Re-visiting
of Chernobly
20th
Anniversary of the Chernobly nuclear
accident in Ukraine...
by Prof. Hayrettin KILIC
April 26, will mark 20th anniversary
of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in
Ukraine. The Chernobyl anniversary
provides a fitting time and backdrop
to revisit the issues relating to safety
and environmental aspects of nuclear
power plants, specially the global effects
of the Chernobyl accident, which proved
that radioactive radiation recognize
no boundaries.
According to latest "official" studies from Chernobyl
Forum; International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), World Health Organization (WHO),
and Untied Nations Development Program,
4000 projected deaths, hundreds of billions
of dollar in damage, millions of acres
of habitable land contaminated, and
hundreds of thousand people were permanently
evacuated from their homes.
However, the findings of Chernobyl Forum is highly contested by
many organizations and researchers who
argue that IAEA-drafted summary contradicts
the key findings of the Chernobyl forum
as well as the findings of a 1993 study
conducted by the UN, Scientific Radiation
on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).
They point out that, it overlooks independent
scientific data that have been accumulated
over the twenty years and the report
contradicts some of its conclusions.
They claim that Forum's latest report
is a "Whitewash" and it is
a deliberate misleading IAEA effort
that benefit's the nuclear industry..
Before April 26 1986, Soviet nuclear scientists had stated that
a catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl
nuclear power plant was impossible.
But on April 29, when a United States
surveillance satellite confirmed that
Chernobyl's reactor number four was
burning with red fire, and rumors from
Sweden that a major nuclear accident
had occurred in the Soviet Union became
inescapable reality, in spite of the
Soviet government's denials. When the
impossible world's worst nuclear reactor
accident happened, a thunderous blast
lifted the massive 500 tons of concrete
lid from the reactor core, and released
huge amounts of radioactive debris that
was carried two thousand meters into
the air. The reactors core, mostly graphite
burned two more weeks, effecting more
than 20 nations that were in the radioactive
fallout's path.
The total amount of immeasurable radioactivity released will never
be known, but the official Soviet figure
of 90 million curies suggests a minimum, says Dr. Yuri M. Shcherbak,
a former
Supreme Soviet member of the
U.S.R.R and ambassador of Ukraine to
USA who, in 1989 initiated the first
parliamentary investigation of the Chernobyl
accident in the Soviet Union. Although,
the total amount of radioactivity that
effected most of Europe and Asia was
estimated several times more by Western
scientists, the conservative Soviet
figures correspond to hundreds of times
more radiation than that produced by
the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki at the end of the second
world war.
Aftermath
of the first twenty years
The debate surrounding the increased prevalence of diseases induced
from the Chernobyl accident is likely
to continue for many decades. Up to
this date, it is not clear how many
people have already died, or are suffering
from illness resulting from Chernobyl
radiation, due to systematically relocating
and sending the local children away
to different areas in the Soviet Union,
and destroying medical records of victims.
However, so far, ''32.000 deaths are
defensible'' says Dr. Shcherbak, most
of them are the so called "liquidators",
800.000 workers who were involved in
putting out the initial fire, cleaning
out the blown-reactor core and burying
them in nearby sites.
According to the Russian Ministry
for Civil Defense 38 % of the liquidators
suffer from some disease, and the Ukrainian
Ministry of Health in their annual 1995
press conference stated that ''according
to inter-ministerial expert councils
the 805 of liquidators deaths only in
1993 and 532 deaths in 1994 were connected
with Chernobyl accident effects.''
After twenty years of the nuclear reactor accident, 260.000 Square
kilometers of land is still contaminated
with radioactive cesium 137 and Strontium
90 in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, exceeding
1 curie / km2 in some regions, and effecting
nearly 9 million people. Strontium-90 is chemically similar to calcium, therefore concentrates
in the bone of the developing infant,
child and adolescent. Once in the bone,
it irradiates the marrow where the cells
of the immune system are created. Within
30 kilometers of the Chernobyl plant
there are no inhabitants, and about
60 settlements inside this zone were
relocated to different places. During the first few days of the accident,
13.000 children had inhaled aerosols
containing iodine 131, a short lived
radioactive isotope which induces thyroid
cancer. About 4000 of these children have received
up to 2.000 roentgen equivalents
of radiation doses that is 20
times more than the maximum recommended
dose for nuclear industry workers for
an entire year.
