Environmental Issues

 Accidents are not something that can be considered as something out of the ordinary, specially when dealing with immense machineries and outdated technology. Nuclear power plant operation is no exception to the rule. Massive amounts of energy, if not properly monitored and regulated, can and will cause a catastrophe unimaginable in scale and magnitude. Whether the accident at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986 was an accident or caused by human negligence or sheer incompetence will be the focus of the paper.

    In April of 1986, the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl exploded, releasing a significant amount of radioactive material into the atmosphere. The  cause of the disaster was allegedly due to the deficient design of the nuclear reactor in the plant and the inadequacy in the training of the personnel that were in charge on operating the plant itself. Indirectly, the cause of the nuclear disaster was the isolation of the Soviet Union from the technology available that could have made the plant operate on a safer level. On the evening of the disaster, two workers of the plant died, and within a span of a few weeks, 28 more people lost their lives as a result of the accident (World Nuclear Association).

    On the 28th of April in Sweden, plant officials from the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, located 60 miles to the north of the capital Stockholm, monitored high levels of radiation in the atmosphere.  At first they checked on the status of their own reactors for signs of trouble, and finding nothing, examined the clothes of the workers in the plant. To their surprise, the clothing gave off dangerous levels of radiation. Ground and air samples gave off four to five times the average amount of radiation that was considered safe (John Greenwald 1).

    The operation of the plant was met with some measure of skepticism by the general public, skepticism and fear that was met with a degree of either misplaced optimism or just plain bravado from Soviet officials. In his paper From Scientific research to Nuclear Industry, exactly 14 years before the accident, A.M. Petrosyants, chair of the Soviet Union State committee on the use of nuclear energy, said that the future of the Soviet nuclear industry was very promising, and assured the nation of a stable and ready source of power (Medvedev 2).

    Moscow moved swiftly to contain the damage bought about by the disaster. Moscow released findings that the radioactive readings in the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, was safe and within normal levels. But all of that was a cleverly schemed lie to cover up the effects of the accident. In their minds, the nuclear power industry was a symbol of advanced progress. That would be coupled with their boasting that the use of nuclear power was safe and economical (Miriam Schroder 1). Illustration 1: Location of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Source: World Nuclear Association.

    Located approximately nine miles (14.5 kilometers) northwest of Chernobyl, the plant is situated 20 kilometers south of the Belarus border. At the time, the plant had four reactors in operation (Green Facts 1). Thee four working RBMK power units at the plant must be discussed, as this will give a further insight to the events that led to disaster. For the plant to generate electrical power, the plant must achieve a chain reaction of the uranium in the reactors. This is the same reaction that nuclear weapons achieve, such as the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima and the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki (Richard Mould 12). Using enriched uranium for its operation, the RBMK-1000 was a Soviet designed and manufactured graphite pressure tube type reactor. Steam is directly fed into the turbines, the water being fed to the bottom of the fuel channels achieving boiling point as they move up the pressure tubes. The steam produced by the water powers two 500 MW turbines, producing electricity (World). Illustration 2: RBMK 1000 deisgn reactor at Chernobyl. Source: World Nuclear Association.

    In the magazine Ogonyok, the academician M.A. Styrikovich (1980) praised the safety of nuclear power, saying that the nuclear power stations are not only safe, but perfectly safe to operate. This will provide the needed power for the then Soviet Union. In the same thread, N.M. Sinev, the deputy head of the State committee on the utilization of nuclear energy, stated that on the whole, nuclear power plants can be treated as ordinary furnaces, and the workers as those who shovel in the coal. In essence, Sinev said that the operation of the nuclear power plants are no more dangerous than operating a furnace or a steam boiler (Grigori Medvedev 1).The statements seemed to be designed to achieve a two-fold result. One, the statement seemed to have reassured the public about the safe operation of the plant. Secondly, the staff can be paid with the same wages as that of a thermal power plant, and even less than that. In the 1980's, the pay for the workers in the nuclear power plants were below that of the employees in the thermal power stations (Medvedev 1). But the disaster at Chernobyl seemed to have a foreboding in the words of Aleksandr Yefimovich Sheidlin in his comments to the Literaturnaya Gazeta, on August 1984:

