Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
This article was first published on 24 April 2016 and is reproduced to mark 30 years to the date of the disaster.
ALMOST 30 YEARS ago on the morning of 28 April, something strange happened at a Swedish nuclear power plant.
While attempting to enter his office, Cliff Robinson set off radiation detectors. The engineer carried out a second test on himself and discovered radioactive particles not normally found at this plant.
Recalling the incident to Reuters, Robinson said he initially feared “a war had broken out and that somebody had blown up a nuclear bomb”.
Robinson’s discovery prompted the Soviet Union to reveal the source of the contamination – there had been an accident at Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine two days previous on 26 April.
Here’s the original (and very much understated) news report from Russian television:
The scale of the disaster was not revealed until later the next month. A fire and explosion at one of Chernobyl’s reactors had spewed radioactive material into the atmosphere.
During this time a radioactive plume of smoke swirled over Europe. Locals in Ukraine and Belarus spent days either in areas they should have evacuated from, or unknowingly consuming food tainted by the fallout.
The exact death toll from the disaster still remains hard to pin down.
A 2005 World Health Organisation report concluded that as many as 4,000 people will eventually die as a result of Chernobyl. There were around 50 direct deaths, many of whom were the first responders.
There have been around 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer directly linked to Chernobyl, of which there has so far been a 99% survival rate. More than a dozen children have died.
“Otherwise, the team of international experts found no evidence for any increases in the incidence of leukemia and cancer among affected residents,” the WHO’s radiation programme manager Dr Michael Repacholi said in the report, and found no changes in fertility or any increase in the number of birth defects for those living in areas with elevated levels of radiation.
This itself was disputed by some. Other studies suggested a sharp rise in the number of birth defects among children of liquidators, the thousands-strong force that was involved in the cleanup of Chernobyl.
There is a higher leukemia risk among this group.
The incident remains the worst disaster in the largely safe history of civilian nuclear power, rivalled only by Fukushima which had a more limited fallout.
Experts say a big factor behind the disaster was the unusual and poor design of the reactor, known as RMBK, particularly its propensity to sudden power surges – as happened at Chernobyl.
In addition, and unlike elsewhere outside the Soviet Union, there was no containment structure shielding the reactor to stop radioactivity escaping.
But there was also human error. According to the World Nuclear Association, the accident was also due to “the violation of operating procedures and the absence of a safety culture”. Workers at the plant disabled safety systems and ignored warnings during the test that led to the explosion.
It took almost a week for the fallout to reach Ireland.
By the time Met Éireann’s headquarters in Glasnevin recorded a sudden spike in radioactivity over Dublin on 2 May, it wasn’t unexpected.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie, Ciara McMahon, programme manager at the EPA’s Office of Radiological Protection, explained that like smoke dissipating the further it blows from a fire, the concentration of radioactive particles in the atmosphere was diluted by the time it reached Irish airspace.
Authorities launched widespread monitoring programmes across the country to ascertain the scale of what Ireland was now facing.
Heavy rain in some areas meant particles that would have normally stayed in the atmosphere were brought to the ground.
“The highest levels of radioactive particles found roughly matches the pattern of rainfall in Ireland at that time,” McMahon explained, citing areas such as Galway, Mayo, Sligo, and Waterford.
Monitoring programmes were immediately stepped up from what was normally carried out to make sure that food and drinking water were still safe. Mapping projects were launched to find where exactly these particles had settled, and if they posed any potential longer-term dangers.
However, McMahon said while Chernobyl’s fallout was detectable in Ireland and in foodstuffs like milk, the disaster had no discernible effect on public health in Ireland – in fact, the lives of sheep were the most affected.
“An issue that persisted was radioactivity being taken up by upland sheep,” McMahon said.
This mainly related to caesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear power production. Large quantities can cause radiation poisoning, while smaller amounts can lead to increased cancer risk. It proved to be the largest source of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster.
McMahon continued:
One reason you find higher concentrations of the radioactive particles in uplands areas is that caesium binds to clay in lowland areas [a process that essentially takes it out of the environment] but not to peaty soils.
Heather and mosses also take it up more effectively than other plants.
Upland sheep tend to eat those, so the combination of peat and the vegetation meant we were able to detect it in sheep for longer.