So far, the Ukrainian government has been spending more than 5
percent of its budget to provide benefits
for more than 3 million people who are officially
recognized as victims of the Chernobyl
catastrophe, including 356.000 liquidators
and 870.000 children. Having major economic
crises, it is not clear how along the
Ukrainian government can maintain these
benefits. Tens of thousands of metric
tons of nuclear fuel and reactor parts
were buried in rush in 800 different
sites within the 30 kilometer zone,
still representing radioactivity levels
of some 20 million curies. In order to clean up this dangerously contaminated zone in
the world, it will take at least 30 years, and billions of dollars.
In
addition, existing sarcophagus of unit
4 which houses about 200 tons of nuclear
fuel, consisting melted reactor core
or an unearthly radioactive-lava is
a ticking time bomb. It cost 300 million
dollars to built in hurry in six months,
and was planed to last 20 years.
However, this structure’s
western walls is already bulged and
it leaks rain and melted snow, according
to experts it could simply collapse
any time due to a small earthquake resulting
a new Chernobyl disaster.
In order to prevent further destruction, building a "super-sarcophagus"
around the existing one, after a long
negotiations with Western countries,
was finally completed last year. Construction
work on a new sarcophagus is expected
to start later this year, and estimated
to cost 800 million dollars.
In Europe, many countries suffered economic losses. According to
the Belarus government, the total economic
damage caused between 1986-2005 will
be $ 235 billion which is equivalent
to 21 times its 1991 national budget,
and as of 1994 the Belarus government
spent 13.46 % of its budget to minimize
the consequences of the Chernobyl accident.
The total loss to the Soviet Union was prepared by Yuri Koryakin,
the then-chief economist of the Research
and Development Institute of Power Engineering
of the Soviet Union, his analysis showed
that the total loss to the Soviet Union
between 1986-2000 will be equivalent
to $ 283-358 billion. After the accident,
the total cost of compensations paid
by some European governments to farmers
who had to destroy their livestock and
crops were $18 million in England, $
307 million in Germany, and $ 94 million
in Austria.
On December, 2000, Ukrainian officials met with IAEA and European
Union (EU) officials to discuses the
possibilities of permanently closing
remaining
three reactors in Chernobyl.
Estimates were that the first phase
of decommissioning three units, projected
over 5 years horizon, and would cost
$ 85 million per year, with tasks
mainly focused on removal of
wastes and nuclear fuel. On December
15, 2000, After securing financial assistant
from EU, Ukrainian government, permanently
shut down the 925 MW, unit 3 at the
Chernobyl power plant, disabling the
last remaining reactor at ill-fated
nuclear power plant complex.
Next
twenty years, a countdown for new meltdowns
In response to the constantly growing International concern over
the safety of old Soviet-designed reactors
that are operating around the world,
the United States Department of Energy
(DOE) conducted an intelligence study
in 1993 titled "Most dangerous
reactors". The purpose of this
project was to study Soviet designed
and built reactors currently operating
in the successor states which are in
deteriorating economics, political turmoil
and lacking from sufficient technical
and regulatory oversights. As of February
1995, nine Soviet built power plants
have been surveyed and the preliminary
top five worst power plants-reactors
happened to be Chernobyl in Ukraine,
Kozloduy in Bulgaria, Kola in Russia, Iganalina in Lithuania, and
Metzamor in Armenia.
Unfortunately, Turkey is situated in the middle of the most dangerous
reactors operating in the world today.
In the west, Bulgaria has 6 nuclear
reactors, four of which have been condemned
by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) Operational Safety Assessment
Review Team (OSART), and in 1991, called
for the immediate shutdown of these
first generation Soviet design and built
reactors.
In the east, Matzemor power plant in Armenia was closed shortly
after the December 1989 earthquake and
due to local opposition was never to
be reopened again.
