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Climate Change Is Happening, What Are We Going To Do About It?

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Climate Change Is Happening, What Are We Going To Do About It?

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There were 2 articles that I was pretty interested in during my investigation of what is happening within our world’s environment. The first being the article from NBC News about the ghost forests appearing on the U.S.’s east coast. It’s interesting because these ghost forests are the first experience of how the rising sea levels will affect multiple environments. My other interest was in the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. Learning about how and why this accident occured has led me to change my opinion of nuclear power towards it being safe. These two articles changed my view on advanced environmental technology and causes to reduce climate change.

As a Wisconsin citizen that lives nowhere near the ocean, I believed that ocean levels rising couldn’t possibly affect me because there is no way that my home could possibly be flooded by rising ocean levels. The truth is that my life can be affected by more than water flooding my home. I am correct that my home will likely never be flooded as it sits on a big hill high above sea level. But the thing that will most definitely affect me is the fact that states on the East Coast that make produce like Georgia’s oranges and other products will likely be affected by rising sea levels as the rising sea levels are already causing ghost forests. These ghost forests are the result of the trees receiving salt water because of the rising ocean levels. The forest isn’t flooded by salt water but their roots are absorbing salt water which causes the trees to die and it kills the whole forest because trees are so detrimental to the environment of a forest. These forests are also a natural barrier between the ocean water and freshwater. If these natural barriers are broken, saltwater will easily get deeper and deeper into our land. Another effect of trees being missing is the land becomes looser causing much more erosion and the east coast to lose its land mass. These are the reasons why we need to look further than what we think will affect us because there is more to a direct issue that meets the eye as there are usually smaller issues that go relatively unnoticed.

Speaking of issues that have more than what meets the eye, we have the Chernobyl Accident of 1986. This environmental catastrophe caught my eye immediately and I was very interested to learn more about this rare occurrence of nuclear mishap. Before I learned about Chernobyl and why the accident occured, I believed that nuclear energy was both dangerous and mostly unacceptable. This belief came from the fact that I associated nuclear energy with a nuclear bomb. Nuclear bombs are not the same as a nuclear energy plant as they were both made to suit two very different needs. A current-day nuclear energy plant is much safer than people realise as we have learned from past accidents like Chernobyl that there are better and much safer ways of maintaining one. What I have learned from the Chernobyl Accident is that it was manned by some unqualified workers that were uneducated, the disaster happened because Chernobyl used a positive production method which led to the explosion, and Chernobyl had badly designed safety measures. All of these factors led to the accident and it could have been easily preventable given any of these features were flipped creating a better, less explosive and radiation-inducing outcome. I learned today that nuclear energy plants have a negative production system as if the power is cut, the system will be fine and begin to cool down. People running these plants are also more educated and well-trained to handle any emergency. Safety measures have also advanced greatly since 1986. Given this it is my belief that nuclear energy is safe. Nuclear Energy still produces waste that we need to figure out a way to deal with, but in my opinion it is safe.

Conclusively, I believe that people should do more research as reading these articles have prompted me to do. There is a lot more than what you initially thought about a situation at hand. I have had my opinions completely changed about two major things that will matter within my lifetime. I do believe we need to start educating ourselves to the matters at hand and then hold our beliefs. There are many different beliefs about any given topic, some are educated, some are uneducated, some believe from their heart, others may have no opinion at all. But learning what I have learned, just from a few articles, people should educate themselves before living off assumptions like I have done.

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Ghost forests and Chernobyl

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Mining companies pollute waterways. Citizens pay.

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Mining companies pollute waterways. Citizens pay.

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I was interested in this article because it had to do with how much mining affects the water quality, which is related to the current class topic of watersheds and how water becomes polluted. “..., in a 2003 report… there was between $1 billion and $12 billion in unfunded cleanup liability at the country’s hardrock mines.” This money has to be paid by taxpayers as the mining companies had a “guaranteed” bond that would’ve paid for the cleanup, but that money often disappeared when a company filed bankruptcy.

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The remnants of an abandoned gold and silver mine scar the Little Rocky Mountains just south of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana, bleeding polluted orange water into streams that meander through the reservation. Warren Morin remembers drinking the once-pristine water while he was growing up in the 1970s. Now it's so acidic it makes his skin burn and turn red on contact.

Pegasus Gold Corp., a Canadian company that owned that mine and several others in the state, went bankrupt and folded 20 years ago. That left a legacy of water pollution and a cleanup bill nearing $100 million - with no end in sight.

"They took the heart of the mountains away from us."

"They took the heart of the mountains away from us," said Morin, chair of the tribal council's natural resources committee.

Pegasus isn't an isolated case. Especially in the drought-prone West, the outdated and opaque regulatory system meant to ensure money is available to restore water and land at gold, copper and other hardrock mines often falls short. Regulators with insufficient funding are tasked with cleaning up a mess left years ago by now-defunct companies. The agencies that required those firms to set aside money underestimated how much it would take, in some cases acquiescing to companies pressing for lower amounts.

