On 26 April, 1986 the world changed forever. The nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in Ukraine blew up, sending a huge radioactive particle crowd up into the atmosphere which covered most of Europe.
Despite the recent blast at Fukushima in Japan, it is still regarded as the worst nuclear disaster ever. Many of the younger generation might not remember it, but the heroism of Soviet containment crews was encapsulated in a short news reel film where helicopters could be seen hovering over the core to douse it in water – everyone knew those men would die.
The whole operation involved some half a million workers and cost some 18 million rubles. From 1986 to the year 2000, some 350,000 people were evacuated and resettled from the most severely contaminated areas in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia – all forming part of the Soviet Union at the time.
Since then, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and decontamination and healthcare costs of the Chernobyl accident. Estimates of the number of deaths that will eventually result from the accident vary enormously; these disparities reflect both the lack of solid scientific data and the different methodologies used to quantify mortality – whether the deaths are immediate, short term, or long term. 31 deaths were directly attributed to the accident – all staff and emergency workers.
A UNSCEAR report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008. But the Chernobyl Forum estimates that the eventual death toll could reach 4,000 among those exposed to the highest levels of radiation (200,000 emergency workers, 116,000 evacuees and 270,000 residents of the most contaminated areas); this figure includes some 50 emergency workers who died of acute radiation syndrome, nine children who died of thyroid cancer and an estimated total of 3,940 deaths from radiation-induced cancer and leukaemia.
In addition, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that, among the hundreds of millions of people living in broader geographical areas, there will be 50,000 excess cancer cases resulting in 25,000 excess cancer deaths.
The truth is that we will never truly quantify the damage caused by the nuclear fallout. Nuclear energy was once sold and marketed as the safest form of energy generation, but as we have seen twice in the last 25 years, when something goes wrong, it goes very badly wrong.
The fallout was not limited to what people came into contact with, even here in Malta. But it also has a cumulative effect when it settles on grass. Cattle ate that grass and plants were sown in contaminated fields. Scientists will argue that the amounts are minimal, but over time they do take effect. Doses of radiation are scientifically proven to cause deformities in babies as their genes mutate.
Support for nuclear power ebbs and flows. It is a reality which is here to stay, but we should always be wary and we should always remember, accidents do happen and when they do, the results can be catastrophic.