This is not to say that if you looked to the moors at night you would see them filled with glowing green sheep. The health effects on the sheep themselves were minimal due to the small amount of caesium, and were also easily mitigated before reaching the food chain.
Eating a single piece of meat with a higher-than-permitted levels of caesium wouldn’t cause issues, but it would be the accumulation of the material in your body over time as you ate more, McMahon added.
She said the solution was simple – test the animals before they were slaughtered. If elevated levels of caesium were found that could have potentially breached the conservative limits for this particle in food, the sheep were moved to lowland areas and fed on grass until the caesium passed naturally through their systems.
There was just one sample that exceeded the guidelines for the maximum amount of radioactive material that foodstuffs could contain.
Still detected
30 years on from the disaster, these particles can only be detected in the soil using sensitive equipment. Larger quantities of radioactive material settled in upland areas of Wales and Scotland, but monitoring of this ceased in 2012 as there was no longer a risk to public health.
McMahon explained that occasionally a sheep could still cause concern, but only because “it particularly loved heather” or another similar factor.
This is not in the case in some parts of Europe and elsewhere, where caesium is still easily detectable in livestock.
The main hangover in Ireland is the need to certify that certain foods being exported to countries outside of the EU are free from the radioactive particles released by Chernobyl.
But what about the dose of radiation to Irish people from Chernobyl?
Measuring this is a confusing area of science, with differing units used in different countries and some measuring different factors than others, but for this will stick with a millisievert (mSv). Here’s a quick guide:
Chernobyl resulted in an approximate 3% increase in radiation exposure to the average Irish person in the 12 months following the accident.
This would have varied from area to area but means the average dose was between 0.1msv or 0.15msv spread out over a year, carrying a nominal health risk.
In comparison, you would receive this in a matter of minutes during a chest x-ray.
Now more than three decades later, you can not differentiate between the Chernobyl fallout and that of other events such as nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and Fukushima, combined with background radiation.
While the fear of Chernobyl faded, the Irish public has remained concerned a plant much closer to home – Sellafield.
Although it has been theorised that the Windscale disaster may have impacted some areas, you would have to make an effort to consume large quantities of seafood from the Irish Sea to even come close to adding 1% to your annual radiation dose (remembering that we already get around 6% from food) as a result of Sellafield’s activities.
However, the Guardian reported in 2014 that nuclear experts said an attack or accident at the site’s pools of spent fuel could result in the contamination of a much larger area than Chernobyl or Fukushima, although the plant’s operators have said the issues with the design of these containment pools are now being addressed.
But Ciara McMahon explained that the Irish public is at greater risk from a homegrown threat rather than the likes of Chernobyl: radon.
This radioactive gas is produced by the decay of naturally-occurring uranium in rocks. It can build up in buildings, which certain areas more at risk than others.
Although it makes up half of our annual radiation dose, it generally does not cause problems as the dose involved is still small.
Click here to view a larger version of this graph.
It’s estimated that around 13% of the deaths from lung cancer in Ireland are linked to radon, numbering around 250 a year.
Most people will spend their lives being exposed to radon without even being aware. However, it can pose a serious health risk if there are high levels in your home – the residents of one home in Tralee were receiving the same amount of radiation every day as 18 chest x-rays.
You can apply to the EPA for a radon test in your home. It costs €56.90 and involves two small devices being left in your home for three months to take readings.
Click here to view a larger version of this map.
McMahon described radon as a “avoidable threat”, and that many steps can be taken to mitigate its effects.
Speaking generally about the threat of a nuclear accident to the Irish public, she said the Chernobyl resulted in the creation of a national management plan for nuclear accidents which was found to be of a good standard when tested recently.
Over at Chernobyl itself, the concrete sarcophagus that encases reactor four is crumbling. A section collapsed in 2013 under the weight of snow covering it.
A new metal structure, the New Safe Confinement (NSC), is being built adjacent to the site and will be rolled into place on tracks. It will keep the still highly radioactive contents safe into the next century.
However, it will be another 25,000 years before the site is safe for humans.
Contains reporting by AFP
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Radioactive Sheep? Eweranium…..
That’s baaaad form phil! Ewe will be sorry.and stop actin so sheepish! You’re trying to pull the Wool over our eyes.just stop actin the goat.
sheep only exist to feed humans, so i guess the buck stops again with us
Is this what happened Chris! No wonder Hud Hastings was worried!