THE COST OF POLLUTION
It's difficult to put an exact number on the nationwide funding shortfall for hardrock mine cleanup. Each state manages its mining industry differently, and many don't maintain a database of reclamation bonds - the funds meant to guarantee that cleanup costs are covered if a company walks away from its mine.

But the deficiency looks substantial.

Jim Kuipers, who runs a mining consulting firm in Montana, researches mine closure and previously studied reclamation for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He estimated, in a 2003 report by the Center for Science in Public Participation, that there was between$1 billion and $12 billion in unfunded cleanup liability at the country's hardrock mines.

Kuipers said calculations of companies' cleanup costs are improving, decreasing that gap as states base their bonding requirements on more accurate estimates. Even so, he said, as many as half of active hardrock mines could still hold inadequate reclamation bonds.

When the Pegasus mine near the Fort Belknap reservation was new in 1979, Kuipers said, "mines were permitted in a very nonchalant manner, and this whole financial assurance issue was not given a whole lot of concern."

Uncontrolled mining pollution has a literal ripple effect. Mine waste, heavy metals and acidic water often end up in streams and rivers.

Mining has polluted the headwaters of more than 40 percent of Western watersheds, according to the EPA. In 2017, metals mines generated nearly 2 billion pounds of toxic waste. That's roughly the same weight as 5,000 Boeing 747s, and it accounts for a full half of toxic waste generated by all industries across the country.

"The facts are incontrovertible. Mining is the nation's largest source of toxic pollution. The costs have been counted and are only going to continue to grow."

"The facts are incontrovertible," said Jennifer Krill, executive director of Earthworks, an environmental advocacy group. "Mining is the nation's largest source of toxic pollution. The costs have been counted and are only going to continue to grow."

An Earthworks report studying the mines responsible for 93 percent of U.S. gold production in 2013 found every site had at least one pipeline spill, such as diesel fuel or dangerous cyanide solutions used in gold processing. About three-quarters of the mines also harmed nearby groundwater or surface water, "including impacts to drinking water supplies for residential homes and businesses, loss of fish and wildlife habitat, and fish kills." An estimated 50 million gallons of water polluted with toxic metals still flows from the country's hardrock mines daily, the Associated Press revealed in February.

The National Mining Association, which represents the industry, contends that mines permitted today don't cause the same level of pollution. New operations, according to the group's factsheet on bonds, are constructed "and closed using state-of-the-art environmental safeguards and technology that minimize releases of hazardous substances to the environment."
NO END IN SIGHT
For the Aaniiih and Nakoda Nations, whose citizens live on the Fort Belknap reservation, the effects of mining are felt daily.

The area around Zortman-Landusky was carved out of the reservation by the Grinnell Agreement in 1895. The U.S. government, which commissioned a trio of explorers to negotiate on its behalf, agreed to pay the tribes on the reservation $360,000 - the equivalent of about $11 million today - in return for more than 40,000 acres known to be rich with minerals.

"The object of the negotiations with the Indians mentioned in the law was to secure the cession by them of the mountainous portions of their respective reservations supposed to contain valuable deposits of gold, silver, and copper," the commissioner of Indian affairs reported at the time.

Notes from a meeting between the government's surrogates and members of the tribe in 1895 - taken by a stenographer for the surrogates - show mixed feelings about the deal, with many speaking against it despite a desperate need for aid. "I am thinking of the treaty that I made before with the whites," one tribal member named Little Shield said. "It was just like they took the land away from us for nothing."

Growing up on the reservation, Morin heard stories from elders that many tribal members didn't want to sign the agreement but were threatened with starvation if they declined. Notes from the 1895 meeting show a government negotiator saying hard times would befall the reservation without a deal.

One of the area's highest peaks was among those ripped open in the process of digging the 1,200-acre Zortman-Landusky mine. The tribes called it Spirit Mountain, but miners renamed it "Gold Bug Butte."

Reno Shambo is a tribal member who grew up hunting and camping in the mountains. As an adult, he was part of a crew that dug out piles of mine waste choking the area's streams, and he now stays well clear for fear of the pollution.

Contaminated water also flows past the powwow and Sundance grounds used for community and spiritual gatherings. That's a "perpetual nightmare," Morin said: "Our beliefs are the land is who we are. We're nothing without our land, and our mountains are sacred."

In October 2017, the then-president of the Fort Belknap Indian Community, Mark L. Azure, sent a letter to the state that called Pegasus' bonds "woefully inadequate." The failure to properly reclaim the nearby mine, Azure wrote, meant the tribes could no longer swim in or drink from the area's streams.

"As a result, our community continues to suffer from the effects of water pollution and scars on the landscape, and there is no end to that suffering in sight."

"As a result, our community continues to suffer from the effects of water pollution and scars on the landscape," Azure wrote, "and there is no end to that suffering in sight."

