Europe Features

Cloud over Chernobyl, 25 years after nuclear disaster

By Stefan Korshak Apr 25, 2011, 12:37 GMT

A handout photo released by environment organisation Greenpeace on 26 April 2011 shows a projection by activists on the wall of the Chernobyl \'Sarcophagus\', the concrete cover of the damaged reactor. EPA/VADIM KANTOR/GREENPEACE/HANDOUT

Kiev - The first hint the world had that something was amiss at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power station was a spike in atmospheric radiation recorded in Sweden a day after explosions and fires demolished one of the plants reactors.

The Soviet authorities initial response was to launch a cover- up. But as the seriousness of the disaster sunk in, they began sharing information with the general public and with their Western counterparts.

Eventually, the trickle of information turned into a flood, and the disaster went on to become a milestone in Mikhail Gorbachevs newly formulated policy of glasnost, or openness.

Twenty-eight people were killed in the first hours of the accident on April 26, 1986, but many thousands are believed to have died in subsequent months and years. Those involved in immediate cleanup and containment efforts counted for most of the fatalities.

Some 150,000 were called to action, among them firefighters, miners and military conscripts. They had little choice but to help out, and they received incomplete information, at best, about the dangers they faced.

These men were heroes; they risked their lives so that the worst of Chernobyl stayed here and didn't spread to the rest of the world,' said Maksim Kolegin, a worker at the station.

Known as liquidators,' the men put out the fires and evacuated a 30-kilometre perimeter around the plant, evacuating some 310,000 people who would never again see their homes. They then set to work building a huge concrete containment building, which become known as the sarcophagus.'

In Soviet shock-worker style, the giant structure went up in matter of months. Today, the containment building is showing its age, and plans are under way to construct a new one, with a cost estimated at 1.2 billion dollars.

But the public health problems stemming from Chernobyl are not so easy to fix, in no small part because no one really knows how bad things are.

The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has projected 4,000 additional deaths from cancer in countries affected by Chernobyl radiation. By contrast, Ukraine's Health Ministry estimates that some 12,000 people have died prematurely and that a person in an irradiated region is some 18 per cent more likely to fall ill than a person living in a safe region.

Environmental group Greenpeace puts forward a much greater number. In a 2006 study, it estimated that local populations would suffer as many as 250,000 additional cancer cases as a result of Chernobyl radiation, 100,000 of them fatal.

While many scientists have discounted the Greenpeace estimates as insufficiently rigorous, others say that no one really knows the effect of long-term exposure to low-level radiation.

Some scientists have estimated the territory polluted by Chernobyl will contain dangerous radioactive isotopes for thousands of years. Nature, nonetheless, has made a remarkable comeback. Thanks largely to armed guards who keep out hunters, there are growing populations of moose, beaver, wolf and elk.

The government has announced plans to review radiation in the area around the plant, known as the Chernobyl exclusion Zone, with the aim of returning some land to agricultural use and human settlement. Few details about the review, set to be completed by the end of the year, were released.

The zone is already deemed safe enough for brief visits. For a fee of about 150 dollars, a tourist can make a one-day excursion to the area, which includes lunch at the Chernobyl station cafeteria.

But the after-effects of the accident continue to exact a human and financial toll, Ukraine's cash-strapped government paying 1 billion dollars annually in pensions and health benefits to accident victims.

The sarcophagus is now weakening because of the haste in its construction and years of weather-related damage. That raises the risk of further release of radioactive materials.

During a recent donor conference, the European Union and Group of Eight (G8) industrial countries pledged at least 550 million euros to help Ukraine deal with Chernobyls after-effects. That should go quite some way towards construction of a new containment structure.

'Chernobyl is a problem for the entire world,' said Viktor Baloga, Ukraine's minister for Chernobyl administration and clean-up. 'But it will remain for us Ukrainians to live with it.'