The horror and the beauty come face to face when you visit the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – the focus of the popular HBO series about the worst nuclear accident ever. The series more than suggests that the accident led to upwards of 100,000 deaths. But is it true?
The village is only a shadow of what it once was. Silence, potholes, and abandoned buildings everywhere. But life goes on – also in the church, at the grocery store, and in front of the hotel. Here, wild dogs, locals, and visitors share the shade in the harsh midday heat.
Hotel Desiatka, a two-story wooden building, is both inside and outside a studio in beige and brown. If you are hungry, you can be served a plate of indeterminate, watered mashed potatoes and a kind of cutlet. Smack!
We are in the town of Chernobyl, a few kilometers due south of the nuclear reactor which exploded at 01.23.40 on 26 April 1986 and a few days later poured into the world’s collective memory.
The city is located in the Closed Zone, from where people were forcibly displaced for health reasons in the wake of the accident. But right here, in Chernobyl, there are no measurable traces of radioactivity. Both at the riverbed, the Lenin statue in the middle of the city, the church a little further down the road, and at the hotel, there is less radiation than the amount that naturally occurs in the metro under Kgs. Nytorv in Copenhagen.
In Chernobyl, 1.4 micro Sivert was measured at Kgs. Nytorv in Copenhagen, 2.0 micro Sivert were measured.
So it is with the zone. There are many paradoxes in it. The radioactivity is there, in larger or smaller spots here and there. The largest area is the so-called Red Forest – not the most obvious place to have a picnic. But in general, the level is not even close to alarming.
This also applies close to the plant itself, which is still today a gigantic industrial complex. One end is wrapped in a huge dome, which since 2016 has kept the destroyed reactor 4 secluded from the rest of the world. A few hundred meters from this epicenter is the canteen, where more than 1,000 employees – risk-free – put food to live.
Most people do not know that 3 out of 4 reactors at Chernobyl continued to produce power for Ukraine after the accident. Thus, 100s of employees at Chernobyl continued to work at the plant without health complications. The area was, and is, not a radioactive wasteland, as many environmental organizations and the media claim, which is directly supported by thousands of visiting tourists’ dosimeters, who do not find alarming radiation in most of the exclusion zone. Reactor number 1 was only closed in the year 2000, as part of an agreement with the EU, in which a crisis-hit post-Soviet Ukraine received financial support and in return closed the reactor. A similar agreement was concluded for reactors 1 and 2..
In fact, the Chernobyl plant saved more lives than it cost because its nuclear power replaced coal power. Reactor 3, which ran until the year 2000, produced 98.2 TWh, reactor 1 produced 73.65 TWh, and reactor 2 produced 49 TWh. A total of 221 TWh. We know that coal power costs 32.72 lives per TWh, and it would cost 7293 lives to produce 221 TWh with coal power. So far, the UN has recorded 46 deaths as a result of Chernobyl. Thus, the world’s most failed nuclear power plant has saved a net 7247 lives, despite the worst nuclear accident in history.
Close to the work, there are no people, but apart from that there is plenty of life. In the canals to the plant’s cooling water, fat fish frolic, and more and more bears, wolves, lynxes, birds of prey and other game fill the forests. Nature is pouring in.
One forest, in particular, is remarkable. You enter it via oddly straight forest paths, which are actually paved roads. If you look closely, you might notice behind the dense foliage a six- or ten-story dilapidated building a few meters away. What was once the communist model city, Pripyat, has been abandoned for three decades.
The two camps
While animals and plants have colonized the Closed Zone for thirty-two years in the unusual absence of humans, scientists and interest groups – including fierce nuclear opponents – have been fighting over the legacy of the accident.
A key year in this respect is 2005. Here, the so-called Chernobyl Forum published a report with four main conclusions in relation to morbidity and mortality from radiation.
First, there were 31 immediate deaths – many radiation-related – among the rescue teams. In the following 15 years, another 19 died of all sorts of things that were not necessarily due to radioactivity.
Secondly, more cancer – thyroid cancer – had indeed been detected, unfortunately, especially in children. Usually an extremely rare disease, but now several thousand cases had been recorded. Much more than usual.
Thirdly, there were indications of an increased incidence of cataracts and cardiovascular disease in those who cleaned up after the accident, but no increase in cancers other than thyroid cancer was observed.
If they were there, the cases would be too few to be read in any statistics. It was calculated that over the years there would be up to an extra 4,000 cancer deaths in a population where 100,000 would die of cancer naturally and unrelated to radiation anyway.
Fourthly, there had been no changes in fertility or in the number of pregnancy problems, stillbirths, birth complications, or malformations in fetuses and newborns.
That was the case in 2005, but already the following year, in 2006, a counter-report from Greenpeace was published.
The message here was quite different: the disaster was endless. Hundreds of thousands, one could read, had already died (the cause of death is completely unclear). Lots of cancers in all sorts of variations had been noted, as had seen a number of other serious ailments, including piles of pregnancy problems and chromosomal abnormalities in the next generations.
