The Chernobyl disaster

These things are not intended to be in any significant order.

Local copy of things collected from WWW news sources.
[Last update: 18 Dec 2002].

Yahoo! News Headline Matches keyword "Chernobyl"

Search my web pages keyword "Chernobyl"

"Good evening, comrades. All of you know that there has been an incredible misfortune -- the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It has painfully affected the Soviet people, and shocked the international community. For the first time, we confront the real force of nuclear enegery, out of control."
-- Soviet Pres. Mikhail Gobachev

Chornobyl Disaster Zone Official site

[You will have to read Ukranian (or even Russian :-) for this page].

Chernobyl Journal

All manner of bits and pieces relating to Chernobyl and the Instytute BELRAD.
(Thanks to shevcov@ehu.unibel.by for this one).
NOTE: Get your browser into Cyrillic for these web pages. If you hit "English" on the welcome page you get some English text -- but only about 10% of material is available.
NOTE: A DNS entry for "da.ru" is not always available. As at end 1999 the Journal is guested at http://greenfield.fortunecity.com/flytrap/250/index.htm.
Update 23 Oct 1999: New forums related to Radiation Safety (Consequences of the accident), Postindustriality (New technology, science and humanity) , and Week-days (Chernobyl forum) were added.

Chernobyl & Nuclear Safety - Internet Resources

Extensive list of Chernobyl and Ukrainian (and other) resources.
[From the Slavic-Eurasian Studies Web]

Prof. Yuri Bandazhevsky's Home Page (Cyrillic alert!)

Various topics and materials related to the Chernobyl disaster and its aftermath. Multi-lingual: Ukranian, French, German and some English.
[Some detailed articles included. See, e.g., PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF INCORPORATED RADIOACTIVE EMISSION (1998)].

Search my news archives for Chernobyl articles

A potted glimpse query to search Aussie News articles and the news morgue for items that may be relevant to "Chernobyl". (You might also try the potted search of my public web pages).
[NOTE: searches at this site may periodically be disabled due to disk-space limitations. But as of Jan 2000 a much-updated Chernobyl news collection will be available at kymhorsell.com and exaflops.com].

The Chornobyl [sic] CyberSpace Parliament

As of mid 1998 only seems to be an odd collection of GIF's, including one of reactor #4.

You are in Chornobyl!

Features abstracts regarding "Problems of Chornobyl Exclusion Zone". and data about enterprises running inside the Zone.
Contact information:

Infocentre Chornobyl, p/b 183, Chornobyl, Kyiv region, 255620 Ukraine.

Telephone: +380 4493 5-13-91.
Fax: +380 4493 5-19-42.
Email: admin@ic-chernobyl.kiev.ua.
[See the English language page, if you're that way inclined].

Summing up the Consequences of the Accident (Vienna, Austria 8-12 April 1996)

This summary of the results of the Joint EC/IAEA/WHO International Conference: One Decade after Chernobyl: Summing up the Consequences of the Accident, held in Vienna, 8-12 April 1996, was formulated on the basis of the following: updating reports and keynote presentations; Background Papers prepared by expert panels, and discussions of these by the Conference; and the Session Chairpersons' conclusions, which also took into account material submitted in posters and in technical exhibitions. It does not necessarily reflect the views of governments of Member States of the Sponsoring Organizations.

CHERNOBYL TEN YEARS ON -- RADIOLOGICAL AND HEALTH IMPACT

Several years after the Three Mile Island accident, in the United States, the Chernobyl accident completely changed the public's perception of nuclear risk. While the first accident provided the impetus to develop new research programmes on nuclear safety, the second, with its human death toll and the dispersion of a large part of the reactor core into the environment, raised a large number of problems of "management" not only for the treatment of severely exposed persons, but also for the decisions that had to be taken affecting the population. Clearly, the national authorities were not ready to manage an accident whose consequences were not confined to their territory.
[From the NEA Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health, OECD NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY, November 1995]

The International Chernobyl Project, 1990-91

On April 26, 1986 a major reactor accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This caused acute radiation injuries and deaths among plant workers and firemen. It also led to radiation exposure to thousands of persons involved in rescue and clean-up operations. There was severe radioactive contamination in the area, resulting in the evacuation of people from a 30-km zone around the power plant. It became clear over the months following the accident that radioactive contamination of varying severity had also occurred in extensive areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia up to hundreds of kilometers from the site.
While the data were not detailed enough to exclude the possibility of an increase in some tumor types, it is emphasised that, on the basis of the doses estimated by the project and using internationally accepted risk estimates, future increases over the natural incidence of all cancers or hereditary effects would be difficult to discern, even with well designed long-term epidemiological studies. There remains a possibility of a statistically detectable increase in the incidence of thyroid tumors at a later date. Some general recommendations in the field of preventive medicine and for further investigations were also made by the project team.
[See The health situation for a summary relevant to end 1991].

