This increase is partly attributed to the consumption of tainted milk, studies reported. In the decades following the accident, researchers detected rates of that particular condition in young people in the former Soviet Union that were around three times higher than expected. Studies following the survivors of the Chernobyl disaster have shown an increase in cases of thyroid cancer. The Chernobyl Forum essentially assumed otherwise," he said, calling the study a "highly political document with conclusions that were carefully massaged to minimize the impacts of the accident."
"The fundamental issue is whether one believes that low-level exposures will cause cancer or not - and the worldwide expert consensus is that they do. The original Chernobyl health impact report conducted by UN agencies and published in 1988, did address the global exposure to radiation in response to the accident, and estimated it would ultimately correspond to 30,000 or more cancer deaths, Lyman said.
Lyman said the Forum's report based its cancer death predictions only on cases within the former Soviet Union, ignoring exposure to populations in other parts of Europe and the northern hemisphere. In a Greenpeace report published in 2006, researchers estimated the predicted death toll at around 90,000 - nearly 23 times the number suggested by the Chernobyl Forum report.Įdwin Lyman, a physicist and director of Nuclear Power Safety with the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said he, "doesn't consider the Chernobyl Forum report to be authoritative." One of them is Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Kate Brown.īrown has conducted extensive research on the impact radiation has had on people's health in Ukraine and surrounding countries since the 1986 accident. Some experts say the impact of the disaster was concealed by Soviet officials in an attempt to downplay its severity. Over 30 plant workers died in the three months following the disaster at the Soviet power station, Chernobyl, as a direct result of the meltdown.Ī report published by the Chernobyl Forum, a group of UN agencies formed in 2003 to assess the health and environmental consequences of the accident, suggested in 2006 that it will cause at least 4,000 cancer deaths in the long term, although that estimate is contested.ĭid Soviet officials try to downplay the aftermath of Chernobyl? The Chernobyl meltdown released radiation across Europe, affecting the lives of humans, plants and animals throughout the region. When occupying forces seized the plant in March 2022, experts tried to weigh up how a potential accident there would compare with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster - an event that for decades marked the worst nuclear power accident in history. In 2022, it became the first active nuclear plant in history to continue operations in the midst of a war.
With six reactors on site, Zaporizhzhia is Europe's largest nuclear power plant. Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia power plant is located close to the country's southern border. In the next article in this series, we explain the health effects linked to the detonation of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and also look at what could happen if nuclear weapons were detonated in today's world. When people think about nuclear threats and the war in Ukraine, most consider two possibilities: What would happen if an accident occurred at a Ukrainian nuclear plant? And what would happen if a nuclear weapon were deployed?įor this article, we talked to experts about the health impact the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters had on surrounding populations, and asked them to explain the degree to which those disasters might provide a framework for our current understanding of risk at Zaporizhzhia. Nuclear poses two threats in the Russia-Ukraine war That backup power supply was vital for cooling reactor fuel at the plant and preventing a nuclear meltdown, which would release dangerous thermal energy and radiation into the atmosphere.
Two months earlier, in March 2023, missile strikes had caused outages and left the plant running on emergency diesel generators. Rafael Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that the “general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous."
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