Documents Chernobyl 11 results

"Exposure to radiation has origins such as medical diagnosis and therapeutic procedures; nuclear weapons production and testing; as well as occupations that entail increased exposure to artificial or naturally occurring sources of radiation. Since the establishment on of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation the mandate of the committee has been to undertake board reviews of the sources of ionizing radiation and of the effects of that radiation on human health and the environment. The committee last made estimates of radiation levels and trends in its 2000 report. The present report updates and extends those estimates."

"Information about the consequences of human exposure to radiation in the former Soviet Union has recently become available. These data add new insights and provide possible answers to several important questions regarding radiation and its impact on occupational and public health. The 1986 Chernobyl accident initiated a major and early increase in childhood thyroid cancer that resulted from ingestion of iodine-131 (131I) by young children living in the most heavily contaminated areas of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. No significant additional cancer or other adverse medical effects have yet been reported in the affected populations and among clean-up workers. Major psychological stress independent of radiation dose has been observed in those people thought to be exposed. During the early days of the atomic energy program in the former Soviet Union, some unfortunate events occurred. The country's first atomic test in Semipalatinsk in 1949 exposed over 25,000 people downwind from the blast to significant doses of fission products, especially 131I. During the late 1940s and the early 1950s nuclear material production facilities were developed near Chelyabinsk in the South Ural Mountains, which resulted in major releases into the environment and significant overexposures for thousands of workers and nearby populations. ..."

"Several important features of the Chernobyl disaster make it an outstanding event among the industrial accidents in the world's history. We want to draw the readers' attention to three of them: 1) Chernobyl involved severe occupa-tional injuries and caused chronic disorders in an unprecedented number of mitigation workers; 2) the health problems in question cannot be attributed solely to the specific radiation injury in the zone 1 ; and 3) the Chernobyl disaster has been a unique communication (media, in particular) event in terms of its international coverage, impact, and the controversies it has generated. The purpose of this article is to trace the links between these peculiarities of the accident and to suggest a framework for relating the communication and information factors to the health condition of the people who were occupationally involved in the Chernobyl disaster mitigation. We also will propose a number of ideas about how the factors in question can be managed within the Chernobyl disaster mitigation policy, which at present is critically shaped by the post-Soviet political, economic, and cultural context."

"Investigators estimate that the population exposure that resulted from the Chernobyl fallout is in the range of natural background radiation for most European countries. Given current radiobiologic knowledge, health effects-if any-would not be measurable with epidemiologic tools. In several independent reports, however, researchers have described isolated peaks in the prevalence of congenital malformations in the cohort conceived immediately after onset of the fallout. The consistency of the time pattern and the specific types of malformation raise concern about their significance. In this study, the author summarizes findings from Turkey, Belarus, Croatia, Finland, Germany, and other countries, and implications for radiation protection and public health issues are discussed."

"La catastrophe survenue le 26 avril 1986 à Tchernobyl, aux frontières des républiques d'Ukraine, du Bélarus et de Russie, a provoqué un désastre sanitaire dont les conséquences fortement minimisées à l'époque perdurent aujourd'hui. Le reste de l'Europe, dont la France et la Belgique, n'a du reste pas été totalement épargné. Elle a contribué à la désagrégation de l'URSS et a fait peser un coût énorme sur les républiques concernées.
À l'Ouest comme à l'Est, où les opinions publiques n'avaient pas le poids qu'elles ont aujourd'hui, le "Tchernobyl disaster" a tétanisé l'industrie nucléaire, mais également les milieux scientifiques et techniques qui lui sont liés, les agences et forums liés à la promotion et au contrôle de cette industrie, et les États puissamment engagés dans le nucléaire. La gestion post-Tchernobyl est alors devenue un enjeu majeur, politique, scientifique, social, médical, technologique, financier et aussi d'information et de communication.
Vingt-cinq ans après, les promoteurs du nucléaire auraient volontiers tourné la page de Tchernobyl, mais les événements de Fukushima sont venus douloureusement leur rappeler qu'on ne peut se voiler la face devant une technologie toujours difficilement maîtrisable, quoi qu'on en dise."

"This volume, written by leading authorities from Eastern Europe, outlines the history of the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Although there has been much discussion concerning the impacts of nuclear accidents, and Chernobyl in particular, never before has there been a comprehensive presentation of all the available information concerning the health and environmental effects of the low dose radioactive contaminants that were emitted from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The official discussions emanating from the IAEA and associated UN agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl Forum reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findings reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and as a consequence these reports have erred on the side of negative findings simply because much of what was known was not included in their assessments. This new book provides a complete and extensive summary of all known research, including that published in Russian and Ukrainian, and provides new insights to the likely long term health and environmental consequences of nuclear accidents."

"Tougher action is needed to allow for new information about the risks from internal radiation. Uncertainties about the risks mean that in some cases we might be exposed to 10 times the risk previously thought, while in other cases the risk may be almost zero. Uncertainties in current methods of estimating risks from internal radiation require policy makers and regulators to adopt a precautionary approach when dealing with exposures to internal radiation, according to a Report published today by the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE). The Report advises that greater attention should be paid to these uncertainties.
The Report warns also that newly discovered effects of radiation, genomic instability (ongoing, long-term increase in mutations within cells and their offspring), bystander effects (cells next to those that were irradiated can also be damaged), and minisatellite mutations (inherited germline DNA changes) are real biological events that need further research. However the Report finds no clear evidence to date that current radiation risks are substantially wrong.
The Committee was established by the then Environment Minister in 2001 following concerns about the health risks of internal radiation, including reports of increased incidences of cancer near nuclear sites and after Chernobyl. ..."