The legacy of Chernobyl

In the early hours of 26 April 1986 Leonid Toptunov, a young, inexperienced and tired operator at the Soviet nuclear plant at Chernobyl, near Kiev, allowed the level of reactivity in one of the plant's reactors to fall dangerously low. As he attempted to correct this, the power in the reactor rose dramatically and uncontrollably, and a powerful steam explosion took place, closely followed by a massive second explosion which started a hugh graphite fire and blew millions of curies of radioactivity into the environment. So occurred the worst disaster in the history of nuclear energy. Zhores Medvedev, gives an analysis of the long-term natural and global effects of the catastrophe, examining the technical, environmental, agricultural, health and economic impact of the accident, the largest industrial accident in human history. Officially it has been estimated to have cost more than US $20 billion by 1989, and this is almost certainly an underestimate due to the fact that more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the contaminated zone and permanently resettled, about 1,000,000 people continue to live under a special regime because their homes are in an area of increased radiation danger, nearly 500,000 civilians and soldiers took part in the decontamination work and in other emergencies and more than 600,000 people (including 250,000 children) received high doses of external and internal radiation and have been entered in medical register similar to the one set up for survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs in 1945. Why did the catastrophe happen and what will be its legacy? This book offers an account of the technical aspects of the Chernobyl accident, based on documents and information that have only recently become available. It indicates that the accident was inevitable in the context of the poor safety record of Soviet nuclear plants which finally began to emerge only in 1988. The result was the closure of many reactors (and the cancellation of ones planned or in construction) for safety reasons and because of public pressure. Chernobyl's implications for global energy supplies and for the energy crisis in the USSR and Eastern Europe have contributed to a reconsideration of economic and political priorities in the Soviet Union and to perestroika and glasnost.