One Year After Chernobyl

Sojourners first published this article in 1987, one year after a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded. Acccording to estimates from the World Health Organization, more than 9,000 people will die from cancer and leukemia related to Chernobyl. —The Editors, April 2016

On April 28, 1986, Chernobyl became a household word. On that day the world learned some frightening new lessons about nuclear power. Civilian nuclear power is not as safe as governments and nuclear industry representatives have promised. More important, in the event of an accident, there is nothing governments, industry experts, or anyone else can do to stop the cloud of deadly radiation that contaminates the air, water, and vegetation in its path.

Many studies about the Chernobyl accident have been done in the past year, and many, often conflicting, reports have been issued about its health effects. But there are still many more questions about the effects of low-level radiation than there are answers.

While exact figures on the extent of the damage done to human health by the Chernobyl catastrophe will never be known, official estimates have continually risen upward since the accident occurred. "Potentially health-threatening levels of radioactive materials were deposited more than 2,000 kilometers from the plant and in at least 20 countries," according to Christopher Flavin, in his report for the Worldwatch Institute.

Current estimates of increased cancer deaths in the Soviet Union range from a low of 5,100 to nearly 500,000. Experts agree that there will be additional cancer deaths caused by Chernobyl outside the Soviet Union. The U.S. government, which has a long history of underestimating radiation effects, recently released a report which estimates that 4,000 additional cancer deaths can be expected in Europe. This same report explains that "others might recommend a risk factor that is three times higher or lower."

Non-lethal cancers are expected to rise to similar proportions, with as many as 500,000 being projected. The discrepancies in the so-called experts' numbers should be cause enough for alarm. The numbers clearly indicate that no one knows the extent of the damage, and no one will until the affected population is carefully examined over many years.

Experts predict more instances of mental retardation in babies whose mothers were exposed to Chernobyl fallout during pregnancy. Dr. Robert P. Gale, a University of California at Los Angeles cancer specialist who has been working with Soviet doctors since the accident, said that "exposure to radiation before birth will make the retardation rate of those infants 50 percent higher than usual."

Children and unborn babies are known to be the most susceptible to radiation effects. That is why a study in Austria after Chernobyl was viewed with concern. This study demonstrated increased levels of radiation in the milk of breast-feeding women, as well as in cows. No one can say how this will affect young children.

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LOSSES resulting from Chernobyl are also staggering. In the Soviet Union, accident expenses include the initial clean-up and entombing of the damaged reactor as well as replacing several villages and the high-rise city of Pripyat. The official Soviet cost estimate is $3 billion, but independent economists are using much higher figures.

In Scotland and Wales, a costly ban on the sale of sheep was imposed after several were found to be contaminated. In Switzerland's Lake Lugano, all fishing was banned after catches showed high levels of radiation. Throughout Europe vegetables, berries, and fruit were destroyed as each was found to be contaminated, and tons of cows' milk was dumped. In Poland honey shortages are projected because millions of honeybees were killed by the radioactive cloud. Millions of dollars were spent to monitor the radiation and dispose of the contaminated products. And these figures do not take into account the medical costs for the projected increases in cancer and other related diseases.

One cost from Chernobyl that is harder to quantify is the cultural impact. The culture of the Same people, or Laplanders, of northern Sweden and Norway revolves around reindeer, as it has for hundreds of years. Last fall 97 percent of the first 1,000 reindeer put to the annual fall slaughter were found to contain radiation in excess of permissible levels. The Sames were also told not to eat much locally caught fish or locally grown vegetables. Whether the Sames can exist without the consumption and sale of reindeer meat for at least the next five years is a major question.

ONE MEASURABLE QUANTITY since Chernobyl has been the growth of public opposition to nuclear power. Citizen-led protests have gained new momentum throughout the world in the past year. In several countries mainstream political parties are adopting an anti-nuclear policy.

Non-nuclear countries are encouraging bordering nations to dismantle plans and plants for nuclear generation and waste reprocessing. Three countries changed their nuclear plans as a direct result of Chernobyl. The governments of Austria and the Philippines decided to dismantle their single reactors, and in Greece the government abandoned plans for the country's first reactor.

Not surprisingly, the countries that have worked the hardest to sell nuclear power as the energy source of the future redoubled their efforts in the wake of Chernobyl. The first responses came while the Chernobyl reactor was still burning.

First, the Soviet reactor design was called defective. Second, the graphite core of this particular reactor was pointed to as the problem. And third, each country said it couldn't happen to its reactors.

These same responses, in varying degrees, came from France, the United Kingdom, West Germany, and the United States. The Soviet Union, for its part, said simply that the Chernobyl accident was caused by operator error, emphasizing that the designs were extremely safe and that the accident would not change plans to continue expanding its nuclear generating capacity.

In the United States, public support for new plants has steadily declined since well before Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. In fact, there have been no new orders for nuclear plants in the United States since 1974, and 108 plants that had been ordered were cancelled. Since the Chernobyl accident, the U.S. nuclear industry has found it increasingly difficult to commission already completed, but unpopular, reactors.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering regulations that would in effect remove the current requirement for state and local participation in emergency evacuation plans. This NRC rule has been proposed because at both the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire and the Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island, full-power operation licensing has been blocked by state and local authorities refusing to participate in emergency planning. At a hearing in February, opponents of the rule change included Govs. Cuomo of New York, Dukakis of Massachusetts, Kunin of Vermont, and Celeste of Ohio, along with Sens. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Kerry (D-Mass.), Moynihan (D-N.Y.), and D'Amato (R-N.Y.).

Never before have so many high-level government officials gathered to openly oppose the commissioning of completed nuclear reactors. This indicates how serious the problems of the U.S. nuclear power industry have become.

CHERNOBYL CAME AT A TIME when much of the world was already reassessing the costs and benefits of civilian nuclear power. In the United States, the old promises of a clean, safe source of energy that was "too cheap to meter" had long since died. But the momentum created by these false promises, along with unprecedented, often hidden, government subsidies, propelled the industry well past its logical end.

Nuclear power has been tested, and it has failed miserably. It has been found costly, environmentally unsound, in need of police-state security measures, and prone to accidents with sometimes catastrophic consequences. And there is still no proven answer to the waste disposal problems, in spite of industry promises to the contrary.

The often-maligned critics of nuclear power have been shown to be far more reliable and accurate than the government and nuclear industry experts. We should now listen to those who say we can survive quite nicely without the use of nuclear power and begin the process of weaning ourselves from this dangerous energy source.

An obvious place to begin is by making sure that no new reactors are started up. Shoreham and Seabrook have shown that if the public protests long and hard enough, local and state politicians will catch up. The second step is to start working to close the least safe of the operating reactors. Several U.S. reactors have a horrendous safety record and have been described by critics as accidents waiting to happen. And finally, we have to map out a plan to move away from nuclear energy entirely, in favor of the many existing alternatives that do not risk international environmental catastrophe.

The costs of abandoning the new plants and decommissioning the old ones will be high, but not nearly as high as the government subsidies needed to keep the nuclear power industry going. Nor as high as the cost of finding out too late how many Chernobyl-like accidents our planet can survive.

Dennis Marker was a Sojourners’ assistant to the editor when this article appeared.