WPROST: "Chernobyl Bluff"

Twenty three minutes after 1 A.M. on 26 April 1986 a violent explosion has occurred in the fourth unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Large quantities of radioactive material have been ejected into the atmosphere. The world panicked - the more so because of the lack of reliable information blocked by the Soviet Union censorship. The headlines in the Western press shouted: "Chernobyl hecatomb" "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl" "Death from Chernobyl." Respectable newspapers and weeklies announced: "Thousands of bodies are being buried in Chernobyl." The atmosphere of fear, which then started to develop, paralyses the public opinion to this very day.

Whereas, in fact, the accident in Chernobyl nuclear reactor does not represent one of the largest 20th century tragedies, the explosion did not kill thousands of people, nor did it heavily contaminate for hundreds of years enormous areas of land. Moreover, radiation doses to which the populations in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus have been exposed, had nearly no impact on their health - these people do not suffer more frequently from leukemia, nor do they give birth to more children with genetic defects. Those are the conclusions from the recent UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) report, which has been prepared by 142 most prominent experts from 21 countries. But after 15 years since the accident, it is clear that this event has been put to a very good use - mainly by environmental and anti-nuclear organizations. "Thanks to" the "Chernobyl disaster" the nuclear power program development has been delayed by several decades.

Death from fear, or how many people really were injured by the Chernobyl explosion

According to the UNSCEAR report authors, only 134 people from nuclear power plant staff and emergency teams members have been exposed to very high ionizing radiation doses and subsequently suffered from acute radiation sickness. Twenty eight of them died from irradiation and two from scalding. Those were the only fatalities.

About 381 000 people, who have been engaged in the elimination of accident consequences, have been exposed to radiation doses slightly above 100 mSv (milliSievert). It is presumed that a single dose of 2 000 mSv poses a risk to life. - The examinations of people engaged in elimination of accident consequences indicate that those people are even healthier than the non-exposed individuals - says Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski from Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, one of the report co-authors, who since 1973 is representing Poland in UNSCEAR.

As stated in UNSCEAR report: "Fourteen years after the Chernobyl accident there is no scientific evidence of increased cancer incidence, increased mortality or the occurrence of other diseases attributable to radiation." On the other hand, a significant increase in the incidence of psychosomatic disorders - concerning the respiratory, digestive and nervous systems - has been observed. But these disorders are caused not by radiation but by fear. People are afraid that they have been exposed to radiation or that they live on contaminated land and that any day they will develop cancer.

- The scientists have never published such rubbish as the trash served by media on the consequences of Chernobyl accident - says Professor Leonid Andreyevich Ilyin from the Biophysics Institute of the Russia’s Ministry of Health, who participated in the program of elimination of the disaster’s consequences and represents Russia in UNSCEAR. According to Professor Ilyin: - The media exaggerated this tragedy, now and again giving ear to various "experts." For example, quite recently a Russian bi-weekly "Planet’s Echo" claimed that the Chernobyl has been the worst disaster of the second half of 20th century. In the article published there one finds some entirely fabricated estimates of the consequences of this accident, because how are we to rate the information that 300 000 people were killed? In fact, the most dangerous consequences are those of psychological kind, which have been caused by fear and relocation from the areas deemed (often rashly) at risk.

Almost 400 000 people participated in the elimination of accident consequences

Similar conclusions have been formulated earlier. In March 1996 weekly magazine The Economist has published an article under a meaningful title "Chernobyl, cancer and creeping paranoia" indicating that the direct health impact of the radiation was quite small. "Much worse are the consequences of fear and ignorance - people did not know, and still do not know, what was the real danger - and this is the largest health related problem caused by the Chernobyl disaster" - writes The Economist.

Immediately after the disaster, thousands of Ukrainian and Belarusian pregnant women decided, or were persuaded by the physicians, to undergo abortion. The number of abortions in those two Soviet republics during 1986-1987 was equal to one third of the number of children born in Eastern Europe as a whole. In some regions the number of natural miscarriages jumped up by 25%. Why? Women were afraid that they will give birth to mutants. Meanwhile, after the disaster, the number of children born with serious defects in Ukraine has not risen - maintains Dr. Herwig Paretzke from the Institute of Radiation Protection in Munich.

Besides, the growth in the number of children born with genetic defects has been simply impossible - assert UNSCEAR experts. Even after the highest radiation doses incurred by people because of the atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (hundreds of times higher than the Chernobyl doses and absorbed within a fraction of a second), no genetic disorders have been observed in the offspring of the Japanese nuclear attacks survivors.