Chernobyl -- results of the largest open-air radiation experiment

On April 26, 1986, one of the four reactors at the Chernobyl generating station in the Soviet Union, melted down, largely as a result of operator error. Their mistake -- running the plant with safety measures disconnected -- was compounded by the lack of a containment vessel...

Chernobyl -- first results in

Despite the confusion, uncertainty and stress, some information is coming in from studies of Chernobyl's aftermath. Let's take a look...

COUNTRY STATUS REPORT: UKRAINE

Ukraine is best known as the host of the worlds worst nuclear accident: the explosion at reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986. The catastrophe, killing 32 people directly, has and will have enormous impact on the health and economic situation of the Ukraine and other countries. An estimated 125,000 people already died in the Ukraine on the consequences and many more will follow.
[Includes outline of present status and history of the nuclear industry in Ukraine. From For Mother Earth ].

AAAS abstracts concerning Chernobyl

Global Radiation Patterns

The risk to the public health of the people in neighboring countries from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, USSR, has been a primary element in evaluating the magnitude this accident has had on the world. The citizens of eastern Europe and Scandinavia are the most concerned, because their countries received the majority of the exposure in the first week of the accident and thus, their health is at the highest risk.
[Local copy of <http://idcrl6.psu.edu/rmenuc/users/martin/Chernobyl/glbrad.html>].

Radiation-Induced Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure: AN INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS, 1990 by John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D.

In this book, an expert who is independent of the radiation community provides the human and physical evidence proving that carcinogenesis from ionizing radiation does occur at the lowest conceivable doses and dose-rates. This finding refutes current claims by parts of the radiation community that very low doses or dose-rates may be safe.
[See Chapter 24 -- Chernobyl: A Crossroad in the Radiation Health Sciences which appears presently at ratical.com . Gofman calculated in 1986 that about 1/2 mn additional malignant cancers would be induced by the Chernobyl accident. He points out why there is such a large disparity between that estimate and subsequent estimates by the NRC (Jan87) of 14,000, DOE (Jun87) of 28,000, DOE (Dec88) of 17,400. Gofman says the DOE and radiation community uses cancer yields based on "preferred speculations", rather than real measurements. The DOE also uses a "50 year cutoff" model that reduces estimated whole-body dose commitments by about 25%. His present minimum estimate of additional cancer fatalities is around 140K, based on RERF/Preston & Pierce's A-Bomb sub-cohort study 1950--1985].

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Chernobyl a town of 12,500 people is located in the Ukraine near the Belarus border. The Capital City of Kiev with a population of 2.4 million people lies about one hundred and ten kilometers to the north. The nuclear power station of Chernobyl lies 15 kilometers to the northwest of the town of Chernobyl. Three kilometers northwest of the reactors is the city of Pripyat, with a population of 45,000. The Pripyat River and the Dniepr River flow past the nuclear power station on their way to the Kiev Reservoir, which is south of the power station.
In 1986, the Russians generated about 10% of the world's nuclear power from only 43 operating reactors. Together they produced 27 thousand Mega Watts of electricity. Another 36 reactors were still under construction that would produce 37 thousand Mega Watts of electricity. Still in their planning stages were another 34 reactors which would ultimately represent 36 thousand Mega Watts of electricity.

9/92 "Nature" magazine: Thyroid Cancer 7.5 yrs after Chernobyl soaring

In a letter published yesterday in Nature, a British science journal, Dr. Vasily S. Kazakov of the Belarus Ministry of Health in Minsk and his colleagues say that the thyroid cancer rates in the regions most heavily irradiated began to soar in 1990. In Gomel there used to be just one or two cases of thyroid children a year. But Kazakov and his colleagues found that there were 38 cases in 1991. In six regions of Belarus and the city of Minsk, the investigators found 131 cases of thyroid cancer in young children, some of whom were still in the womb when the Chernobyl accident occurred. Because of questions about the cancer reports, the World Health Organization sent a team of scientists to Minsk to verify the reports. In an accompanying letter in Nature yesterday, they confirmed Kazakov's results.

