1987: A LOOK BACK: Chornobyl revisited (12/27/87)

1987: A LOOK BACK

Chornobyl revisited

The United States said on January 29 that it was safe for Americans to visit Kiev, which is just south of the Chornobyl power plant in Prypiat, where the world's worst nuclear accident occurred on April 26, 1986. The U.S. Energy Department had sent a team of three scientists equipped with sophisticated instruments to assess radiation levels in the Ukrainian capital. The team, which also included U.S. consul-designate to Kiev William Courtney and two officers from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, had traveled to Kiev in October of 1986. The January 29 announcement rescinded an earlier earning issued in the aftermath of the Chornobyl disaster advising U.S. citizens not to travel to Kiev.

In February, doctors reported that infants born in the past few months to women who lived near the Chornobyl reactor when it exploded may show signs of mental deficiencies caused by radiation. Fetuses less than 15 weeks old are most vulnerable to radiation and the brain is the organ most susceptible. Dr. Robert Gale, who treated victims of the Chornobyl accident, said there is a critical period between eight and 15 weeks of gestation when there is a correlation between the dose of radiation and mental radiation. He added that 13 excess cases of mental retardation over those normally expected might be found in 300 infants born since the nuclear accident to women pregnant at the time of the disaster who lived within 30 kilometers of the reactor.

More horrifying information, though it could not be confirmed, was related in a Soviet emigre engineer's testimony before the U.S. Helsinki Commission on March 31. Ihor Gerashchenko, husband of recently freed poet Irina Ratushinskaya, said that some 15,000 persons died in two Kiev hospitals from radiation poisoning during the five-month period after the Chornobyl accident. He added that Soviet authorities had deliberately covered up the deaths by recording their illnesses as other than radiation sickness and then noting after they died that they had undergone treatment and did not require further treatment.

However, Cronid Lubarsky, editor of USSR News Brief, and Dr. Vladimir Malinkovich, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, refuted Mr. Gerashchenko's statements in a letter they sent to the press on April 3. They called his testimony "irresponsible" and said it "has no correspondence with reality."

But, other reports emanating from the USSR from reliable sources supported Mr. Gerashchenko's statements about falsification of medical records.

A year after the nuclear disaster, the World Health Organization noted that there were five main points of concern: the contamination of forests, long-term disposal of contaminated topsoil, contamination of lakes, consumption of contaminated food products and the danger of spring flooding bringing contaminated groundwater into the river systems. And, according to economic historian Dr. David Marples, the Soviets were being much less than forthcoming about the status of the clean-up as well as about the future of the USSR's nuclear energy program and how it has been affected by the accident.

Meanwhile, in the United States and Canada, Ukrainians in many communities commemorated the first anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy with demonstrations, prayer services, seminars, candlelight vigils, lectures and the like. In Hartford, local youths participated in a March of Dimes walk-a-thon and dedicated their participation to the memory of the Chornobyl victims. The youths wore T-shirts with the slogan: "Ukrainian youth remember Chornobyl. April 26,1986."

The World Congress of Free Ukrainians and the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Chornobyl accident, issued their report on the disaster. Among the report's findings: serious health consequences will result because of the authorities' delay in informing the populace; the official death toll of 31 is questionable given the magnitude of the disaster; the clean-up operation was conducted with little concern for the health of workers.

In June the Associated Press quoted a Soviet official as saying that 27 towns near the site of the Chornobyl accident are too contaminated to be resettled in the foreseeable future. These towns are located within an 18-mile evacuation zone around the stricken power plant.

Six officials of the plant stood trial in the town of Chornobyl, 11 miles from the nuclear power station, on July 7-29. The head of the plant and two aides were each sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp for violation of safety regulations resulting in conditions that led to the reactor explosion. Three other officials received lesser terms for negligence and unfaithful execution of duty, or violating safety rules.

Dr. Gale, meanwhile, continued to make headlines with his observations on the accident. In May he was quoted as saying, "The ultimate fallout from Chornobyl may well be more good than evil," since Chornobyl will serve as a laboratory for the study of human beings contaminated with radiation and will aid scientists in discovering ways to prevent similar disasters. "Until Chornobyl we have had to rely largely on theoretical analyses when pondering a cataclysmic nuclear mishap," he said. "Now we've doubled our data base. We have examined as many injuries as in all previous nuclear accidents put together." Dr. Gale also wrote an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association in which he reported that the Chornobyl nuclear accident showed humans can withstand a higher dose of radiation than previously thought.

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