We should never forget the engineers and soldiers that gave up their lives and died in the most awful way to stop the situation becoming even worse. All these guy volunteered knowing the risks.
Overall nuclear power has caused less deaths than any of the other major forms of power generation, in fact the deaths caused by nuclear power is on a par with the renewables per unit electricity generated.
It’s deeply unfortunate however that the incompetence of the Soviets has stigmatised what is otherwise a safe and clean way of generating electricity.
That may be factually correct but the potential for nuclear disasters is still great no matter what safeguards are put in place. To blame the ‘incompetence of the Soviets’ is sheer arrogance and hubris. What about Fukushima or Three Mile Island which were both first world countries. There have also been numerous near misses including Windscale 1957. We now also have the Terrorist threat as was evidenced in Belgium just weeks ago. If we also factor in the nuclear waste from these plants which lasts tens of thousands of years we have many potential future natural disasters with some of these storage areas already showing signs of ineffectiveness. Nuclear power should be halted and the search for a clean fusion alternative accelerated.
I don’t think it is arrogant to blame the incompetence of the Soviets, have you heard the sequence of events that lead to the disaster, it was totally reckless incompetence there were no safety procedures in place.
As for Fukushima, I think the largest tsunami to hit the country (a particularly earthquake country) might have had something to do with the disaster and the vast majority of studies on the effects of the Three Mile Island accident have shown few or even no radiation-induced health effects.
Nuclear fusion is great, however as for your suggestion that it should be accelerated, I’m afraid it’s going literally as fast as it can, it won’t be available for use for decades. In the meantime we’re running out of oil, our climate is changing and renewable energy isn’t efficient or reliable enough. It’s completely naive to ignore nuclear energy.
Fiachra, you can read the reports of any nuclear disaster and ‘human error’ nearly always compounds the root causes including violations of basic rules because this is and always will be at the heart of human nature.
The fact that a Tsunami caused the Fukushima accident or not is hardly important….something causes every accident and that is the whole point, you can only ever minimise accidents never prevent them.
You mention the Soviets but many third world countries now have and will have nuclear reactors…Iran, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Ukraine, Armenia,Romania, Bulgaria, Brazil…with Egypt, Belarus and UAE under construction…countries that have shown themselves far from perfect in many other areas such as democracy and human rights and exhibited extremism. With this proliferation the odds of accidents/attacks occurring will increase and when nuclear accidents happen it can have global consequences and affect our environment for generations.
Winston, get some perspective. Every year, 5.5 MILLION people die from atmospheric pollution. Nuclear power is by far the safest and least polluting form of power generation, and the includes windmills.
Can you tell us about fukushina. More people died from being evacuated. A US aircraft carrier was contaminated by radioactive material from it & no one died on that & it’s still in use. Yes there is potential for environmental impact after an accident but in every way nuclear power is still the safest form of power generation out there & stats back that up. It is expensive & waste is a problem but these issues are being dealt with.
The EPA are not the sole supplier of radon test kits in Ireland. There are private companies providing the same service for up to 30% less than the EPA and are using more up to date technology for measuring the detectors.
Very good article Nicky. You could throw in the “elephants foot” in the sarcophagus of the reactor emitting close to 94,000mSieverts per hour.
http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/the-elephant-foot-of-the-chernobyl-disaster-1986/
Enter the armchair nuclear danger specialists. Everyone take a breath, go to Netflix and watch “Pandoras Box”. It’s a brilliant documentary by some of the worlds top environmentalists who have 180′d on nuclear power. Green energy is not working, accounting for 1% of the wirkds energy production. It can’t ramp enough. The small number of nuclear accidents and deaths which are heavily reported are nothing compared to the annual deaths from the burning of fissile fuel, the damage to the ozone and destruction to be caused by climate change, our cost of living (cheaper green power means more money on health and lifestyle), even our transfer of power to what are some very dangerous and backward thinking little countries. Watch it, it’s an eye opener. The new facilities don’t even produce waste, they’re self contained. Have been since the 60′s. Then the Cold War and films like “the end of days” pop up and everyone fills their pants. Add in a heap of oil cash and thus corruption, buying up the good electric battery patents, even funding the ads now for “no nuclear, go green” as they know green isn’t working and more oil is used). We need nuclear right now. Flatten Leitrim and build a little plant in the middle of if. Free juice, better lives.