Last year - in a shift in oversight - Montana invoked its 1989 "bad actor" statute in relation to the cleanup woes. The case is working its way through the courts, but it could bar Hecla Mining Company, a large player in the silver and gold sectors, from operating in Montana because its CEO, Phillips S. Baker Jr., was an executive at Pegasus in the 1990s. Baker also chairs the board of the National Mining Association.

"It can be argued mining built this state and minerals from Montana fueled the development of our nation," Tom Livers, the former director of Montana's Department of Environmental Quality, wrote in an August opinion column about the decision to invoke the statute. "It also left a legacy of pollution and cleanup we're still addressing today."

Hecla would not make Baker available for an interview with the Center for Public Integrity, but in its court filings and in a statement, company representatives dismissed the suit as meritless. Neither Baker nor Hecla were responsible for Pegasus' failure, the company said, and Pegasus had put up all bonds requested by the state.

"Mr. Baker has been CEO of Hecla for some 15 years," the company wrote in its statement. "Under his leadership, the company has proven its commitment to environmental stewardship."
A BROKEN SYSTEM
Environmentalists face an uphill climb in addressing hardrock mining pollution.

In November, Montana voters considered a ballot measure prohibiting the state from permitting new mines if the companies disclosed that they expected the sites to pollute water indefinitely, even after cleanup. An Alaskan measure aimed to create new protections for salmon-spawning streams, a move that would restrict - perhaps halt - the permitting of large new mines.

Industry interests opposing the initiatives outspent environmental advocates more than twice over in Montana and six-to-one in Alaska. Voters rejected both measures by large margins.

Unlike with coal mining, which is also underfunded for proper cleanup, no central law or single federal agency oversees hardrock reclamation. A patchwork of state and federal legislation, beginning with a law barely updated since its passage in 1872, regulates hardrock mine closure. The Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and state regulators oversee a system of governance unique to each state, managed by often-outdated memorandums of understanding.

States have fine-tuned their mining laws since they were stuck with cleanup costs after a rash of bankruptcies wiped out mining companies in the 1990s. But predicting future costs isn't an exact science. States and mining companies often negotiate over the amount of money to set aside.

"We go back and forth with them on getting those costs to be realistic," said Kyle Moselle, associate director at Alaska's Department of Natural Resources.

Experts say that regulators can get played if they're not wary. Companies' consultants can massage subjective aspects of the calculations, like how much inflation might rise over time, to land on a more favorable amount.

Ann Maest, a mining consultant who often works on contract for government agencies and environmental advocacy organizations, researches the impacts of resource extraction on water. To secure permits, mining companies frequently underestimate their potential for long-term water pollution, she said, which leads to insufficient bonds.

"It's rare to find a mine that's really accurately estimated how much it's going to cost to do hydrologic reclamation when they have an acid-producing mine," Maest said.

In Arizona, roughly $500 million of the more than $600 million worth of hardrock reclamation bonds overseen by the state's Department of Environmental Quality sit in corporate guarantees and self-assurances. These forms of bonds allow the mining firm or a related entity such as a parent company to guarantee reclamation against its own financial strength.

Because regulators don't call on bonds until a company is in dire straits, experts say these guarantees are effectively worthless. "In Arizona, I'd have a hard time suggesting that if a company goes bankrupt, anybody should expect anything more than zero," said Kuipers, the mining consultant.

Arizona Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman Erin Jordan said the state's regulations were strengthened in 2016 and keep the cleanup liability with mining companies. The agency, which helps oversee the state's approximately 20 active copper mines, has never faced a situation where a mining firm went under and it needed to spend the company's bond for cleanup, Jordan said.

Other states may be moving away from self-assurances. New Mexico's legislature is considering a bill that would close a loopholeleft by earlier efforts to stop the practice. Legislation that its supporters believe will be signed into law this year in Colorado would also institute a ban on self-bonds - and strictly limit when permits can be issued for mines expected to pollute water indefinitely.
MINING'S LEGACY
In December 2017, the EPA reversed nascent attempts by the Obama administration to mandate a separate source of mine cleanup funds. Earthworks and others are suing to compel the agency to implement the rule, which a federal judge in 2016 ruled is required by the same 1980 law that created the Superfund program to clean up hazardous waste sites.

"Holding mining companies accountable for cleaning up their pollution is an idea that's heading backwards under the Trump administration," Earthworks' Krill said.

The U.S. has some of the world's more developed environmental regulations governing mining, and the industry argues these are sufficient. The National Mining Association celebrated the EPA halting its proposed rule in a 2017 press release, calling the regulations "crippling financial and regulatory burdens on the mining industry."

The Forest Service is also planning to overhaul its regulations governing mine cleanup funds. It's unclear whether the rulemaking process will strengthen or weaken existing environmental protections.

The cost of all this reclamation doesn't include sites shuttered prior to regulations passed in the 1970s and 1980s mandating cleanup funds.

As many as 500,000 abandoned hardrock and coal mines are scattered across the country, according to a Bureau of Land Management estimate. Many are small, and the exact number is unknown. While fees from operational coal mines help pay for cleanup of legacy coal sites, no such system exists in the hardrock industry, and federal agencies estimated they spend more than $80 million on abandoned hardrock cleanup annually.

