Ukrainian Scientists' View of Chernobyl': A Case of Déjà Vu?

Abstract

' T 1 he need for a new, comprehensive work on the Chernobyl' disaster of 1986 is evident. -•There are currently conflicting views concerning many aspects of the disaster, and Chernobyl' is rarely out of the news as a result of the continuing debate between the G-7 countries and Ukraine as to the status of the plant, the aid that is forthcoming or not forthcoming from the West, Ukrainian energy needs, and the crucial question of the safety of the station and of other reactors in Ukraine. Each anniversary elicits new material from the Ukrainian Health Ministry concerning the alleged number of victims of Ukraine, but there is no consensus on how many people have died because of Chernobyl' or even on the state of health of those living in the contaminated zones. Although some sources maintain that Chernobyl' is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century (Nedashkivs'kiy, 1996, p. 7), others argue that such claims are exaggerated, and that psychological stress has brought on many of the problems of those living in contaminated zones (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1992). This new volume is less a revisionist approach than a reassertion of viewpoints that prevailed in the mid-1980s. It is, in a sense, like taking a step backward in time. It combines valuable new information with cryptic comments, enclosed in somewhat clipped prose and statistics and with an apparent reluctance to deal in depth with the health consequences of the accident. Indeed the latter are included as Appendix 2 rather than in the main text and the only primary medical result of Chernobyl' that is acknowledged by the authors—the rise in incidence of thyroid gland cancer among children—takes up a single page! One wonders how a risk assessment process can be comprehensive if the health consequences of the major industrial accident at a nuclear plant in the 20th century are not included. There are also several odd characteristics of the book. One is language. The editor uses the Ukrainian transliteration Chornobyl (rather than Chernobyl') and notes (p. x) that the official language is Ukrainian, whereas the working language in nuclear science and technology is nearly always Russian. However, this practice is never followed in the text, which either uses Russian throughout (Kiev, rather than Kyiv, for example), or else—and frequently—names that are incorrect in either Russian or Ukrainian. Thus one has (p. 116) Rivno (Russian: Rovno; Ukrainian: Rivne) and Volynsk (rather than Volyn). Each chapter is provided with what presumably is its Russian heading, but these are invariably in the wrong case, or plural rather than singular. It seems astonishing that editors of a book of this caliber