But cut off from major energy
supplies and having severe economical
conditions, Armenia has gambled by starting
unit 2 in 1995. Although the G-7 countries
and World Bank were opposed to unit-2's
restart, it was determined by IAEA experts
that, because of its age and that the
plant is situated in the middle of the
most seismically active and dangerous
foult, that the Matzemor power plant
unit-2 can operate only until the end
of
2004, provided, if the facility
complies with the all the above applicable
safety and technological upgrading requirements.
Prior to restart of Matzemor unit-2, the Armenian Government has
signed an agreement with IAEA and European
Union to receive necessary financial
and technological support to upgrade
and operate the unit-2 close to the
western standards, and has agreed to
close permanently the Matzemor unit-2
by the end of year 2004. Unfortunately,
Armenian government did not honor their
commitment to close the Matzemor nuclear
power plant in 2004, and at the present
time this power plant is running as
a time bomb in the Ararat valley, threatening
more than two million people life's
on the both Turkish and Armenian side
of border.
In
the north, the worst of the worst, remaining
of the Chernobyl power plant complex
and existing old Soviet designed reactors.
These type of reactors
have serious problems, abound
in nearly every face of the operation
since they were commissioned to generate
electricity and Pu-239 for the Soviet
nuclear weapons program, and racing
against the time for another accident.
As a result of losing a vital cooling
system, on October 11 1991, a fire started
in the Chernobyl unit 2 reactor, another
meltdown of the power plant was
prevented by heroic efforts of plant
workers and this unit had to be shutdown
and was out of commission since
then. Until final shutdown of all units
in year 2000,
remaining units were operating
in very poor technical conditions that
are expected to significantly increase
the likelihood of a large scale accident.
Finally, due to weak regulations, poor moral, and funding difficulties
at Kola power plant in Russia has experienced
43 off-normal events in 1993 alone,
representing nearly 25 % of all events
reported in Russia. In March 1994, a
pipe rupture in Kola-2 that leaked about
a fourth of the reactors primary coolant
leading to a possible meltdown, fortunately
this event happened when the plant was
shutdown for maintenance. After a long
international pressure, this power plant
was also permanently shutdown.
There are two types of Soviet designed and built reactors in existence
for the purpose of generating electricity.
They are the RBMK-boiling water reactors
and the VVER-presurized light water
reactors. The RBMK is a boiling-water,
graphite-moderated, pressure-tube reactor.
Nuclear fuel is contained in approximately
1700 of individual pressure tubes vertically
mounted in a large graphite core. Cool
water passes through these tubes and
is boiled by nuclear heat to produce
steam which is transferred to turbine
generators for the production of electricity.
The RBMK design does not meet Western
standards, and deficiencies are known
to exist in the emergency core cooling
system, fire protection system, and
instrumentation and control systems.
Most importantly, these type of reactors
lack a Western-style containment building,
and are also susceptible to dangerous
power instabilities. It was this extreme
power excursion, combined with a series
of operational errors that led to the
Chernobyl accident in 1986. These type
power plants are still operating in
Russian Federation and in Ex-Soviet-Sites.
The other three worst nuclear power plants operating at Metzamor-Armenia,
Kozloduy-
Bulgaria, and Kola-Russia are
the VVER-440/230-270 type reactors developed
as civilian power plants, similar to
Western pressurized water reactors (PWR).
It employs low-enriched uranium oxide
fuel held in thin metal-clad rods that
are cooled by pressurized light water.
The pressurized water from the reactor
is pumped through steam generators,
where steam is produced by transfer
of heat to the separate secondary coolant.
The steam is then routed to the turbine
generators to produce roughly 440 mega
watts of electricity.
These reactors also don't meet Western standards, they have many
design deficiencies including the lack
of a containment building, inadequate
fire protection systems, unreliable
instrumentation and control systems,
and deficient systems for cooling the
reactor core in case of an emergency.
In order to meet most Western standards,
Russia has developed a third VVER generation
design called VVER-1000 which is the
largest reactor that can generate 1000
mega watts of electricity. However there
are known shortcomings in the reactor
fire protection and instrumentation
and control systems of these new type
of reactors as well..