    ...We were delighted to hear of a remarkable achievement- the start-up of the No. 4 reactors, generating one million kilowatts of electricity, at the V.I. Lenin nuclear power station, Chernobyl... (Medvedev 3).
Sheidlin had no idea at the time that the number 4 reactor was to be the catalyst for worst nuclear disasters in the history of mankind (John McCarthy). On the 25th of April of 1986, the operators of the plant began a series of tests on the number 4 reactor of the Chernobyl plant, prior to a scheduled shutdown of the plant (World). The tests sought to determine the time that the turbines would spin and supply power to the primary circulating pumps resulting from a power loss of electrical supply. A series of actions by the operators were done ahead of the tests in the early hours of the 26th of April, including the shutdown of the automatic shutdown systems. When the operator moved to shut down the reactor, it had already achieved an unstable condition (World).

    The accident at Chernobyl was basically a combination of insufficient training on the part of the operators running the facility and the outdated architecture of the plant (Green Facts 1). The engineers at the plant had disabled the safety mechanisms in the plant and the reactor was being run under unsafe and hazardous standards. These factors combined in a uncontrolled surge of power to happen at the plant. The power surge caused the fuel to overheat and then explode (Green Facts 1).  

    The Chernobyl Power complex was built about 130 kilometers of the city of Kiev in the Ukraine region of the former Soviet Union. The plant had 4 nuclear reactors of the RBMK-1000 design. The initial two units of the plant were constructed between 1970 and 1977, and the second batch of units (Units 3 and 4) were constructed and completed by 1980. At the time of the accident, the plant was also being installed with 2 more units of the same design (World Nuclear Association).

    At the southeast end of the plant,  an artificial lake was constructed spanning 22 kilometers beside the Pripyat River to provide the water to cool down the reactors. The area can be described as a low population center, a woodland type of geography. In the city of Pripyat, there were an estimated 49,000 residents, and the town of Chernobyl, with approximately 12,500 residents is situated about 15 kilometers  to the southeast of the plant. Within the 30-mile radius with the plant in the center, the total number of people living in that area is estimated to be 115,000 to 135,000 people (World Nuclear Association).

    In the report of the Chernobyl Forum: Health Expert Group in 2006, it was stated that apart from the initial causalities in the accident, deaths that can be traced to the actual radiation exposure from the Chernobyl accident will never be known. The Expert Group states that of the number that were exposed to the radiation from Chernobyl, 28 people, mostly from the ranks of the workers and the firemen who responded to controlling the blaze, died as a result of acute radiation syndrome, followed by 19 more in the period of 1987-2004. Also, in the aftermath of the explosion and the fallout from the plant, an estimated 116,000 people from the surrounding areas in 1986 (World).

    But the more telling factor among the people affected by the accident is that the rampant poverty, limitations on agriculture have led and more people to claim benefits with the package to aid the actual victims of the Chernobyl disaster. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many people have laid claim to the benefits tied in with the Chernobyl accident. This is because claiming to be a victim of the tragedy and receiving the benefits from the claim became a means of subsistence for many people. At present some 2.2 million people have received benefits in the forms of financial assistance, pensions and improved access to health care and privileges originally for the victims of the tragedy (UNDP and UNICEF).
  
    In the immediate aftermath, all of the xenon gas, half of the cesium and the iodine and the remaining 5% of the radioactive material left in the number 4 reactor was released. In 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) released their findings that the Russian health officials had inadvertently associated several biological and health issues to radiation exposure. As a result of the WHO statement, the Russian authorities requested the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to facilitate in conjunction with several international experts an accurate evaluation of the effects of the Chernobyl disaster in terms of radiological, health and environment impact in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. By 2000, an estimated 4000 thyroid cases had been found in children diagnosed in the area (World).