These abandoned mines, as well as modern mines that hold inadequate bonds, can become the responsibility of the taxpayer-funded Superfund program. EPA figures show it could take an additional $50 billion to reclaim the hardrock operations that were abandoned in the West prior to the rules governing mines like Zortman-Landusky in Montana.

The Superfund program doesn't have enough money to clean them all. At a November mine closure summit in Colorado, Victor Ketellapper, who handles Superfund implementation in the Mountains and Plains Region for the EPA, said private capital and environmental groups are increasingly key to plugging funding gaps.

"The environmental cleanup is so high and the land value is so low that it's difficult to do without outside support," Ketellapper said.

He highlighted two gold mines, one in Colorado and the other in South Dakota - which each fell to the Superfund program - as emblematic of the failure to properly calculate bonds. "In both of those cases, the reclamation bonds didn't even come close to addressing the cost of cleanup," he said.

At the Fort Belknap reservation, that failure means a never-ending flow of Montana tax revenue is diverted to fight the pollution.

"The sickening thing about it is the people that did this, they raped the land, they took the money and they ran off," said Morin, with the tribal council. "And they stuck the taxpayer with it."

Mark Olalde is the 2018 American University Fellow with the Center for Public Integrity. EmailHigh Country Newsat[email protected] or submit aletter to the editor.

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Mining companies pollute waterways. Citizens pay.

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Nearly 2 billion pounds of toxic waste were dumped into western waterways in 2017, and taxpayers are left to clean up the mess.

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I clicked on this article because I was genuinely interested in what a “ghost forest” was. A ghost forest is a whole forest that was killed off by a bunch of salt water due to climate change raising the sea levels. Forests on the coast play a big role in filtering pollution from the ocean and creating a natural barrier from the ocean. Without them, climate change would get even worse.

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"To be able to look at these forests and see that this is a direct result from climate change is frightening," says Kristin Meistrell, a Stewardship Project director for the New Jersey Audubon Society, which focuses on environmental awareness and conservation. Meistrell has worked here for nearly 10 years and recalls walks she used to take on the property when she started in 2012, surrounded by live Atlantic white cedar trees. Since then, she's watched the forests completely die off.

"I think every community, every resident, every business has to ask itself hard questions."
shawn latourette, new jersey commissioner of environmental protection
The state and environmental groups are scrambling to restore the cedar species in environments that aren't as immediately threatened by impending storm surges. Foresters and environmental groups are largely focused on restoring forests in new homes, where they won't be hit by sea level rise. The groups have cleared out large swaths of land typically filled with other hardwoods like maple, to allow remaining healthy cedars to drop seeds naturally with adequate space and access to sunlight. The New Jersey Audubon Society leverages farmers' and hunters' attachment to the land, working with them on their private property to develop forest stewardship plans to manage the property for wildlife like these cedars.

"We're trying to put this forest type back on the landscape," State Forester John Sacco said. "When we do that, we're introducing biodiversity. There are suites of organisms that occur with this forest type that you really don't find in other forests. It increases biodiversity, helps with resiliency, and it's part of our natural heritage that we need to keep around and bequeath to the next generation."

This will take some time. A healthy cedar forest will take decades to develop, and they're playing catch up after losing more than 80 percent of the woodlands due to logging over the last two centuries.

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"To be able to look at these forests and see that this is a direct result from climate change is frightening," says Kristin Meistrell, a Stewardship Project director for the New Jersey Audubon Society, which focuses on environmental awareness and conservation.

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More than 1,400 dolphins killed in Faeroe Islands hunt, stirring fresh anger over old tradition

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More than 1,400 dolphins killed in Faeroe Islands hunt, stirring fresh anger over old tradition

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This staggering amount of dolphins being killed is not the usual amount for this island community. In fact, it blew way past their previous years hunt of just over 200. This traditional hunt gets food for the community and has been a tradition since viking times. Many people were very upset and they should be! This was an unregulated event as the last time this amount of dolphins were caught was in 1940 at 1,200 dolphins. This many dolphins being hunted yearly would not be good for their ecosystem as it'd severely mess up the food chain.

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Dolphin hunting is a centuries-old practice in the Faeroe Islands.

But the tradition is facing fresh scrutiny after more than 1,400 of the aquatic mammals were killed Sunday in a record-breaking slaughter that has sparked outcry among local residents and global environmental groups.

The hunt in the North Atlantic islands is not done for commercial purposes and is authorized by the government, but even those who support the practice expressed concern this year's event could prompt greater scrutiny.

For hundreds of years, residents of the Faeroe Islands have participated in the annual hunting tradition, which is known as the "grind," or grindadráp in Faeroese. It sees pilot whales, the second largest species of dolphins following the orcas, and other dolphins corralled into fjords before being stabbed to death.

