RETURN TO GLOBAL: NORMAL || LOW-GRAPHICS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Centura] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ten years after Chernobyl, plutonium taints Ukraine waters ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright © 1996 The Associated Press KIEV, Ukraine (Apr 3, 1996 4:33 p.m. EST) -- The legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident not only lingers in the minds of millions of people living nearby. It also taints their drinking water. Plutonium and other dangerous radioactive particles released in the accident have been working their way into the ground water in the wetlands of northern Ukraine for the past 10 years, and officials warn they have now found their way to Ukraine's major waterways. "Ukraine is the only country in the world in which a huge quantity of plutonium is in an uncontrolled, free and fluid state," said nuclear physicist Volodymyr Usatenko, chief consultant to the Ukrainian parliament's commission on Chernobyl. Ten years after the world's worst commercial nuclear disaster, officials and environmentalists are still struggling to eradicate the effects. Though expeled in smaller quantities than the iodine, cesium and strontium released after the 1986 accident, the "loose" plutonium is the most insidious. It travels more quickly, is more radioactive, and is more quickly absorbed into human and other organisms, causing cancer and other health problems. It is easily soluble and water can move it far. And with a half-life of nearly 25,000 years, it will long outlast the other elements. Already, a victims group claims, 150,000 people in Ukraine alone are dead from Chernobyl-related diseases, and 55,000 are invalids. Others say that number is wildly overstated in order to attract Western aid, and that deaths are only in the dozens. But it is clear that the radiation has taken a horrible toll. Thyroid cancer among children, almost nonexistent before the accident, has increased a hundredfold since then in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. After the nuclear disaster, plutonium was carried into the air with the radioactive cloud and deposited on the countryside. During the cleanup, bulldozers removed top soil, cut down trees and dismantled buildings. The contaminated rubble was trucked to "temporary storage sites." Those sites were in effect holes in the ground. Some were covered over, some weren't, but those holes and mounds now dot the 18-mile restricted zone around the plant. Nuclear officials call them "graves." "During the construction of these graves ... the question became not of quality construction, but about how to hide it underground as soon as possible," said Volodymyr Holubev, head of radiation protection for Ukraine's Health Ministry. Their rush means that today, no one knows how much waste escaped, or even how many graves were dug. Environment Minister Yuri Kostenko said there are 800 known burial spots, but also some 200 others with no markings around the plant. Mounds of earth surround the plant, and dozens of open ditches are lined with abandoned equipment used in the cleanup. It is also unclear how much fuel, including plutonium, was actually released in the 1986 disaster. Plant officials say only 6 percent of the reactor's fuel escaped -- about 11 tons -- while environmentalists say up to 10 times that was released. Even the plant's chief engineer, Vitaly Tolstonogov, concedes that some 50 tons of fuel remains unaccounted for. Just how much burned in the fire and how much was tossed out onto the earth and surrounding rivers is unknown. "We have billions of tons of radiated earth that can't be dumped anywhere, and which will pour plutonium, cesium and strontium into Europe for decades," Usatenko said. The concrete-and-steel sarcophagus over the No. 4 reactor and the dams on the nearby Prypyat River have delayed the movement of radioactive water, but have not prevented it. And the barbed-wire fence surrounding the zone is powerless against the underground threat. "The migration of radionuclides out of the zone is the most complex and burning issue," said Hanna Tsvetkova, a nuclear specialist with Greenpeace Ukraine. "Plutonium, cesium and strontium are falling into the waters of the Dnipro River today, and tomorrow they'll turn up in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean." The Dnipro provides some two-thirds of Ukraine with its drinking water. Government officials acknowledge that the zone around the plant is gradually being cleansed of radioactive elements, but at the expense of previously clean regions outside the zone, in neighboring Belarus and Russia as well as Ukraine. Usatenko says finding and studying the graves would not be difficult, but that bureaucratic barriers are preventing it. The state, meanwhile, points to the 15 percent of Ukraine's annual budget allocated for Chernobyl cleanup and research, and says there's no money for anything else. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ GLOBAL | STATESIDE | SPORTS | POLITICS | VOICES | BUSINESS | INFOTECH | HEALTH & SCIENCE | ENTERTAINMENT | MAIN ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Do you have some feedback for the Nando Times staff?