Chernobyl 38 years later: 5 myths about the tragedy at the nuclear power plant – Newsbomb – News

Almost four decades ago today, a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian region of the then Soviet Union exploded. A large fire burned for the next two weekssending plumes of radioactive gases and particles across the European landscape and beyond.

The WashingtonPost wants to respond to speculation and misinterpretations about the tragedy accident debunked the 5 myths.

Myth No. 1

It resulted in only a few casualties and casualties

In recent decades, official reports of casualties and deaths from the Chernobyl accident have been surprisingly modest. Two people died instantly. Twenty-nine died in hospitals, and much later, 15 children died of thyroid cancer caused by Chernobyl. These numbers have been repeated in recent articles in Newsweek and LiveScience.

Estimates of Chernobyl’s future health effects are also low: In 2006, researchers at the UN International Agency for Research on Cancer estimated that cancers caused by Chernobyl by 2065 they will total 41,000, compared to several hundred million other cancers from other causes. Forbes even claimed that “the fear of radiation alone was killing anyone outside the immediate area,” increasing rates of alcoholism and depression.

The actual numbers may be much higher. Unfortunately, Belarus (where 70% of Chernobyl’s effects occurred), Russia and Ukraine do not have public records of deaths related to the nuclear accident to inform the number.

But other state data provide a rough sense of the number of people affected by the disaster over time. In January 2016, for example, the Ukrainian government said that 1,961,904 people in Ukraine were officially victims of the disaster Chernobyl. Ukraine is also paying compensation to 35,000 people whose spouses died from Chernobyl-related health problems. These figures do not count Russia or Belarus, where cancer and death estimates run into the hundreds of thousands.

Myth No. 2

The Chernobyl accident had only regional consequences

The consequences of the accident reached much further. The impact map shows that the its radioactivity Chernobyl shifted widely across Europe, usually in areas with higher elevations and rainfall. Indeed, Swedish scientists were the first to report the Chernobyl incident because workers in Sweden put on radiation detectors as they entered a factory on the Monday morning after the accident. In 1986, 7,000 farmers in northern England and southern Scotland were forced to withdraw their sheep from sale after the Chernobyl disaster. Two decades later, more than 350 farmers in Britain still face restrictions on moving their animals and selling their meat.

Consumer goods harvested in Chernobyl-affected areas continue to travel around the world. A few years ago, France stopped a large shipment of radioactive mushrooms from Belarus. Contaminated berries from Ukraine regularly enter European markets, and some of these berries are later imported into the United States.

Myth No. 3

Nature thrives in the zone around Chernobyl.

Some who look for a positive outcome to the disaster argue that the ecosystem around Chernobyl has recovered. A company that offers tours of the exclusion zone describes it as an “accidental park” that teaches “key lessons about how wildlife doesn’t need us”. Scientists found up to a sevenfold increase in some large mammals and concluded that while radiation is not good for animals, humans have an even more damaging effect. The Guardian calls the Chernobyl zone a “wildlife sanctuary.”

Such studies tend to focus on data from censuses and cameras that monitor wildlife such as wolves and wild boars. Census data tells scientists how many animals there are but little about their health.

With chronic low doses of radiation, the health effects are subtle and difficult to detect. Biologists who study small animals such as mice, voles and birds report that they found animals with more frequent mutations, physical deformities and reduced populations.

A team of scientists from Texas Tech University found higher than expected mutation rates in Chernobyl rodents exposed to chronically low doses. Scientists have also noticed abnormalities in swallows breeding there, including deformed legs and beaks. Such problems can also affect large mammals, although they cannot be detected by satellite photography.

Myth No. 4

Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster ever.

Chernobyl is often described as the most devastating nuclear disaster in human history. Business Insider, ranking it against other accidents at Fukushima and Three Mile Island, found Chernobyl the most damaging. The International Atomic Energy Agency rated Chernobyl a level 7 accident, the highest possible rating.

While Chernobyl released the most radioactive fallout for a single accident, other nuclear events released far more radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere. The Chernobyl accident released between 50 and 200 million units of radioactivity. By the time the 1963 Test Ban Treaty came into force, nuclear powers had detonated 520 nuclear weapons in the atmosphere in various types of tests, creating massive emissions of long-lived radioactive isotopes.

Examining a single radioactive isotope is illuminating. Chernobyl released about 45 million curies of radioactive iodine (among other elements) into the atmosphere – which is absorbed by human thyroids and can cause thyroid disease and thyroid cancer. American and Soviet nuclear bomb tests released about 20 billion curies of radioactive iodine between 1945 and 1962.

Myth No. 5

Chernobyl shows that the Soviet Union was incompetent.

Chernobyl became representative of a claim that Soviet scientists and government officials were incompetent. “The ferris wheel left in the city’s decaying amusement park still stands as a testament to the folly of the corrupt, paranoid and incompetent Soviet system,” says USA Today. Grigory Medvedev’s book, The Truth About Chernobyl promises a narrative of “absurdity and ineptitude galore.”

In fact, the Soviet response to the disaster was impressive. The Soviets are most often criticized for waiting three days to inform the public of the accident. Its concealment meant that people in neighboring states, such as Poland, received protective prophylactic iodine later than indicated. Soviet leaders, however, acted to protect their citizens. Within 36 hours, they had relocated 50,000 residents of the city of Pripyat and made plans to evacuate a large area around the plant. (Japanese leaders waited a full two months before admitting that three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had melted down in March 2011.)

Then there was the medical response, as observed by a team of American doctors who joined Soviet doctors to treat injured firefighters and factory operators at Hospital No. 6 in Moscow. Americans were impressed by how good the Soviet doctors were in estimating radiation dose by studying a patient’s vital signs and commented on the impressive range of Soviet poisoning treatments from radiation that were unknown in the West.

Of the 19 patients who underwent risky bone marrow or fetal liver transplants recommended by the American team, only one survived. Most of the patients who received potentially lethal doses survived the treatments of the Soviet doctors.