The remote island's tradition was brought to global audiences in the Netflix documentary "Seaspiracy" earlier this year.

According to the Faeroese government, the practice is "fully regulated" and considered "sustainable," with around 600 pilot whales and 250 white-sided dolphins caught on average each year over the past two decades.

Sunday's catch blew past that average, however, with the Seattle-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society estimating that at least 1,428 white-sided dolphins were killed in what the organization branded a "cruel and unnecessary hunt."

"Considering the times we are in, with a global pandemic and the world coming to a halt, it's absolutely appalling to see an attack on nature of this scale in the Faroe Islands," Alex Cornelissen, Sea Shepherd Global CEO, said in a statement.

"If we have learned anything from this pandemic is that we have to live in harmony with nature instead of wiping it out."

The animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, has long called for an end to the "bloody whale slaughter" on the Faeroe Islands.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
Bjarni Mikkelsen, a marine biologist from the Faeroe Islands, said the catch represented the largest number of dolphins to be killed in a single day in the islands. Prior to that, he said the highest number had been 1,200 in 1940.

Traditionally, he said, the grindadráp is "very well-organized and when the drive happens, there are enough people on the beach that it's very seldom that a harvest lasts longer than 10 minutes."

On Sunday, he said, the slaughter lasted for just under an hour, leading to disturbing scenes on the shore that left local residents shaken.

He said he believed hunters were not prepared for the significantly large school of white-sided dolphins they encountered, with Faeroese hunts typically focused on pilot whales, which are larger and thus provide more meat.

Páll Nolsøe, a spokesperson for the Faeroe Islands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Culture, acknowledged that Sunday's catch was "exceptionally large." And, he said Wednesday, "there is no doubt that the whale hunts are a dramatic sight to people unfamiliar to the hunts."

However, he maintained that even Sunday's catch would be considered sustainable by the Faeroese government, with the hunting practice helping to sustain communities through locally sourced means.

"It's very important to understand that the basis of whaling in the Faeroe Islands is to provide food," he said. "The meat is distributed among the participants ... and also to local communities."

Further, he noted that the whale drives have taken place in the Faeroe Islands "since the Viking age," so the "grind" is considered by many to be an important part of the Faeroese cultural identity and heritage.

Mikkelsen said that "all of the meat" from Sunday's drive was distributed to local communities in the Faeroe Islands. "That's a positive thing at least," he said.

However, he said he believes the weekend incident at the very least highlights the need for regulations around how many dolphins can be killed each year, as well as within a single drive.

Nolsøe said that while those who participate in the grind are required to obtain permission from local authorities and are subject to animal welfare regulations requiring animals to be killed "as quickly and efficiently as possible," there are currently no rules in place around how many dolphins can be slaughtered.

As the fallout from Sunday's hunt continues, he said, that could soon be up for discussion.

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Outcry after more than 1,400 dolphins killed in Faeroe Islands hunt

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Dolphin hunting is a centuries-old practice in the Faeroe Islands. But the tradition is facing fresh scrutiny after more than 1,400 of the aquatic mammals were killed Sunday in a record-breaking slaughter that has sparked outcry among local residents and global environmental groups.

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Hungry and desperate: Climate change fuels a migration crisis in Guatemala

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Hungry and desperate: Climate change fuels a migration crisis in Guatemala

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In Guatemala, people that have been living and farming there for years are now having to migrate in order to stay alive. Due to climate change, their crops were initially not doing well. But then a massive storm came, creating mudslides and flooding the fields which destroyed many, many crops. This left a lot of families with nothing because farming is their only source of income. Therefore they have to move and sell their belongings to get a fresh start. Some families have already been forced to move out of their own country.

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Hungry and desperate: Climate change fuels a migration crisis in Guatemala

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Starving and in debt, farmers whose land has been destroyed by climate-related weather events are becoming migrants.

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Ozone hole over Antarctica larger than usual, scientists say

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Ozone hole over Antarctica larger than usual, scientists say

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This got my attention as the size of the ozone hole can be a big change in an organism's environment. Any microorganisms in the Antarctic Ocean could be harmed or killed and it could create a big disruption in the food chain if the producers cannot live in the harsh environment. The hole being larger could be proportional to the climate change situation currently happening.

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Scientists say the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole is larger than usual and already surpasses the size of Antarctica.

The European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said Thursday that the ozone hole, which appears every year during the Southern Hemisphere spring, has grown considerably in the past week following an average start.

"Forecasts show that this year´s hole has evolved into a rather larger than usual one," said Vincent-Henri Peuch, who heads the EU's satellite monitoring service.

"We are looking at a quite big and potentially also deep ozone hole," he said.

Atmospheric ozone absorbs ultraviolet light coming from the sun. Its absence means more of this high-energy radiation reaches Earth, where it can harm living cells.

Peuch noted that last year's ozone hole also started out unremarkably but then turned into one of the longest-lasting ones on record.

The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987, led to a ban on a group of chemicals called halocarbons that were blamed for exacerbating the annual ozone hole.