And, Greenpeace said, there would be at least 93,000 additional cancer deaths. It’s not clear why the organization just landed on that number. The report contains many other estimates – for example, 17,400 or 32,000 or 210,000 or 475,368 or six million extra cancer deaths.
So what do we have? Two reports, each with its own take on the aftermath. One with relatively limited consequences, the other with almost endless suffering.
And if not both commandments are given equal weight in the closing credits of HBO’s Chernobyl docudrama, where the viewer is told (verbatim) in the opening text that “It is estimated that between 4,000 and 93,000 have died.”
The perfect storm
There are plenty of explanations for why both accounts have coexisted over the years. In terms of misinformation, myth-making, and conspiracy theories, Chernobyl has been the perfect storm.
The storm was born from the fact that the accident happened in the Soviet Union, where the authorities routinely lied. The state knew best. About everything. And the rationed knowledge – e.g. important knowledge about faults in the reactor. The knowledge that operators lacked when they pressed the wrong button.
And it was also well known that the cloud from Chernobyl was over Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, on International Workers’ Day, 1 May, four days after the accident. I wonder if the state informed the citizens and canceled the grand parade. Nothing. Ergo: Never believe the authorities.
The storm developed into a hurricane when, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries entered free fall. The economy was for the rats, unemployment is soaring and health conditions were terrible. With lots of alcohol and smoke, collapsed social safety nets, the development of rampant inequality, rising murder and suicide rates, and a miserable health care system. Life expectancy tumbled“Men had the prospect of dying in their fifties, women a little later.
Across the previous union, the population was really, really bad, and one way out of the misery was to be recognized as a Chernobyl victim, as that title gave entitlement to social benefits. So the battles over who were victims and how many there were were were almost endless.
A perfect trajectory for conspiracy theories – such as that the accident was deliberately instigated by Moscow (perhaps to exterminate Ukrainians). Or that Russian planes quickly took to the skies with chemicals that caused radioactivity to rain down on Belarus (then the Russians themselves escaped the dirt). Or that it is, in fact, a cunning CIA plot.
In fact, there are unmistakably biblical overtones to the whole affair. Does not the book of Books (Rev. chapter 8, verses 10-11) predict that a star named Wormwood will fall and pollute rivers and springs and kill mankind? The name is Chernobyl means – wormwood.
Our collective knowledge
It has not been difficult for Greenpeace to get its ear heard for its alternative report and scathing criticism of The Chernobyl Forum. Namely, that it was an “appalling whitewash” that was “insulting to the thousands of victims.”
But are they right in their criticism – and their alternative facts? Judge for yourself. If they have, all the rest of us are victims of one of the most extensive conspiracies in the history of the world. If they have, we must recognize that we – humanity – are lost in our understanding of what is scientifically grounded knowledge about what is dangerous and what is not.
The Chernobyl Forum and its report were the UN system’s bid for a comprehensive presentation of what we know about the scientifically documented consequences of the accident. As many as eight UN agencies and the three post-Soviet countries participated. A key participant was the WHO, created to promote public health. Another was the somewhat lesser-known UNSCEAR, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, which since 1955 has recorded the effects of radioactivity so that the world’s governments can prevent its consequences.
And no, the UN was not quickly flown in and tied a story on its sleeve, after which the report went to press. The plight of the people of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus was recognized. But how much was radiation due?
An accident like the one at Chernobyl is what scientists call a natural experiment. This means: No scientist has (one must hope) the ethics to expose healthy people to unnecessary radiation. But once the accident has happened, it can only be too slow to investigate the consequences and gain new knowledge.
Thousands of scientists – medics, biologists, zoologists, physicists, and everyone else – have stormed to the zone and the surrounding cities since 1986. They have measured, weighed, experimented, and recorded – studied people, plants, animals, and soil. Over the years, they have had their findings published in scientific journals.
All this knowledge is taken into account when the WHO, UNSCEAR, and all the other UN bodies assess what we know. Their conclusions may shift as new studies become available. When that happens, they adjust and tell us that now we know something new. That’s science.
The question is, therefore: do we believe, for example, that the European Union will be able to do so? The WHO is hiding something that they are working with two sets of rules – one for Chernobyl and another for the rest of the world. That the organization turns a blind eye to widespread cancer, severe health problems, and malformed fetuses and children? Do we think this can happen without all the world’s experts questioning, distancing, feeling misquoted or abused?
The unnecessary cancer
Back in the Closed Zone, on the paved path of the forest that was once Pripyat – the Pompei of communism – there’s at least one thing you don’t have to worry about incurring. Namely, the only type of cancer that the accident has documented has given rise to.
It is a known case that causes thyroid cancer. The vast majority of sufferers are cured. But much suffering would have been avoided if the Soviet state had bothered with a simple and short-lived ban: Avoid fresh milk.
Because: Radioactive iodine settles on the grass that cows eat. It goes into the udder, into the milk, into the baby, and into the baby’s thyroid gland. That kind of iodine is somewhat aggressive, but it’s super short-lived. In two months, it’s gone.
The article was originally printed and published by Think Tank Actually. The association Atomkraft Ja Tak has been granted permission to republish the article.