The sole health impact of the atmospheric radioactive material release may be the 1800 cases of thyroid cancer in children, registered in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. This evidence, however, is somewhat doubtful. Radiation induced thyroid cancer develops unrevealed for 6-9 years. Meanwhile the increased number of cases has been noted already after a year from the accident. No correlation was found between the children’s exposure to various radiation doses and the thyroid cancer incidence. UNSCEAR experts think that this increase in cancer incidence may be caused by something else than radiation - e.g. by so called mute cancers. Such cancers give no clinical symptoms through the patient’s lifetime. Until the explosion in Chernobyl no examinations of this type were performed in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, thus medical teams from all over the world discovered only something that existed independently of the disaster.

Also among Poles inhabiting the country’s eastern region, no increase in the thyroid cancer incidence was observed which could be induced by radiation. - "During the night 28/29 April 1986 I was summoned to the Central Committee of the Polish Worker’s Party, as an expert on radiological contamination issues" - recalls Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski. - "Secret consultations were carried on, but even party notables did not know what was happening in Chernobyl. Soviet Union imposed total information blockade. Thus, basing on the knowledge gained from our measurements, I presented some possible scenarios. I also proposed that Lugol liquid (a solution of stable iodine compounds, logistically more handy than potassium iodide tablets) should be administered to children, to protect the thyroid gland against radioactive iodine absorption. The Americans praise us for the effective execution of this action, but today I am convinced that this action was unnecessary. But then, in 1986, it was a right decision, in the light of the data being in our possession and because of increasing waves of contaminated air flowing over Poland. But our current knowledge of the contamination of Polish population indicates that the risk was much smaller than we thought."

Safe contaminated zone, or how much land really has been degraded after Chernobyl explosion

Highly contaminated area in the NPP vicinity measures only a half of a square kilometer! Such is the conclusion from the maps included in UNSCEAR report. On the other hand, most of the territory surrounding the plant poses no risk to human health. Why then is there a 30-km uninhabited safety zone? Why the inhabitants of the town Prypiat have been resettled? Why does this town stay closed until this very day?

The resettlement has been implemented swiftly and on a large scale. Within 11 days (from 27 April until 7 May 1986) 116 000 people were forced to change their place of residence. - "The decision on resettlement has been taken with no notice of the opinion of Russian scientists, who suggested that the majority of people living in the NPP neighborhood should be left alone" - says Michael Waligórski, the head of the Health Physics Department in Oncology Center in Cracow. - "Resettled people did not die from lethal radiation doses, but from high stress. We observed similar reactions to stress also in Poland, during the flood of 1997. Many people died then not from drowning but e.g. from heart attack." - adds Waligórski.

The town Prypiat and a large part of the closed 30-km zone are in fact habitable! Radiological measurements conducted by international teams clearly show that the radiation level in this area is not harmful for humans. The average dose for the contaminated area is only 8 mSv per year, and in locations most contaminated with radioactive material - from 30 to 80 mSv. During 1999 each Pole absorbed a mean radiation dose of 3.3 mSv. Forty percent of this dose comes from radon, a noble gas released from radium contained in earth crust and in construction materials. All artificial radioactive isotopes produced in nuclear weapons tests, from nuclear power and from Chernobyl accident etc., account for the radiation exposure of Poles equal to 0.036 mSv annually.

While Ukrainian authorities were solemnly shutting off the last reactors of Chernobyl nuclear power plant in late 2000, the press, radio and TV networks worldwide were still spreading the apocalyptic visions of the disaster. In Polish Press Agency dispatches one could read the following: "In Ukraine the number of nuclear explosion victims exceeded 4 thousand and 3.5 million people suffer in various degree from radioactive contamination. (...) To this day there is no data on the number of lives taken by the disaster, which by various sources is estimated to be 15-30 thousand. (...)" TV reports again showed the deserted town of Prypiat located a dozen kilometers from the power plant and the children who have been born hideously deformed, recounted the stories of the tragedy of those resettled from "the 30-km death zone", quoted those, who found themselves among "3.5 million people afflicted by the accident consequences" and: "How long shall I live, perhaps in a year, or in a week I shall learn from the doctor that I got leukemia?"

From the very beginning the media were promoting a tragic and exaggerated picture of the disaster. In May 1986 the American press reported that the reactor explosion killed 80 people immediately, that further 2 thousand died on the way to hospitals and their bodies are buried not on the cemeteries but in a place called Pirogovo, where a nuclear waste disposal site is located. The enormous headline in New York Post threatened: "Mass grave - in Kiev 15 thousand human bodies pushed down by bulldozers into the waste pits", while National Enquirer described a mutant chicken 2 m high, caught by the hunters in the forests close to Chernobyl.