Experts say it's likely to take until the 2060s for ozone-depleting substances to be completely phased out.

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Ozone hole over Antarctica larger than usual, scientists say

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Scientists say the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole is larger than usual and already surpasses the size of Antarctica. The European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said Thursday that the ozone hole, which appears every year during the Southern Hemisphere spring, has grown considerably in the past week following an average start.

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Crews race to avert ‘ecological disaster’ after California oil spill

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Crews race to avert ‘ecological disaster’ after California oil spill

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The 126,000 gallon oil spill off of California deeply affects the entire environment for miles. It harshly contaminates the water, which is essential for all life to live. It affected not only ocean water but also in a marsh where many birds, one being the great egret, migrate through the land and use the water. When the birds interact with the contaminated water, it can affect environments world-wide.

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A massive oil spill off Southern California has local officials bracing for an "environmental catastrophe" as the Coast Guard races to clean up the leaked heavy crude oil and prevent it from further infiltrating the region's fragile marshlands.

Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr said Sunday that cleanup efforts are focused on preventing an "ecological disaster," but some environmental advocates warn that irreparable damage has already been done.

"We've already seen oiled fish and birds wash up on shore," said Laura Deehan, the state director of Environment California, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for environmental legislation. "We know that when this thick, goopy oil gets into places, it's really hard to clean up."

An estimated 126,000 gallons of heavy crude oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, affecting nearly 25 miles of the coastline in Orange County from Dana Point to Huntington Beach.

The governor on Monday night declared a state of emergency in Orange County. "The state is moving to cut red tape and mobilize all available resources to protect public health and the environment," said Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Local officials said Sunday that oil seeped into Talbert Marsh, a 25-acre wetlands reserve that is one in a chain of marshes along Huntington Beach. Talbert Marsh is a crucial rest stop for thousands of birds as they migrate south over the winter, and it is home to around 90 species of birds throughout the year.

"A huge variety of seabirds, including egrets, gulls and the great blue heron, go there to feed, so it's of great and immediate concern that there are reports of oil in the wetlands there," Deehan said.

John Villa, the executive director of the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy, said oil has also leaked into nearby Brookhurst Marsh and Magnolia Marsh, although the spills in all three wetlands are contained for now.

Inlets to the marshes are closed to prevent more contaminated saltwater from seeping in. Villa said the channels will eventually need to be reopened for life in the habitats to survive.

"If we don't get that saltwater coming in, then plants and animals are going to start dying in the water, because the water won't have enough oxygen in it," he said.

The Oiled Wildlife Care Network at the University of California, Davis, which is assisting with the cleanup, reported Sunday that a brown pelican and two other birds were recovered alive.

Still, it could be days or weeks before the extent of the impact on wildlife and marine ecosystems is understood, said Jacqueline Savitz, the chief policy officer of Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation organization.

"When oil gets into these wetlands, it's impossible to clean up entirely," she said. "What we've seen after major oil spills is that years later - and sometimes decades later - scientists go back and find traces of oil in the marshes."

The long-term effects of major oil spills, such as the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989, are still being studied. Scientists continue to see abnormalities in fish and other wildlife from exposure to the toxic chemicals.

Researchers have also warned of health impacts for humans if fisheries are contaminated or from exposure to oil during cleanup and recovery operations. A 2018 study published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health, which followed 88 people who participated in cleanup work after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, found an increased prevalence of symptoms seven years after exposure, including chronic cough, shortness of breath and chest pains.

Deehan said the oil spill should be "an urgent wake-up call" about the need for California and the rest of the country to make the transition away from the fossil fuel industry.

"Oil drilling and oil extraction is a dirty, dangerous business," she said. "There's never been a solar power spill. We need to move as fast as we can away from dependence on oil to a clean energy future."

Villa and his corps of volunteers at the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy will monitor the situation closely. He said the spill was disheartening for the organization, which for several decades has restored, expanded and maintained the wetlands around Huntington Beach.

"We're devastated," he said. "There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears over 35 years to keep these marshes as pristine as we can, and all that work can be ruined in the blink of an eye."

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Crews race to avert 'ecological disaster' after California oil spill

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A massive oil spill off the coast of California has local officials bracing for an "environmental catastrophe," as the U.S. Coast Guard races to clean up the leaked heavy crude oil and prevent it from further infiltrating the region's fragile marshlands.

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West Virginia’s coal powered the nation for years. Now, many look to a cleaner future.

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West Virginia’s coal powered the nation for years. Now, many look to a cleaner future.

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West-virginia's coal business has depleted over the years as clean energy has come into being a mass producer for electricity. With the country's change to cleaner energy, the economy has dropped and West Virginia is currently one of the poorest states as most their economy comes from coal mining. Only recently has West Virginia made any moves towards adapting to solar and wind produced energy. The state started making moves to help recover and be more environmentally friendly by cleaning up coal mines and building a solar panel field.

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This story was published in partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The author is Covering Climate Now's deputy director.
Growing up in southern West Virginia, Jacob Hannah was always of two minds about coal.