Common sense and a well thought out argument. See how far that gets you in this debate.
Looks like the west has been badly contaminated by Enda Kenny….
Every. Article. So. Tedious.
How much radiation does Moneypoint put out?
look this guy up ‘bionerd23′ he goes in there to research the effects of radiation.As stupid as it sounds the place is thriving with wildlife once nature reclaimed it.All we ever see in the media are photos depicting the damage done,but some of his video’s & photos of the place look amazing after nature reclaimed it with wolves,deer & numerous other wildlife.Its crazy the damage humans do to this planet.
Going heading over there next month – can’t wait to see it
The inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki live longer today than Europeans and Americans.
They are healthier.
The wildlife around Chernobyl is thriving (The pesky humans have fled).
Natural Radon kills more Europeans every day than Chernobyl ever killed.
Nuclear is the “new witchcraft” to uneducated scaremongers.
Maybe you should call radiation ‘magic moonbeams’ for those who have reservations about putting so much radioactive material in a concentrated area (power station) close to major populations. Easy enough to cal objectors ‘uneducated’ but then again you might want to look at the generation of kids following Chernobyl.
Btw, the miners who stopped the magma reaching the ground water were just as much heroes and the men on the roof and 2,500 miners died out of the 10,000 brought in to dig a cavern beneath the reactor.
I got a free reading from Office of Radiological Protection, Environmental Protection Agency in February.
I’m pretty sure the first EPA test is free, I know it was for me 9 years ago. I changed a radon sump three months ago and got 3 devices for measuring radon levels free of charge. Seriously worth doing. My first measurement was around 750 , got sumps in and wall vents ( 1 day job) second measurement was 50. 200 is the safe level.
There are no free radon tests in Ireland. The RPII did a national survey about 10 years ago where houses were selected in different parts of the country so the radon prediction map could be produced. This was a one off survey.
Up at 7 every morning Monday to Friday. Wish I could be a sheep
I remember going to local health centre to be given iodine syrup as child they kept it secret for good while at first
Hold on a sec Journal: A submariner gets a “fatal dose” at 540mSv but only 5% of people would develop a fatal cancer at just over double that at 1000mSv and maybe get temporary radiation sickness? Surely that does not make sense?
The information above does not make sense unless a time element is involved. The length of time that you are exposed to a radioactive source has a bearing on how it will affect you.
@Conor Heffernan: I disagree. The unit of mSv is a measure of exposure to ambient radiation for 12 months. Being blasted with, say, 1000 mSv is therefore a measure of radiation exposure equivalent to 1000years of ambient radiation. Therefore, whether over a sec, min, hour or day, that is the amount of radiation you’d have received.
I’m not an expert so I’m probably wrong but from what I understand it is more detrimental to ones health to receive say 1000mSv over ten minutes than it is to receive the same dose over 12 months. The argument being that the body will be overwhelmed and unable to repair the cellular damage from the large single dose in comparison to the the smaller dose over 12 months.
It’s time nuclear energy and all the fallout, pollution, extreme cost and especially the nonsense that nuclear supporters seem to still believe in with religious zeal is consigned to history as an experiment that didn’t work out. I know the ‘industry’ that has built up around this technology won’t accept this, nuclear is the gift that keeps on giving to them – courtesy of public funded research, capital funding, insurance, clean up etc etc. The seed funding by the nuclear industry of the anti renewable campaign seems to have worked on some gullible people. The future is renewable energies and storage and ordinary people will drive this change.
It caused radiation levels to rise by a third across the world on top of natural background radiation and the older name for the area is called Wormwood due to the area being covered in that plant. I am sure it got the attention of the Bible thumpers out…
Should place a dosimeter in the Dáil. Might measure the sleep effect! Or maybe the sheeple effect!!!
You can reduce the radon risk in your home to virtually zero in even in a “high-risk” area by one simple trick:
Open the windows for a few minutes every day when there is a bit of a wind and let new air into the house to replace existing air.
(This will not make your house “cold” for long as it is only the “new air” needs to be heated. The walls and furniture etc. won’t go cold during a few minutes air-change…plus…..you will have new pure fresh air in your house every day.)
P.S.
The worst possible thing you can do in a “High Radon” area is to seal up all your windows and doors.
Radon seeps through your floor from the rocks beneath your house and into the air in your house.