Chernobyl Simulation

W-SPEEDI simulated the atmospheric transport of radionuclides released from Chernobyl. The following CG animations cover the period from 2l00 UTC, 25 April to 0000 UTC, 9 May 1986. The computational area was 3,600 km by 3,600 km over Europe. The vertical range was 3,000 m from the ground.
[4 MPEG files at around 2 MB each]

CHERNOBYL: ONCE AND FUTURE SHOCK -- A liquidator's story

For the first time in print, a Belarusian scientist gives his personal recollections of the secrecy that, in the crucial period immediately following the Chernobyl accident, left the unsuspecting public exposed to fallout.
[From oneworld.com]

Chernobyl's IRC home page

For those who don't know, IRC is an internet protocol, it stands for [I]nternet [R]elay [C]hat, it provides real-time communication, [D]irect [C]lient to [C]lient file transfers and many other features. In my opinion, ircII is the best client, another feature of ircII is to load scripts, such as PhoEniX or Raven, but the windows version can't load scripts.

Chernobyl +10

Summary of Nov 28, 1995 Reuter article and pointers to other information regarding reported affects of the Chernobyl accident on the populations of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
[From the Nuclear Information & Resource Service].

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHERNOBYL

That there is little agreement over Chernobyl's consequences so far isn't terribly surprising, given the paucity of pre-accident data to work with and the controversial nature of the issue itself. What is more stunning are the vast differences in estimates of health effects.
[From the Nuclear Information & Resource Service].

Effects of Chernobyl

Deaths due to the 1986 Chernobyl accident range from the 600 cited by the International Atomic Energy Agency to the 32,000 cited by the Ukrainian Ambassador to the US. Over 260,000 square kilometers of land in Belarus, Ukraine, and western Russia are still contaminated by at least one curie of cesium 137. Radioactive material continues to spread. A flood in March affected 30 million by carrying Chernobyl's radioactive material to the reservoirs of Kiev.
[From the Natural Resources Defense Council].

CHERNOBYL: IS A RADIOACTIVE DUST ACCIDENT IMMINENT?

Robot films of the devastated and corroded conditions inside Unit 4 were shown in a television documentary three years ago. These films revealed that the bottom of the Chernobyl reactor is a mass of dust and debris. The question was raised in that documentary as to the imminence of a second massive disaster in Unit 4--a "radioactive dust accident"--with far worse consequences than the first disaster ten years ago. It would be worse because of the enormous quantity of dust and debris that now lies in the reactor chamber. Dust and debris particles can carry radionuclides far distances in the atmosphere. They can remain suspended in the atmosphere for long periods of time, and they can fall to earth in unpredictability scattered "hotspots" here, there and everywhere.
[Notes by Jane Prettyman, 30 Apr 96].

Chernobyl: Ten Years Later

The information presented here is not intended to bias opinion about current nuclear power policy or technology in general. However, the authors of this treatise are unequivocally pro-nuclear power and pro-technology. We are students from the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. We believe the facts speak for themselves.

CHERNOBYL NOTES 1986 - 1995

TIME Magazine Coverage.

CHERNOBYL

Chernobyl page maintained by jmc@cs.stanford.edu.

Chernobyl -- The Forbidden Truth by By Alla Yaroshinskaya

Blurb extract:
In this impassioned, shocking, and deeply personal story, Alla Yaroshinskaya, then a journalist from Zhitomir, Ukraine, near the Chernobyl power station, describes the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the bureaucratic and scientific corruption surrounding it. Despite the government's official silence, news and panic spread throughout the USSR and Europe after the horrific accident.
[Translated by Mich�le Kahn and Julia Sallabank, foreword by John Gofman, introduction by David R. Marples].

The International Chernobyl Project, 1990-91 -- Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures

Chernobyl

IAEA Bulletin, Volume 38, Number 3.
If the experience of the survivors of the Japan atomic bombing and of other exposed populations is applicable, the major expected radiological impact of the Chernobyl accident will be deaths from cancer. The total lifetime numbers of excess cancer deaths will be greatest among the "liquidators" (emergency and recovery workers employed in 1986-87) and among the residents of "contaminated" territories. Any estimate of this excess is very unclear because of uncertainties in individual doses and in the exact magnitude of effects of low-dose protracted radiation exposure. Currently, however, our best estimates are: some 2000 extra cancer deaths lifetime among almost 200,000 liquidators from 1986 and 1987; and 4600 deaths among some 6.8 million residents of contaminated territories. Increases of this magnitude would be extremely difficult to detect epidemiologically against an expected background number of 41,500 and 800,000 cancer deaths, respectively, among the two groups.
[From "Long-term health effects" by E. Cardis, Prof. A.E. Okeanov, V.K. Ivanov, and A. Prisyazhniuk].

