instead we should use it as an incorruptible guardian of the beautiful places on Earth. Who would dare cut down a forest which was a storage place of nuclear ash?”

According to most pro-nuclear environmentalists, radiation exposure from Chernobyl has been harmless (except for those exposed to extremely high doses), and according to some it has been beneficial to human health. And Chernobyl has been good for wildlife and biodiversity (mutations aside). Follow the pro-nuclear environmentalists down these rabbit-holes and you come up with Hansen’s claim that the nuclear industry’s safety record is “superior to any other major industry,” or Lynas’ claim that nuclear power is “extraordinarily safe,” or Brook’s claim that “nuclear power is the safest energy option.”

Nuclear power the safest energy option? Safer than wind and solar? To arrive at that conclusion, Brook and others understate the death toll from Chernobyl (and Fukushima) by orders of magnitude. They conflate an uncertain long-term Chernobyl death toll with a long-term death toll of zero, ignoring the science every bit as much as do climate change deniers.

—Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter. This article, which has been edited for length,was written for the April 7, 2016 edition of The Ecologist.

Filed Under: Chernobyl, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure

July 15, 2015 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Chernobyl and the Fire Next Time

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2015
By John LaForge 

The April 26, 1986 Chernobyl disaster was remembered unhappily the world over. In Germany, 29 years after the fact, the ancient custom of wild boar hunting is still prohibited because the animals remain too contaminated with Chernobyl’s long-lived radioactive fallout.

Government warnings of Chernobyl’s dispersed cancer agents are nearly forgotten today, but a May 14, 1986 bulletin from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)said, “[A]irborne radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident is now so widespread that it is likely to fall to the ground wherever it rains in the United States.”

A week later, Minnesotans read, “For the second time since the [Chernobyl disaster] last month, a slightly elevated level of radioactive iodine has been found in a Minnesota milk sample, state health officials said. … The amount of iodine-131 in the air also increased slightly [May 19] after several days of decline, health officials said.” (“Slight rise in radioactivity found again in state milk,” Duluth News-Tribune & Herald, May 22, 1986)

The AP reported May 15, 1986, “State authorities in Oregon have warned residents dependent solely on rainwater for drinking that they should arrange other supplies for the time being.” Likewise, regarding the triple reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, Forbes reported on April 11, 2011: “Radiation from Japan has been detected in drinking water in 13 more American cities, and cesium-137 has been found in American milk—in Montpelier, Vermont—for the first time since the Japan nuclear disaster began, according to data released by the EPA late [April 8].”

Wildfires put contamination back in the air 

Chernobyl exploded and burned out of control for weeks. The French Nuclear Energy Agency’s “2002 Update of Chernobyl,” noted that “[C]ontinuing low-level releases occurred … for up to 40 days after the accident, particularly on 15 and 16 May, attributable to continuing outbreaks of fires or to hot areas in the reactor.…”

Demonstrating nuclear power’s capacity for whole-earth poisoning, the catastrophic consequences are still spreading three decades later.

The dispersion of large amounts of radioactive cesium-137—which persists in the environment for at least 300 years—was especially concentrated in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, where half the spewed radiation fell. The other half spread to every country in the Northern Hemisphere. The American Geophysical Union reported in 2009 that radioactive cesium-137 dispersed by Chernobyl wouldn’t “disappear” from the environment through decay for up to 320 years.

Cesium has heavily contaminated forested areas of Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone, an area of some 1,000 square miles surrounding the reactor where access and habitation are severely limited. When the forests catch fire, radioactive materials including cesium are again dispersed to the winds.

For two months in the summer of 2010, wildfires in Russia burned over 2 million acres and caused at least 50 deaths. The August 10, 2010 the New York Times noted that “dozens of fires have been burning in contaminated zones.” Two days later, the AP and the Agency France Presse cited government reports that at least six wildfires had been extinguished “this week” in the heavily-contaminated Bryansk region.

About the 2010 wildfires, Time magazine reported that Russian leaders had removed maps of likely radiation-contaminated fires from web sites maintained by the national forestry agency. (Taking a lesson from the Russians, the US government halted its emergency radiation monitoring of water and milk on the West Coast a mere two months after the start of Fukushima’s three explosions and meltdowns.)

In 2002, dozens of peat fires and wildfires again spread across heavily-contaminated Belarus. The AP reported July 22, 2002 that “Belarusian Emergency Minister Valery Astapov said radiation levels in the fire zone are elevated…”

The Washington Post and AP reported in April 1996 that a wildfire had “spread quickly through five villages in the exclusion zone, carried by strong winds blowing toward Kiev and its 2.6 million residents. It burned pines and buildings in one of the areas most heavily contaminated with radioactive cesium.”

“Eight percent” of radioactive fallout re-suspended—but eight percent of what? 

The latest news of cesium spreading from Chernobyl comes from a team of researchers led by Timothy Mousseau, a biologist at the University of South Carolina. According to Dr. Mousseau’s report, published in Ecological Monographs, wildfires that burned in the exclusion zone in 2002, 2008 and 2010 have together redistributed approximately eight percent of the original amount of cesium-137 released by the 1986 disaster—the world’s worst accidental airborne release. The researchers warned that large blazes in the future could spread significant amounts of radioactive soot across Europe, leading to contamination of food crops, the New York Times reported April 6, 2015.

In 2006, The Other Report on Chernobyl (TORCH, by Ian Fairlie and David Sumner) concluded that about 30 percent of the reactor’s radioactivity was distributed over the reactor building and surrounding areas and about 1–2 percent was ejected into the atmosphere. The sum total of radioactivity released was about 324.3 million curies. All of the reactor’s radioactive gases (xenon and krypton) were released.

In 2005, the Chernobyl Forum—comprised of more than 100 scientists, eight UN agencies and the governments of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine—estimated that the total release over the first 10 days reached 378.3 million curies. (Bob Edwards, “Major UN report counts human cost of Chernobyl,” New Scientist, Sept. 5, 2005.)

The Lawrence Livermore National Lab suggested in 1986 that 50 percent of the core’s radioactivity was spewed—4.5 billion curies, according to Science, June 13, 1986. In 1991, Vladimir Chernousenko, a fellow of the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and chief scientific supervisor of “clean up” in the 10-kilometer zone around the demolished reactor, noted that independent experts estimated that 80 percent of the reactor’s radioactivity escaped—over 6.4 billion curies.

According to Mousseau, forests covered 50 percent the Chernobyl exclusion zone before 1986, but trees and brush now cover 70 percent of the no-go area. Mousseau’s team reports that as climate change increasingly heats and dries the region, wildfires are expected to rage more often and more fiercely.

Asked by the Times what the consequences of this dispersion of radioactive materials might be, Mousseau was circumspect and grim. “There is never a positive consequence of having increased amounts of mutagenic materials in our environment,” he said. “It’s always negative.”

Filed Under: Chernobyl, Environment, Fukushima, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

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