U.S. State Department overview of the accident at Chornobyl (04/21/96)

U.S. State Department overview of the accident at Chornobyl

Following is the text of the State Department statement titled "Overview: The Accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant," released in Kyiv on March 19.

In the early hours of April 26, 1986, during a test on the turbines in Chornobyl's Reactor No. 4, a catastrophic explosion in the reactor core destroyed much of the reactor building. The explosion and subsequent fire released massive quantities of radioactive substances - radioactive iodine, cesium-137, strontium-90 - into the atmosphere. The fire raged for nearly two weeks, before being extinguished May 10. Most of the 31 individuals officially recorded as dying during or immediately after the disaster were plant personnel or firefighters with little or no protection against radiation. Some 600,000 individuals from throughout the former Soviet Union helped with the clean-up that followed.

Although arguments persist over the explosion's immediate cause, contributing factors include basic flaws in the reactor's design, shoddy plant construction, the extreme riskiness of the test procedures used the night of the explosion, and a poor safety culture throughout the Soviet nuclear establishment. The affected reactor also had no containment structure.

Prypiat, a town of some 30,000 housing plant personnel and their families only two kilometers from the plant, was evacuated two days after the explosion. Further evacuations subsequently created a 30-kilometer exclusion zone around Chornobyl. In total, some 133,000 people were evacuated, although some individuals refused to leave the zone.

The impact on Ukraine

Although precise figures may never be known, thousands of deaths or deformations may have been linked in some way to the accident. The health effects of the accident clearly have been severe. There is general agreement that the accident led to a dramatic increase in thyroid cancers among Ukrainian children, from approximately six cases a year before the accident to between 30 and 40 cases per year since 1990. It is also generally accepted that a rise in leukemia among "liquidators" - those who helped deal with the immediate consequences of the accident at the plant site - can be attributed to irradiation. The U.S. Department of Energy and Ukraine's Ministry of Health are now discussing cooperative studies of leukemia among the liquidators.

In addition to these known health effects, there has been a dramatic decline in public health as a whole throughout Ukraine. Though the general decline in public health cannot be tied scientifically to Chornobyl, many believe the accident has played a significant role in the deteriorating health of individuals living in irradiated areas.

Estimates of the financial and human costs of the accident vary greatly. The Chornobyl Ministry estimates Ukraine has spent over $3 billion in the four years since independence on Chornobyl-related health and clean-up costs. More than 5 percent of the draft 1996 budget - some $693 million at current exchange rates - has been allocated for dealing with the accident's consequences. About 65 percent of this sum is devoted to direct payments - for exampel, rent, utilities, medical and other types of subsidies - to those affected by the accident, currently estimated at about 3.2 million people. The remainder is largely targeted for construction costs to resettle those in contaminated areas and for clean-up of affected areas. More than 180,000 hectares of arable land and 237,000 hectares of forest land have been rendered useless due to radioactive contamination. An additional 3 million hectares of arable land is still cultivated but has higher than normal radiation levels.

International assistance

The international community has provided significant assistance to the former Soviet Union and Ukraine over the last 10 years to cope with the consequences of Chornobyl. Projects financed by the international community include: the International Atomic Energy Agency's International Chornobyl Project, designed to help create safer living conditions in areas hit by radioactive contamination; World Health Organization programs to monitor the accident's health effects; and more than six current European Commission/TACIS-sponsored programs, including scientific cooperation to remediate affected agricultural and forested areas, cooperative health studies, and donations of medical diagnostic equipment

The United States has contributed over $100 million worth of humanitarian and medical assistance to Ukraine over the last four years. On the 10th anniversary of the accident, USAID expects to distribute some $20 million in humanitarian assistance to victims of Chornobyl and to donate a mobile radiation-measuring unit. The Department of Energy has earmarked approximately $13 million for ongoing nuclear safety improvement projects at Chornobyl. In addition, the G-7 and international financial community have so far marshaled $2.3 billion - $498 million in grants and $1.8 billion in credits - for efforts aimed at ensuring Chornobyl's closure by the year 2000.

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