Chernobyl: Understanding Some of the True Costs of Nuclear Technology

Includes Chernobyl and the Collapse of Soviet Society by Dr. Jay M. Gould; excerpts from Chernobyl, Insight From the Inside, Springer-Verlag, 1991, by Dr. Vladimir M. Chernousenko; Chernobyl: A Crossroad in the Radiation Health Sciences and Chapter 24 from Radiation-Induced Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure: AN INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS by Dr. John Gofman, 1990; a partial list of some of the costs of Nuclear Technology; and testimony about Chernobyl from the World Uranium Hearing conducted in Salzburg in 1992.
[from rat haus reality press]

Health of the Population in Belarus and Ukraine

Health effects in Belarus and Ukraine, animal mutations in Belarus and Ukraine and other pointers.
[From Blackbox]

U.S. Department of Energy Initiatives on Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident

A brief review of U.S.- funded research projects related to the health effects of the Chernobyl accident. Almost all are sponsored by the Department of Energy in conjunction with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Cancer Institute. An inter-agency agreement gives the U.S. lead to the National Cancer Institute to develop and implement several of the scientific protocols.
[PR blurb from the USDOE].

A Major Cause of the Chernobyl Accident: The Vital Role of Human and Organizational Factors in the Safety of Nuclear Power Plants

A brief invited position paper by Najmedin Meshkati [Associate Professor & Associate Executive Director Institute of Safety and Systems Management, USC] for the conference "From Chernobyl to Nuclear Safety in Eastern Europe and Newly Independent States: The Search for a New Partnership".
[Local copy]

THE CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Key facts from Reactor Analysis Division of Argonne National Laboratory.

CHERNOBYL (http://www.chernobyl.com/)

This is the web site of those dedicated to informing and educating the world about radiation disaster. We are just starting with this project and this is a new site. The information listed below will be updated from time to time as needed. Interested parties are invited to respond or be added to the list of resources and information; especially in regards to present danger situations.

Chernobyl -- 10 Years After...

"...The [Chernobyl] catastrophe caused thousands of deaths....It continues to reach into the future to claim new victims and indeed the spectre of another Chernobyl continues to hang over the region..."
U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher after a tour of a children's hospital caring for victims of the disaster, March 19, 1996.
[from Greenpeace International]

The "Rectifiers"

The "Chernobyl Union" soon [after the accident] began to receive thousands of letters from people who were in the Special Zone at Chernobyl beginning in April 1986, and who took part in the rectification operation. The mortality among the Chernobyl station staff in the pre-accident years was apparently no higher than two cases in 5,000 people (4x10-4). Taking into account the fact that those who died after the accident in 1986 were among the 1,200 people doing rectification work, the probabilities of dying for them are as follows:

year	probability
1986	2.1x10-2
1987	0.8x10-2
1988	1.5x10-2
1989	1.7x10-2 (first six months)

That is about 100 times the risk of death usual for a safe place of work.

Images from the Ukraine

Includes maps, photos, drawings, newspaper cartoons, stamps and some material relevant to the Chernobyl accident.
[see README.img for an out-of-date list of what's what]

Photos from "Chernobyl Revisited"

Images from the Chernobyl Atomic Station. These are the publicity photos given to visitors at Chernobyl. (About 150 kb each.)

Maps & photos

Major defence facilities, reactors, and general maps of the Ukraine, including the radiation hot-spots and the Chernobyl fallout cloud as at May 1986.

List of Chernobyl Power Station "fatalities"

This list contains the names of the original Chernobyl Power Station staff who died between 1986 and 1989. Acute radiation sickness is abbreviated by ARS. The list has been compiled by the "Chernobyl Union".

The Chernobyl Disaster, Ten Years Later

Former Soviet republics affected by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster face a peak in cancers caused by radioactivity in about nine years' time, Belarus's Chernobyl minister said Monday [Mar 18, 1996]. Ivan Kenik, speaking outside a conference held in the run-up to the disaster's 10th anniversary, said Belarus had little experience with radiation-linked illness, notably thyroid cancer in children, and needed Western help to cope.
[from Reuters Ltd and Yahoo].

THE APOCALYPSE IS NOW

Starting April 17 and continuing through May 15, Discovery Channel Online (http://www.discovery.com) will examine the bitter legacy of the world's most horrific nuclear accident, the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Russia's Ukraine, just ten years ago this April.
[Or go directly to the main HTML page at Discovery, covering Chernobyl].

http://www-cat.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~zelenko/belarus/ChFacts.html

List of links maintained by Alexander Artsyukhovich at UIUC.