Despite massive international concern over nuclear safety in the
former Soviet Union, and hundreds of
millions of dollars in grants and loans
to successor states, there has been
an insignificant increase in safety,
and only some of these high risk-worst
reactors have been permanently closed.
If one of these worst reactors operating
around Turkey suffers from a moderate-sized
loss-of-coolant accident, a direct release
of radioactive materials into the surrounding
environment is inevitable because, all
these first generation reactors lack containments. In the event,
like what happened at the Chernobyl
site twenty years ago, where the failure
of a reactor vessel resulting in the
upward ejection of the vessel and penetrating
the protective dome would mean a major
radiation release that recognizes no
boundaries.
There is no level of radiation low
enough to be deemed safe
Although cancer is commonly perceived as a disease that strikes
randomly and without warning, this misconception
ignores the results of thousands of
investigations on the causes of cancer.
The conclusion emerging from these investigations
is that most human cancers are caused
by chemicals, viruses, heredity, and
radiation.
Radiation-induced carcinogenesis resembles chemical carcinogenesis
in its basic mode action in the living
cells. Like most chemicals carcinogens,
radiation is mutagenic and is therefore
thought to initiate malignant transformation
by causing DNA damage. Many years usually
intervene between exposure to an initiating
dose of radiation and the appearance
of a malignancy, suggesting that subsequent
exposure to promoting agents plays a
role in stimulating radiation-damaged
cells to divide and form tumors, and
if it is not detected; leads to cancer.
There have been many studies indicating that low level radiation
from reactor accident and bomb fallouts,
and routine low level radioactive isotopes
released from nuclear power plants,
may have done more damage to humans
and other living things than previously
thought. Dr. Abram Petkau, a Canadian
radiation biologist, experimentally
proved that the longer the exposure,
the smaller the dose needed to damage
the blood cells of the immune system.
He concluded that free radicals are
created when macromolecules of the immune
system are subject to lingering low
levels of ionizing radiation. A free
radical is a vigorous charged particle
that attacks other molecules of living
cells to neutralize itself by knocking
off an electron from its target, during
this process it destroys the chemical
compositions of molecules necessary
for daily life, including DNA molecules
that make up the fundamental blocks
of life.
It has been known for many years that molecular structure of the
DNA chain is destroyed, if it is subject
to any ionizing electromagnetic radiation
beyond visible light, such as; ultra-violet,
X-rays and gamma rays, which are generated
in almost every type of radioactive
decays. As a matter of fact, when a
very low level of radiation is penetrated
into DNA molecules (A-adenine, T- thymine,
G-guanine, and C-cytosine ), the energy
of this radiation is usually absorbed
and transmuted into heat by nitrogenous
base of the adenine, guanine, cytosine
leaving DNA most of the time intact.
But, it is quite harmful if the energy
is absorbed by one thymine neighboring
on another thymine in the DNA chain,
in this case, before the absorbed energy
has a chance to be transformed into
heat, the two neighboring thymines enter
into a chemical reaction forming a new
chemical compound called a thymine photodimer.
Damage has been inflicted on DNA, meaning
that, in the place of two thymines,
there has appeared an entirely new chemical
compound that halts further progress
of the enzymes working on DNA. After
millions of years of evolutionary training
to recognize only the letters A,T,G,
and C, the enzymes will balk at this
mysterious newcomer, and they will not
be able to transcribe DNA's information
and synthesize RNA-proteins, thus all
life in the cell will come to a stand-still,
and will perish.
In the light of these crucial findings, it is worth mentioning
the following studies conducted by Dr.
Ernest J. Strenglass, Professor of Emeritus
of Radiology at the University of Pittsburgh
Medical School, and Dr. Jay Gould, a
well known statistician and former member
of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency.
