Chernobyl

 

The Chernobyl accident took place 25 years ago on 26 April 1986. Practically ever since it has been a political football kicked around by the pro- and anti- nuclear lobbies. As a result today there is still much that can be learned from the experience. For the past two years the European Commission has supported a project, Agenda for Chernobyl Health Research (ARCH) has developed a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) which recommends the setting up of a life span study funded by the European Union.

The accident has already taught us much of value, most prominently in terms of the effects of 131-I in inducing thyroid cancer. Less prominently evidence appears to be accumulating that cataract of the eye has a lower threshold that previously thought, even possibly no threshold at all. One of the most interesting findings is the inheritance by the children of exposed fathers of mini-satellite mutations. At the present time it is not possible to say whether these are associated with health effects but animal experiments carried out by Professor Yuri Dubrova at Leicester University in the UK indicate that they might be.

See Editorial in the British Medical Journal published on 26 April 2011 here

 

Fukushima

 

The failure of the cooling in four reactors in Japan on 11 March this year serves as a reminder that even in technically highly developed countries the risk of severe accidents is not zero. Information on the releases from Fukushima remains obscure but the accident, for many weeks rated in the INES scale at 4 has recently been upgraded to 7, the same as the Chernobyl accident and implying releases that can cause severe damage to health and the environment. Fortunately for Japan winds have predominantly carried the plume out into the Pacific ocean sparing the population much potential exposure. An added complication in this case is the release of large quantities of radioactivity washed off the site into the coastal waters with the potential to contaminate sea food.

While the initial event that triggered the releases was the earthquake and tsunami, the occurrence of which were programmed into the operation of the facilities, in that the earthquake automatically triggered the shut down and there were defences against tsunamis, the events that followed on the knocking out of the emergency generators which kicked to cool the cores, revealed deep flaws in the safety culture, which many have pointed out are not peculiar to Japan but widespread in the nuclear as well as other industries, as we were reminded of by the gulf oil spill of a year ago.

Safety and private enterprise would on this evidence appear to  to be not good bedfellows. The un-edifying spectacle of three large and avoidable hydrogen explosions taking out the secondary containments of three reactors in Fukushima is no advertisement for technical competence.

Nuclear technology itself does not inspire confidence in the public at large and incompetence in its management will not improve that situation. Were it the case that this lack of confidence was without its impact on health and well-being essentially globally, the matter could be considered an internal issue for the nuclear industry. However, that it does impact on health and well-being was amply demonstrated after Chernobyl by the psychosocial effect, which is arguably the most important impact on health of that accident, notwithstanding more than 6000 cases of thyroid cancer in the exposed population many of which can be attributed to exposure to 131-I. The industry must now accept that in addition to the effects of radiation on health their industry causes a wider health impact. The accident record testifies not to a necessarily dangerous technology but a human failure to manage it safely.     

 

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