No More Chernobyls

"Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water" said A. Einstein. This site gathers together current reports about Chernobyl and information from various groups across Europe, including Eastern Europe, that will be commemorating the tenth "anniversary" on Apr 26, 1996, of the world's worst nuclear accident. Also has updated data on nuclear power programs, accidents and local contact groups in Armenia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lithuania, etc.
[From the The Fingerbook Propaganda Project].

Chernobyl - Ten Years On

A decade has passed since the disaster at Chernobyl. During the next few months this site will chronicle the events which led up to the accident and report on the consequences. In addition you will be able to find background information on RBMK reactors (the type of reactor used at Chernobyl) and the use of nuclear power for electricity generation in Ukraine.
[This material is provided by the The International Industrial Association for Energy from Nuclear Fuel AKA the Uranium Institute. The Uranium Institute is the only independent, non-governmental, global organisation to offer a forum for research and debate on economic, technical and political issues affecting the peaceful use of nuclear energy].

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station: Past, Present, and Future by Anatolij Nosovsky

1995 "Chernobyl update" from the Deputy Director of the Power Plant.
[1995 Uranium Institute Symposium Abstract]

WHO Press Releases concerning Chernobyl (local copy)

International Conference on Health Consequences of the Chernobyl and Other Radiological Accidents

Conference announcement for 20-23 Nov 1995.
The health and environmental consequences attributed to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been subject to extensive investigation. However, opinions on the real consequences still differ. A clearer picture on the health consequences of this accident is expected to emanate from the pilot phase of the International Programme on the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident (IPHECA). This phase came to an end in 1994 and a comprehensive report will be published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1995. This report will describe the actions taken in medical care, as well as the scientific findings during the first phase of IPHECA (1992- 1994).

The Chernobyl accident

By Sverker Forsberg SLU, Sweden.

Chernobyl references (local copy of stuff from PSU)

Bibliography

Local copy of things collected from WWW sources.

Information on Chornobyl and the Surrounding Area

General. Travel & Health.
[Maintained by bbusby@umich.edu].

Ten Years after Chernobyl

A National Conference. From the Greek Institute of Nuclear Technology, Environmental Radioactivity Laboratory. In Greek.

Project "Polyn"

We are glad to present a hypertext data base describing an accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. As a platform of this data base a recent official version of events published in 1992, has been used as well as materials of Chernobyl Kurchatov Institute Expedition and a number of publications in scientific press and mass media.
"POLYN" is a Russian word and means "Chernobyl'". After an accident all works in a 30-km zone were named after this word, so we keep it as a name of our data base.

Radio-ecology, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

What is radio-ecology? Includes reference to the Chernobyl disaster and its measured effects on both the Ukraine and Sweden and links to other places.

Environmental Research at CARE

Includes some references to research on the aftermath of Chernobyl. CARE is the Centre for Analytical Research in the Environment at Silwood Park, UK.

Chernobyl

Radioactive Disaster. This file is an attempt to compile information on Chernobyl disaster, its influence on Belarus and to inform about international charity organisations helping my little country to fight this horrible inheritance. Maintained by Alexander Artsyukhovich at U Virginia.
[Seems to also be at Chernobyl Radioactive Disaster ].

Chernobyl'

In April 1986, Chernobyl' (Chornobyl' in Ukrainian) was an obscure city on the Pripiat' River in north-central Ukraine. Almost incidentally, its name was attached to the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant located about twenty-five kilometres upstream.

On April 26, the city's anonymity vanished forever when, during a test at 1:21 A.M., the No. 4 reactor exploded and released thirty to forty times the radioactivity of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world first learned of history's worst nuclear accident from Sweden, where abnormal radiation levels were registered at one of its nuclear facilities.

Ukraine

Links and other information about the Ukraine, including the Chernobyl disaster and its consequences.

Other references

A list of pointers to all local Web files that contain one or more references to "Chernobyl". Many of these can't be located from the "Chernobyl" pages, and some don't presently reside inside any Web directory page. Expect the corresponding quality.

Other Interesting Addresses

A list of relevant email addresses. E.g. pbl@ibrae.msk.su - Nuclear Safety Institute (NSI). Maintained by Ben Slone sloneb@nuke.handheld.com.

Various incoming stuff

Kym Horsell /
Kym@KymHorsell.COM

ADVISORY: Email to these sites is filtered. Unsolicited email may be automajically re-directed to the relevant postmaster.

Date created: Thu Feb 5 17:51:41 2004

Date last modified: Tue Jun 10 17:36:43 2003