Chernobyl's radioactive cloud had not yet reached the shores of the Pacific when official U.S. government pronouncements began assuring citizens that there was no danger to the public health. The same message had already been delivered by governments of other countries to their citizens as the radioactive cloud passed overhead.
Socialist and capitalist countries alike could agree that the radioactive release was safe for everyone living outside the immediate area of the Chernobyl plant. Radiation levels increased by more than 500 percent in some areas hundreds of miles away from the accident, but citizens were still assured this was safe. And in what can only be viewed as political double talk, some governments actually told their citizens the air was perfectly safe to breathe, while the fruit and vegetables in the same places might be unsafe to eat.
The Chernobyl reactor meltdown was predictable. The location and time were unknown, of course, but a nuclear disaster of this magnitude was bound to happen once, and unfortunately, it's bound to happen again.
The response of governments throughout the world has also been predictable. Hasty assurances of public safety were followed with detailed explanations of why a nuclear power disaster could not occur in their countries. And most predictable of all was the nearly unanimous silence about the victims of this accident.
The number of Chernobyl victims is unknown. The Soviet Union is reporting new deaths almost daily. Some outside commentators have suggested the number of casualties is much higher than official government counts. The Soviet Union's initial denial and distortion of the disaster has rendered their numbers questionable at best. And the large-scale evacuations of an estimated 92,000 people make independent confirmation impossible. When these factors are added to the normal press secrecy and control practiced in the Soviet Union, no one can say accurately who and how many victims there are.
What can be said about the victims is that their numbers will surely increase with time. How many people were exposed to "unsafe" levels of radiation for how long is unknown. But even if this information were public knowledge, experts in the field of radiation would disagree about the potential number of victims, because of a great divergence of opinion about both short- and long-term health effects of different types of radiation. So-called "safe" exposure levels have routinely been set too low, only to be revised upward as new tests and data are analyzed. Only time will tell which experts, if any, are right and how many people in the Soviet Union and elsewhere will contract radiation-related illnesses due to the Chernobyl accident.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. government and press have focused almost exclusively on the irresponsible handling of information by the Soviet Union. The accident and subsequent radiation release were not reported and were then denied by the Soviet Union for two days after the accident occurred. It is likely that many people in the path of the fallout would have left voluntarily if they had been given information about the disaster before the cloud arrived. For this reason the people in the path of the Chernobyl cloud who were not warned in advance have a special right to be angry and to demand damages for the injuries caused to them because of Soviet negligence.
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT has no room to gloat or condemn others when it comes to nuclear secrecy and safety, however. We have our own history of cover-ups and unreported radiation releases. There have been at least 12 serious nuclear power accidents in the United States since 1959. And at Three Mile Island, in the most serious nuclear accident to date in this country, the decision not to evacuate Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was made for political rather than safety reasons.
The U.S. government gambled and won, but the decision not to evacuate was made at a time when an explosion like the one at Chernobyl was still possible at the Three Mile Island reactor. The people surrounding the plant were not given this information and allowed to decide for themselves. They were instead told by the federal government that everything was under control, when it was not, and that there was no danger to the public health, when there was.
One of the lessons I learned personally while working at the Environmental Protection Agency during the Three Mile Island crisis, and that we all can learn from Chernobyl, is that in the event of a nuclear accident there is very little governments can do except help evacuate their citizens. One of the main reasons why governments are so quick to claim that there is no danger to their citizens in a radiation release is because there is nothing governments can do to prevent exposure.
The question that continues to surface throughout the world after Chernobyl is why a similar accident could not happen elsewhere. In this country we are told that the Soviet technology is inferior to our own. We are almost never told that some U.S. reactors, both commercial and military, use the same graphite that has come to symbolize the difference between the U.S. and Soviet reactors.
The other main difference between U.S. and Soviet reactors is the containment capabilities. Most U.S. reactors are surrounded by a huge concrete structure that is supposed to keep radioactive gases from leaking into the environment. Chernobyl and other Soviet reactors reportedly do not have this type of containment.
In reality, though, containment domes may offer nothing more than false hope in the event of an accident on the scale of Chernobyl. Even with the much smaller Three Mile Island accident, radioactive gases had to be continually "vented" into the environment to avoid an explosion. And in a major accident, the dome itself could prevent aerial efforts to slow a fire or cool the reactor core, as was done at Chernobyl. In the end, a containment dome serves much the same purpose as the Star Wars nuclear defense system--it makes some people feel safer, works great on paper, costs a lot, and fails only when it is needed.
Containment domes and the use of water instead of graphite will not change the simple fact that technology is never 100 percent safe. Even with seemingly unlimited amounts of money, some of the best scientific minds in the world, and the pride that goes with doing something no one else can, our nation suffered from the technological failure of the Challenger space shuttle. The disaster occurred on the same day President Reagan was to point to the orbiting Challenger during his State of the Union address and hail the marvels of American technology. Instead the space shuttle blew up, and we as a nation were left to mourn for the victims. As the president himself pointed out, the Challenger astronauts knew the risks involved with space travel and accepted them.
Potential victims of nuclear disasters are not given a choice. Nor are they given an honest assessment of the risks. The Soviet Union, for example, claimed prior to the Chernobyl disaster that a serious accident could happen in their country "once in a million years." The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission consistently claimed that a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear power plant was virtually impossible, but then, in a moment of candor last April, raised the possibility to a frightening 45 percent chance by the year 2000. What is not given to the people of most countries is the power to make their own decision about whether or not the risks of nuclear reactors outweigh the benefits. This decision still rests with governments and nuclear energy corporations.
NUCLEAR POWER GENERATION is a dangerous technology. It provides electricity only at a high potential cost. Like other technologies, nuclear reactors can and do fail, not only in the United States, as the Soviet Union used to say, or only in the Soviet Union, as U.S. nuclear engineers are now saying, but anywhere that the technology is used.
Unlike other disasters, however, the victims of a nuclear catastrophe cannot be counted on the day of the event, or the next day, or the day after that. In fact, it takes years for many types of radiation to damage the human body. The victims list from Chernobyl will continue to increase long after the story has left the front pages of our newspapers.
The Chernobyl accident was a major catastrophe. A similar or worse accident can happen at any time, at any one of the world's 374 other nuclear power stations. For those who have lost family and friends, contracted a radiation-related disease, had to be relocated, or who now live with the increased fear of developing cancer or leukemia, the risks of nuclear power are already too great.
For the rest of the world's population, Chernobyl should be a warning. We can heed the warning and begin weaning ourselves from this overly dangerous, unforgiving source of electricity; or we can ignore the warning and wait for other accidents, other victims, and the permanent destruction of other parts of our world. What we must not do is let the governments of our world convince us that nuclear power and radiation pose no threat to the public health.
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