His father and grandfather were coal miners. Coal meant a roof over their heads and a tie to bind the small community of Wilsondale that they called home. People there found purpose in coal, proud to know their work was helping power the nation.

But Hannah, 29, also saw neighbors who grappled with nasty illnesses: bronchitis, black lung and cancer. Worksite injuries were a constant. And he began to hear more news about climate change and the role that coal and other fossil fuels played.

"The coal economy is a sinking ship," he said, "but it's difficult for anyone who grew up in Appalachia not to feel a sense of defensiveness and protectiveness towards coal."

Hannah is a conservation coordinator for Coalfield Development, a nonprofit group working to revitalize West Virginia, in part through clean energy. The organization recently put in place the state's largest nonprofit solar installation. He's proud of his family's legacy but traveling around the state and taking stock of shuttered storefronts and scarred land have convinced him that the need for change is clear.

"We need an antidote," he said. "We need medicine to strengthen our communities."

At a time when U.S. leaders are finally moving to address climate change, it's fitting that a state long at center stage in America's resource-extraction economy would hold the spotlight.

Since the start of Joe Biden's presidency, all eyes have been on Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., whose vote in an evenly divided Senate positions him as a linchpin in the federal climate agenda. Prior to entering politics, Manchin founded and ran the coal-brokerage firm Enersystems. He handed the company to his son upon being elected West Virginia's secretary of state in 2000 - he served later as governor, before joining the U.S. Senate in 2010 - but retained millions in company stocks. According to the senator's financial disclosures, Manchin continues to earn hundreds of thousands each year from the sale of coal.

To date, the centrist Democrat has been critical of the action that scientists around the world agree is necessary to avoid the worst of the climate emergency. He argues that a rapid move toward clean energy could sound the death knell for communities already suffering from fossil fuels' decline.

In Manchin's home state, however, some say change can't come soon enough. Coal remains a backbone of some West Virginia communities. But with a nationwide shift toward renewables underway, many West Virginians are eager to secure a place for the state in America's clean energy future.

"For a long time, the culture here has been, 'What's good for coal is good for West Virginia,'" said James Van Nostrand, director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at the West Virginia University College of Law. "But that hasn't been true for 10 years, or decades longer."

In the mid-1900s, coal employed more than 100,000 people in the Mountain State. Over the years, new technology enabled companies to mine more with fewer workers. Then, beginning in the mid-2000s, the shale revolution saw natural gas challenge and ultimately, in 2016, replace coal as America's leading energy source for electricity production. In 2019, the last year for which data is available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal employment in West Virginia was down to roughly 14,000.

Throughout this decline, poverty spiked, placing West Virginia consistently among the poorest states in the country. The state has also come to lead the nation in population decline, with young West Virginians increasingly leaving to find gainful employment. A grim joke in the state goes that people have overtaken coal as West Virginia's top export.

In a state prized for its natural beauty, the environmental situation is no better. Abandoned mines and thousands of uncapped oil and gas wells pollute local air and water. Mountaintop removal, a mining practice that involves deforesting mountain peaks and then blasting them out of existence to get at coal underneath, continues to cover surrounding areas in hazardous dust.

Health impacts are widespread, and in Charleston, the state capital, deregulation is standard. Many political leaders in West Virginia have direct ties to the coal industry, ​​including Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican and a billionaire who owns multiple coal companies and, in his official capacity, oversees the state regulatory arms meant to hold those companies accountable.

"It's not uncommon for me to turn on the tap water, and it's brown," said Angie Rosser, director of the environmental nonprofit West Virginia Rivers Coalition. "That's normal in many parts of West Virginia. Some of us don't remember ever having safe water."

Further emphasizing West Virginia's legacy as a fossil fuel producer, climate change is also taking a toll.

Rosser, like many West Virginians, lives near a river. In June 2016, torrential rains filled the Elk River outside her home, triggering a flash flood. That day, floods killed 23 people and devastated much of central West Virginia. She said her town, Clendenin, hasn't been the same since.

"People have left," she said. "There are abandoned houses. We still don't have a grocery store."

Scientists called the flooding a " thousand-year event " but only a preview of what climate change might have in store for West Virginia. As global heating progresses, the Appalachian region is projected to become significantly wetter, with heavier rainfall making floods both more likely and more dangerous.

Traditionally, climate change has been a near-verboten subject in her state, Rosser said. The implicit threat to coal was always one thing. In a deeply conservative state, the politicization of climate change was another. A 2020 study by Yale University and George Mason University showed that fewer people in West Virginia believed climate change was occurring than in any other state - 59 percent of adults compared with 72 percent nationwide.

Affinities toward coal notwithstanding, she said it's clear that West Virginians' foremost loyalties lie with their families and preserving the state as a safe and prosperous place to call home.

"I'm hearing more conversations acknowledging that coal isn't coming back," Rosser said. "There's a lot of fear and anxiety actually that maybe we waited too long."