The state of South Carolina houses the Savannah River nuclear weapons
plant that has been in operation for
30 years, and is one of the most radioactive
places on earth. Almost one billion
curies of high-level nuclear waste are
stored in this complex representing
more than half of the U.S government's
inventory. Dr. Strenglass and Gould
analysis of state medical records showed
that during a 15 year period, 1968-83,
the death rate from infant diseases
in South Carolina increased 13 percent,
and infant mortality from birth defects
showed a more startling increase, rising
25 percent faster than in the U.S average.
During this period, South Carolina also
experienced a three-fold increase in
excess lung cancer, and readings of
stonium-90 in the bones of young children
rose by 45 percent.
After the Three Miles Island (TMI) accident of March 28, 1979,
some 2.500 lawsuits have been filed
against the Metropolitan Edison Company,
the owner-operator of TMI, by plaintiffs
who were living close to the power plant.
They claim to suffer from a host of
radiation-induced illnesses such as:
birth defects, spontaneous abortions,
sterility, cancers, and leukemia. Indeed,
official 1979-1980 Pennsylvania vital
static's showed that the infant mortality
rate for Dauphin County was 37 percent
higher than the rate of the previous
two years. While during the same period,
the U.S infant mortality rate dropped
by 8 percent. In fact, Dr. Gloud's analysis
also showed that infant mortality from
birth defects in the ten-county area
surrounding TMI rose over 20 percent
faster than in the U.S.
Swiss health authorities published a set of annual mortality data
covering the period since World War
II. It should be noted that all five
nuclear reactors built in Switzerland
since 1968, have released significant
amounts of radioactive isotopes into
the environment, and are located in
the Swiss plateau where the most part
of the six million Swiss population
reside. Statistical analysis of Swiss
data by Dr. Strenglass and Gloud has
revealed the following facts: Swiss
mortality rate, death per 1000 people,
for leukemia and non-epithelial cancer
was 0.16 in 1945, which increased to
0.32 in 1983. There was a sharp rise
of breast cancer at the rate of 5.5
percent a year from 1980 to 1983. The
percentage of total deaths accounted
for by those aged 25 to 44, due to infectious
diseases rose from 0.66 in 1983 to 1.14
in 1989, a gain of 72 percent.
Finally an analysis of the extreme detailed Oregon State vital
statistics published by the Oregon State
Department of Human Resources indicated
that deaths due to leukemia increased
70 percent in Portland between 1980
and 1988, where the Trojan nuclear power
plant has been in operation since 1975.
For Oregon as a whole the leukemia mortality
rate rose 32 percent while it declined
2.7 percent for the entire U.S. during
this period. The link to the radioactive
releases from the Trojan plant is strengthened
by a similar rise in leukemia incidence
around the Pilgrim nuclear plant as
reported by the Massachusetts State
Department of Health.
Both plants had comparable releases
of radioactive iodine and bone-seeking
fission products into the air and water
since 1976, in both cases, the leukemia
rates decreased with distance away from
the power plant.
Today, 20 years of following Chernobyl, 27 years after Three Miles
Island, and more than 50 years after
the launch of the Atom for Peace program,
nuclear power continues to be a failed
technology. There remains no solution
of the problem of mounting huge piles
of lethal radioactive waste, nuclear
power still the most expensive way to
provide electricity, and continued operation
of atomic reactors poses unacceptable
and unpredictable safety, public health
and weapon proliferation risks around
the World.
These are some of the facts of so called nuclear age-life that
we have to live with. As a primary physician
and witness of Chernobyl accident, Dr. Shcerbak has stated
in his article published in the April,
1996 issue of the Scientific American,
that
''the disaster illustrates the
great responsibility that falls on the
solders of Scientists and other experts
who give advice to politicians on technical
matters... Humankind lost a sort of
innocence on April 26, 1986. We have
embarked on a new, post-Chernobyl era,
and we have yet to comprehend all the
consequences".
Credits
for images
http://www.ifa.ukf.net/nuc.htm
Chemicals
linked to illnesses that come from the
air!
Chemistry Department, Loreto College,
Coleraine
by Emma O'Donnell
--The
Saga of Nuclear Power Plant
Page 1
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Page II
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A Brief Profile of Prof. Hayrettin Kiliç>
