The period of “Chernobyl’s decay” /ДЕНЬ/

The period of “Chernobyl’s decay”U kraine will be exposed to residual radiation for hundreds of years. What can be done today? day.kiev.ua By Oleksandra SHEPEL 28 April 09

Twenty-three years have passed since The Day of April 26 divided human fates into “before” and “after” the disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Until this day it is the world’s worst anthropogenic catastrophe unmatched for its environmental impact.

For Ukraine Chornobyl is an everyday reality and a host of global-scale problems. Unfortunately, the problems caused by the catastrophe are as acute today as they were 23 years ago. Can one get used to devastated villages and abandoned fertile land?………………………..

Radioisotopes of iodine, which were present in the air in the largest quantities, were the most dangerous for people. Therefore, Ukrainians who were outside under the radioactive clouds in the last days of April and early May picked up plenty of this isotope. Their thyroid glands accumulating this substance, received the largest dose of irradiation of all the parts of body, and suffered worst. As a result, several years after the Chornobyl disaster, doctors registered a spike in thyroid cancer among children.

Some experts assert that the life of radioactive iodine is short, so it cannot be affecting our health today. In fact, radioactive iodine does not disappear within eight days, as some write, but plants itself in the thyroid of its victims and stays there for 80 days.

Back in 1978 the children’s doctor Helen Caldicott warned humanity that the silence of doctors about the consequences of nuclear technologies and radiation would lead to an increase in cancer and hereditary diseases. In 1982 Ukraine published data of foreign authors proving the dangerous influence of radiation on the health of pregnant women and children, specifically mentioning children with inborn defects born of irradiated parents.

Before the Chornobyl catastrophe, in 1985, academician Valeri Legasov argued that the residual radioactivity after nuclear plant explosions increases with time because of accumulation of long-lived radionuclides. Alice Stuart, an expert on the effects of low levels of radiation, studied the state of health of the employees of the Hanford military plant, and victims of nuclear bombing in Japanese cities, and proved that small doses of radiation over a longer period of time are more of a carcinogenic threat than a one-time equivalent.

Are the restless experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) aware of this?………………………………….plutonium-241 will “leave the arena” in a century — it will be replaced by more mobile “long-lived” americium-241. Experts are afraid that this isotope, able to percolate into the ground, will contaminate the subsoil waters and will spread from the worst contaminated zone to clean territories over several thousands of years.

The period of “Chornobyl’s decay” /ДЕНЬ/