Let it out!
Rather than speculate about the Cost of Radon testing by the EPA look it up it isn’t free and then to cap it all they will even charge you VAT which is pretty scandalous
Here is the link to the application page
https://www.epa.ie/radiation/meas/radon/services/apply/#.Vx8kKtR4WrU
By the time Met Éireann’s headquarters in Glasnevin recorded a sudden spike in radioactivity over Dublin on 2 May, it wasn’t unexpected.
Yeah, but we could have been warned to at least stay indoors until the wind had changed.
Unfortunately our prevailing south westerly winds were not there on that day
According to RT News Ireland got rained on by radioactive rain due to the accident due to the fallout, no ones tells us that here?
The lies told to irish people concerning the contamination we were exposed to four times what was stated in our media the reality was the proper equipment was not used by monitors they did not have up to date gear so they just told the public lied
Cheers thanks for letting me know I’m nuclear contaminated. Good Sunday to you too.
Poor Louth, 333…
“A 2005 World Health Organisation report concluded that as many as 4,000 people will eventually die as a result of Chernobyl.”
The 4,000 figure was for the most heavily contaminated areas. The WHO/Chernobyl Forum also estimated a further possible 5,000 eventual cancer deaths further afield in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. They were silent on effects further afield again, but the radiation did not stop at borders, and there is no known safe dose of radiation*. Using the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT)** model of radiation risk, 50,000 eventual cancers deaths is a reasonable, scientific estimate, in line with establishment scientific thinking, no matter what a noisy minority of threshold/hormesis ideologues claim.***
*This doses not mean that even tiny amounts of radiation are dangerous, but rather, that there is a risk, however small, with every dose. Large doses involve large risks. Medium doses involve medium risks. Small doses involve small risks, and so on. While tiny doses may not be of any great personal concern to individuals, especially in comparison to other, greater risks in everyday life, nonetheless, in a democracy, no-one has the right to impose any additional risk, however small, on another person, and furthermore, if millions of people are exposed to a tiny fatal risk of, say, one in a hundred thousand, then ten people may die. Comparisons by nuclear ideologues with other risks are a red herring. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
**LNT is firmly founded on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb studies, on more recent nuclear worker studies, CT scan studies and background radiation studies. Even the pro-nuclear US EPA has again endorsed LNT as recently as last year, stating that “Of all the agents demonstrated to be carcinogenic, the evidence for LNT is particularly strong for ionizing radiation……….additional evidence has accumulated supporting the use of LNT to extrapolate risk estimates from high acute doses to lower doses and dose rates…..These studies have shown increased risks of leukemia and other cancers at doses and dose rates below those which LNT skeptics have maintained are harmless – or even beneficial.
Given the continuing wide consensus on the use of LNT for regulatory purposes as well as the increasing scientific confirmation of the LNT model, it would be unacceptable to the EPA to ignore the recommendations of the NAS and other authoritative sources on this issue. The EPA cannot endorse basing radiation protection on poorly supported and highly speculative proposals for dose thresholds or doubtful notions concerning protective effects from low-level ionizing radiation.”
*** In the absence of definitive epidemiological health studies (unlikely now to be ever carried out, and, even if they were, extremely difficult and expensive to conduct in the ex-Soviet Union), and since a Chernobyl-induced cancer is indistinguishable from a naturally-occurring cancer, and since even tens of thousands of Chernobyl cancers would be almost impossible to identify among tens of millions of naturally-occurring cancers, health effects have to be estimated using LNT estimates and collective dose. Applying the full worldwide collective dose is a principle accepted by the US BEIR committees and by the Irish RPII. Even Bo Lindell, head of the pro-nuclear ICRP accepted that collective dose calculation/LNT estimation was not just perfectly legitimate, but a matter of basic logic and morality.
So, in spite of uncertainties – which could underestimate casualties as easily as overestimate them – LNT is a middle ground between the competing poles of hormesis/hreshold on the one side and supralinearity on the other. And LNT suggests 50,000 cancer deaths from Chernobyl as a reasonable, logical, well-supported scientific estimate.
I don’t get the ‘these guys saved the world.’ No details just music and a video. Is it Chernobyl? What are they doing? Who are they?
BTW – those questions should be answered in the article, not in the comments…
Baa-d news for the wolly backs.
have your say