The interesting point is that equally absurd stories appeared in the press not only in the times when Soviet authorities prevented gathering of reliable information on the disaster, but also afterwards. In 1990 the major Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten published a large article entitled "Chernobyl - an everlasting nightmare." This article has been illustrated with the pictures made by a Polish photographer Wojciech Laski, showing two children with serious congenital defects (one of them one-armed), supposedly caused by radiation. Five years later, 13 October 1995, Reuters dispatch reported that 800 thousand children have been affected by the consequences of Chernobyl accident, which was "as terrible as a nuclear attack."

Average ionizing radiation doses	mSv/a
Caused by the Chernobyl disaster
Chernobyl (1992) Prypiat (1992)	4.9 25
From natural sources (soil, rocks)
Average in Poland	2.4
Grand Central Railway Station in New York City	5.4
Kerala (India)	9
A region in Norway	10
A region in Sweden	35
Guarapari (Brazil)	37
Tamil Nadu (India)	53
A house in Ramsar (Iran) build over 100 years ago	89-132
Source: UNSCEAR, Jovanovich, Sohrabi. Data from 1993.

           1) Prypiat - an abandoned town        2) Maria Pietrovna Shovkuta
                                                  returned to Opatycha, 15 kilometers
                                                from Chernobyl, one year after the
                                              disaster. She does not complain of her
                                                health and eats her own produce.

In October 2000 French television has shown a movie on the disaster, entitled "Chernobyl, an autopsy of the cloud." French scientists protested against this program - the letter to the French TV network chairman has been signed by the presidents of the most prestigious scientific societies for biophysics, nuclear medicine and nuclear physics. Two years earlier Polish scientists delivered a similar letter of protest to the National Radio and Television Council. This action concerned the emission of a British documentary "Igor - a child of Chernobyl." Polish scientists stated: "This movie describes the case of a boy with defects of extremities, who has been born in the vicinity of Minsk in Belarus, two years after the Chernobyl accident. In this documentary it is repeatedly stated that the boy’s deformities has been caused by irradiation from radioactive dust. The movie’s authors claim that similar developmental anomalies occurred in a million children on contaminated territories. All this information is simply untrue."

The fear of accident consequences fell on a receptive ground - it may be said that bad news was even expected. - "Mainly it was the result of the fear of atomic bomb" - explains Professor Kazimierz Obuchowski from the Psychology Institute of Bydgoszcz Academy. - "The disaster happened in the times when the conflict among nuclear superpowers still existed, and various organizations loudly expounded on horrible consequences of atomic warfare. People sought the information which could endorse their misgivings and fears - and only such information was deemed credible." - considers Professor Obuchowski.

Why the Chernobyl myth is so industriously supported? What it is all about? The answer is: number one - the money, number two - the money, and number three - the money.

Ukraine and Belarus inherited a heavy burden from the Soviet Union - Soviet authorities granted pensions and social privileges (worth, after conversion, a dozen or so US dollars) to 600 000 people (deemed to be victims of the explosion). It is estimated that at present over 3 million people are entitled to some privileges on the account of "permanent health detriment caused by Chernobyl radiation." No politician will dare to take them away. Up to the year 2015, in impoverished Byelorussia, the "Chernobyl relief payments" alone will equal $86 billion. To this one should add the costs of safety arrangements for ruined reactor. The super-sarcophagus construction (the present concrete one is in a bad shape) shall cost $300 million. Up to now the United States and Western Europe transferred $800 million for the elimination of accident consequences; EBDR (European Bank for Development and Reconstruction) plans to contribute further 2.3 billion euros. Kiev claims that, during the next 20 years, coping with the accident consequences will cost $5 billion! In Ukraine it is often heard that the politicians’ eager appeals for financial support "for liquidation of the Chernobyl disaster consequences" have their roots in the fact, that some part of this money will go for patching up the holes in the state budget, and some - perhaps - will end in the pockets of bureaucrats.

The museum in Kiev corroborates the myth of the accident in Chernobyl. The photographs
show the victims of the disaster.

Thus Chernobyl still is presented in the very blackest colors. In 1996, during the session of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Ukrainian Ministry of Health representative stated that up to that day 2500 people died from illnesses caused by the Chernobyl explosion. According to this information, the fatalities were caused by cancers, heart and circulatory system diseases and nervous system disorders. In 1995 this same ministry in its press release informed that the Chernobyl accident in 9 years accounted for 125 000 fatalities. WHO experts strongly protested against this statement. Valeri Pistchikov, who in Ukrainian Ministry of Health monitors the Chernobyl consequences, recently stated in public that "the most frequent disorders, suffered by the population of Ukraine in the result of the power plant explosion, include cancer and various forms of illnesses involving blood and respiratory, digestive and nervous systems." On the other hand, Vladislav Ostapienko, the head of Belarusian Institute for Radiation Medicine, said for Reuters that because of Chernobyl explosion his country faces a demographic catastrophe: since some years there are more deaths than births, and moreover each year 2500 children are born with genetic defects. However Ostapienko did not mention the fact, that a demographic low is noted on nearly whole former Soviet Union territory, including its Asiatic part. Moreover, taking into account the population of Belarus, the number of serious genetic disorders among the newborns should be five times higher. But those have nothing to do with any radiation, and in particular that from Chernobyl: in every population such defects show up in about 6% births.