    In the early part of 2003, the Chernobyl Forum was founded by the IAEA. In the reports of the UNSCEAR, in 2000, there was no noticeable effect that could be traced back to exposure to radiation 14 years after the disaster (World). In the United Kingdom, it is estimated that more than 300 farms in Britain cannot be used fully owing to the fallout effects of the Chernobyl disaster (Terry Macalister and Helen Carter 1). The announcement came as the United Kingdom pushed to build a new generation of nuclear plants across the country. In the report of the Ministry of Health, the government admitted that more than 360 farms and more than 190,000 heads of sheep were affected by the fallout, but also stated that the number is a far cry from the immediate numbers from the Ukraine fallout  (Macalister and Carter 1).

    Large amounts of lands were contaminated by the fallout radiation in the three former states of the Soviet Union. Also, the trace deposition of the radionuclide released from the reactor were still traceable in all Northern Hemisphere countries. The main areas that are considered as the heaviest contaminated are in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The territories were designated as the Central, Gomel-Mogilev-Bryansk and Kaluga-Tula-Orel areas (World).

    The Central area consisted of lands within 100 square kilometers of the Chernobyl reactor, to the west and northwest of the power plant. The Gomel-Mogilev-Bryansk area is 200 kilometers north-northeast of the plant at the border of the Gomel and Mogilev regions of Belarus and the Bryansk region of the Russian Federation. The Kaluga-Tula-Orel  region is 500 kilometers of the reactor, situated within the Russian Federation. In total, the areas contaminated totaled 150,000 square kilometers with a deposition density above the normal 37kBq/square mile (World).

    Around the plant itself, it is estimated that 60 square miles of farmland in the area of the Soviet Union will be contaminated for decades to come. The reason is that the only way to remove the contamination is to completely remove the topsoil. The cesium 137 and strontium 90, particles that were released in the fire, take a longer time to break down. Though air currents can carry the radiation to the North American shores, American officials say there is very little need to worry. The Environmental Protection Agency has increased monitoring activities  to immediately detect airborne particles from the fallout (Greenwald 1).

    In the early parts of the 1990's, an estimated $400 million was used to improve the operations of the remaining reactors at Chernobyl. The operation of reactor 3 was necessary to avert energy shortages until December of 2000. In the course of the operations of the remaining reactors, more than 6000 people reported for work at the plant, and were constantly monitored for radiation levels. When the announcement made in 1995 to completely shut down the two remaining operating reactors, Ukraine and the Group of 7 nations, the 7 most industrialized nations in the world, signed a memorandum of understanding to work for the implementation of the move, but encountered delays in execution (World).

    In the research done by the Institute of Sociology, the accident at Chernobyl led to an array of psychological issues for the people affected, inclusive of the feeling of being victimized. In their report, the Institute found that stress was at its peak among re settlers that moved away from their ancestral lands as a result of the evacuation procedures during the accident. The feelings of distress seems to have stayed constant even though a number of years have passed since the fatal day. The stress among the people who chose to stay in their homes in the areas hit by the contamination registered less stress than those who were forced to leave (UNDP and UNICEF).

    Though the accurate figures on the losses due to Chernobyl are hard to come by, Belarus put in a figure of $235 billion spread over three decades. Ukraine, for its part, states that the losses incurred from 1986 to 2000 will be around $148 billion. Losses include the balance of payments in the purchasing of electricity that would have been sourced locally. Since Chernobyl to the present time, more than 340,000 people have been relocated as part of the ongoing efforts to clean the area of contamination (UNDP and UNICEF). The Chernobyl Forum estimates that 7 million people will be eligible to receive benefits relating to the accident (World).

    In the report of the United Nations Development Program, the people still have a dearth of information on leading healthy and useful lives. The information lack is not the culprit in the issue; it is the lack of means to get the information out for the people to use. The information on leading healthy lifestyles is not that important as to the safe living practices with low-dosage radiation. Community workers will be fielded into the affected areas to remove the false beliefs of people regarding exposure to radiation (United Nations Development Program 1).