ANALYSIS: Chornobyl's shutdown was a symbolic end (04/22/01)

CHORNOBYL: THE FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY

ANALYSIS: Chornobyl's shutdown was a symbolic end

by Jeremy Bransten
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

PRAGUE - In the early hours of April 26, 1986, technicians at the Chornobyl nuclear power station - 135 kilometers north of Kyiv - were running a test of the plant's No. 4 reactor. They disregarded safety procedures as they proceeded.

Within minutes, fuel rods in the reactor's core experienced a sudden loss of cooling water. The meltdown had begun. At 1:23 a.m., the chain reaction in the reactor spun out of control, causing explosions and a fireball that blew off the building's roof.

A plume of radiation gradually swept north of the plant, across the rich farmlands of northern Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states into Scandinavia. Despite Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's newly proclaimed policy of "glasnost," or openness, Moscow continued its past practice and initially kept silent about the accident.

It was only when heightened radiation levels triggered alarms at a Swedish nuclear power plant that the Soviet leadership admitted that something was amiss. Two days after the accident, Soviet television finally announced that an accident had occurred at Chornobyl. Despite the spread of radiation, outdoor May Day parades in nearby Kyiv went ahead. A decision to evacuate people living within a 30-kilometer radius of the plant was not made until the next day

Slowly, over the next two weeks, information about the scale of the disaster began to trickle through government censors. Mr. Gorbachev did not appear on television to discuss the disaster until May 15. All the while the stricken reactor continued to spew radiation into the atmosphere.

To slow the outflow, fire-fighting units made up of men called "liquidators" ran relays onto the plant's mangled roof, dumping shovelfuls of hot graphite into the gaping hole. After two weeks the opening was closed. Eventually, the entire reactor was sealed within a 300,000-ton concrete and metal sarcophagus.

Thirty-one people died in the immediate aftermath of the accident, of acute radiation poisoning. But over the next four years more than 600,000 people took part in clean-up efforts inside the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the plant. Many still face long-term health consequences.

According to government figures cited in Kyiv in December 2000, more than 4,000 people who took part in clean-up work have died to date from Chornobyl-related illnesses. Another 70,000 have been disabled. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Anan noted recently that according to U.N. specialists, 3 million children in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia require treatment as a result of radiation exposure, and many of them are expected to die prematurely of thyroid and other cancers.

In addition to the medical consequences, hundreds of thousands of people have been uprooted from their homes. More than 150,000 people were evacuated from the immediate radiation fallout zone in Ukraine; another 130,000 people across the border in Belarus were forced to relocate.

The Chornobyl accident changed perceptions of nuclear power around the world, reinforcing public fears of atomic energy and prompting several European countries to rethink their nuclear power strategies. But Hans Friederich Meyer, spokesman for the U.N.'s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that, paradoxically, the accident also had a beneficial impact, leading to new international safety conventions.

"The Chornobyl accident was really a big event and in the field of nuclear safety, it created a new awareness and, from our point of view, from the point of view of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in the longer run, a real improvement in the safety culture," Mr. Meyer told RFE/RL.

Although the design of the Chornobyl plant is considered less safe than the layout of plants operating in Western Europe, many countries, including Germany, have now adopted plans to gradually phase out their reliance on nuclear power. Among the European Union's 15 member-states, only France remains fully committed to the technology.

Despite their announced intentions, Mr. Meyer noted that Western European countries will have a difficult time weaning themselves off nuclear power, at least in the short term. For the moment there are few non-polluting alternatives that can provide sufficient supplies of electricity

"If we look to the global warming question and climate change, it is very difficult for European countries to close down a great number of their nuclear power plants. One must take into account that in many Western European countries, the share of nuclear electricity is quite high," he noted.

President Leonid Kuchma's order to shut down Chornobyl put a symbolic end to a plant that had become a byword for catastrophe. "The world will become a safer place. People will sleep in peace," Mr. Kuchma said during a ceremony marking the shutdown on December 15, 2000.

But this is not the end of nuclear power not yet. What will happen to similar plants in other post-Soviet states that continue to operate - among them the Ignalina power station in Lithuania - remains unresolved.

In an ironic final twist to the Chornobyl saga, technicians had to restart the plant's last operating reactor on December 14 - it had been shut down due to a minor malfunction - so that President Kuchma could order the cessation of operations. Nuclear safety is one thing, but losing face is quite another.

Jeremy Bransten, is an RFE/RL journalist based in Prague.

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