From the very beginning, the disaster in Chernobyl became the main weapon used by the environmental organizations in their war against nuclear power. The accident and its supposedly horrible consequences were to be a warning to all who plan nuclear power plants construction. This campaign has been successful - and very much so! In Germany, the parliament dominated by Social Democrats and Green Party members decided to dismantle all nuclear power plants. In France, previously free of anti-nukes phobia, the ecologists push a similar demand. Meanwhile, the environmentalists who wage such fierce battle against nuclear power plants, are accused by the nuclear lobby of getting funds from oil and gas industry, interested in closing the existing nuclear power plants and delaying the construction of the future ones.

- "Ecological organization Greenpeace has in its disposition more money than the budgets of some African countries. From where this money comes?" - asks Professor £ukasz Turski from the National Academy of Sciences Center for Theoretical Physics and College for Sciences in Warsaw. - "Greenpeace is one of the most active organizations fighting against nuclear power." - reckons Professor Ziemowid Sujkowski, director of the Institute for Nuclear Problems in Warsaw. - "This organization is well known for its many positive actions for preserving the environment, but it is deeply wrong in the case of nuclear power plants. Perhaps those people are being manipulated ... People calling themselves ecologists cannot be deaf to all rational arguments. Nuclear power exerts the least impact on the environment, in contrast to the coal fired power plants. The fear of radiation is rooted mostly in ignorance. Radioactivity is associated with something mysterious and extremely dangerous." - emphasizes Professor Sujkowski.

Environmental organizations, while quite vocal in extolling dire disaster in Ukraine, are rather reluctant to mention a similar accident, which took place in March 1979 in Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, USA, and where - as in Chernobyl - the reactor core has been melted. But thanks to adequate safety arrangements, no dangerous radioactivity has been released into the atmosphere, nobody from the neighboring population suffered, and radiation doses obtained by a dozen or so plant’s personnel were not harmful for their life. Thus it appears that the problem is not in the nuclear fuel, but in appropriate safety systems.

- "Even if the explosion in Chernobyl would cause death of several thousand people, this nevertheless would not be the worst disaster of the second half of 20th century." - considers Professor Turski. - "Who loudly spoke of the consequences of the accident which occurred in 1984 in pesticide plant in Bhopal in India? In this event very large quantities of fatally toxic materials have been released into the air, killing over 15 000 people." - emphasizes Professor Turski. "How many thousand people die each year because of the pollutants emitted from coal fired power plants?"

Thus, do the nuclear power plants pose a real, mortal threat to the environment and humans? Such misgivings are not supported by the data quoted by the scientists. Burning up one million tons of hard coal (with no filtering devices) releases into the atmosphere 20 thousand tons of dust, 25 thousand tons of sulfur dioxide, 6 thousand tons of nitrogen oxides, and 2 million tons of carbon dioxide. The detrimental effect of those substances for human health is easy to imagine. In Poland each year 30 million tons of hard coal are burned in home stoves and local furnaces, where there are no filters. For comparison, 1000 MW nuclear power plant (all conventional Polish power plants together account for 30 000 MW) generates only 30 tons of highly radioactive waste annually.

- "If all electric and heat energy in the United Kingdom were produced in nuclear power plants, the radioactive waste generated in those plants could be accommodated within one football field." - says Professor Turski. In his opinion, the problem of radioactive waste is nothing more than another myth, which is fostered to convince people that nuclear power plants are harmful. Such waste can be managed in an appropriate way.

- "If we shall decide to draw energy only from conventional sources, these sources will be quickly depleted." - holds Professor Sujkowski. - "It would be extremely irresponsible. The depletion of oil resources means not only the lack of fuel for furnaces or cars. From what shall we produce plastics and some textiles?" - warns Professor Sujkowski. - "If the atmosphere around nuclear power programs, shaped also by the mythological treatment of the Chernobyl accident, would not change rapidly, than in a few decades freezing humanity will frenetically start building nuclear power plants." - emphasizes Professor Turski. - "And then we shall have real cause for fear, because those plants will be build hurriedly and shoddily."