Increasingly, a transition away from coal might be a conversation some West Virginians are willing to entertain.

Along with other local nonprofit group, Rosser's organization recently produced a " Citizens Guide to Climate Change." Written "by West Virginians, for West Virginians," she said, the guide aims to push climate discourse in the state forward, unpacking the causes and impacts of climate change from a local perspective and laying out a menu of potential solutions, such as a Green New Deal, enhanced emissions regulations and a carbon tax.

Rosser expected skepticism, but responses to the guide have been positive, she said. Especially resonant is the goal of a "just transition," which suggests that, although fossil fuels are very much to blame for climate change, a special debt is owed to fossil fuel workers, as the nation shifts to new sources of energy.

"We put in the work to lift America into an industrialized power, through the use of coal," Rosser explained. "Now, we deserve reinvestment."

And West Virginia is ripe for reinvestment, according to Jeremy Richardson, a native West Virginian and a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy program. There is "plenty of untapped potential," he said, to create jobs as an "off-ramp" for current and former coal workers - first, in reclaiming and restoring land damaged by fossil fuel exploitation and, second, in domestic manufacturing of clean energy components, such as windmill blades and parts for solar panels. West Virginia is also well-suited to wind and solar energy production.

Clean energy is unlikely to replace every coal and fossil fuel job lost in West Virginia, he added. But it can help begin to diversify the state's economy. It will also make West Virginia more attractive to outside industries and companies, such as car manufacturers - which increasingly have made their own climate commitments and, thus, are unlikely to invest where clean energy is scarce - sparking further economic development.

"West Virginia is behind the eight ball, because we haven't done a lot by way of developing and deploying clean energy," Richardson said. "We really need to go far fast."

Whether West Virginians will reap the benefits of clean energy opportunities depends in large part on the state's leaders in both Charleston and Washington, said Van Nostrand, of West Virginia University. In this regard, there have been halting gestures toward sustainability, he added, but the state lags behind most others, as well as the latest climate science. In August, a landmark United Nations report warned that the consequences of climate change, including the extreme weather wreaking havoc already, will grow dramatically worse this century if humanity fails to rein in emissions.

Also critical: making sure climate action reaches communities of color in West Virginia. The state is more than 90 percent white, but African Americans nevertheless comprised a substantial portion of the coal labor force, said Pam Nixon, a community organizer with the Charleston, West Virginia, chapter of the NAACP.

As technology in the industry progressed, though, Black workers typically weren't selected for training opportunities; when layoffs became commonplace, they were far more likely than their white peers to be let go.

"When Manchin and others talk about not leaving coal workers behind, they don't usually acknowledge that Black coal workers were left behind years ago," she said. "We need to make sure this trend doesn't continue. Blacks and Latinos in West Virginia, we need to be sitting at the table."

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was instrumental to the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, passed in August by the Senate and pending House approval. That bill includes some $120 billion for clean energy and climate resilience projects, as well as $21 billion to clean up abandoned mines and cap leaking oil and gas wells.

Experts say these provisions can be a boon for West Virginia, but they'll fall short of meeting the needs of the state. At the national level, climate scientist Michael E. Mann called the bill "a far cry from meeting the moment," arguing that it does nothing to reduce America's reliance on fossil fuels.

A separate, larger bill, hailed as the most comprehensive climate legislation in U.S. history, promises more robust investments in renewables. But Manchin has said he opposes the measure, citing its $3.5 trillion price tag.

Manchin's Senate office did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Unwilling to wait, some in the senator's state are taking matters into their own hands.

This summer, West Virginia environmental groups banded together, traveling to six communities in the state as part of the "Democracy, Jobs, and Care-a-van Summer Jam." They offered live music, free food, prayer and a message about clean energy.

"The best way to honor West Virginians as energy producers is to bring them into what clean energy looks like today," said Morgan Sell, an organizer with the West Virginia Working Families Party and president of the Eastern Panhandle Green Coalition.

Sell said she found people receptive, even those with politics different from her own. But many were also angry at the pain and poverty their communities had been asked to endure.

"When you talk about clean energy or something like manufacturing electric vehicles, West Virginians are extremely interested," she said. "But politicians aren't having these conversations with us. Instead, they make assumptions about what we want."

Indeed, a June poll by Data for Progress and the Chesapeake Climate Action Fund found that a clear majority of West Virginians, 56 percent, support a clean electricity transition by 2035, while only 36 percent oppose such a transition.

"We're intensely creative people in West Virginia," Sell said. "We have the drive to bring ourselves out of this, to build ourselves up. We just need resources and support."

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West Virginia's coal powered the nation for years. Now, many look to a cleaner future.

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This story was published in partnership with Covering Climate Now , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The author is Covering Climate Now's deputy director. Growing up in southern West Virginia, Jacob Hannah was always of two minds about coal. His father and grandfather were coal miners.

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Remote work may be keeping some cities' air cleaner

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Remote work may be keeping some cities' air cleaner

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This article sparked my interest greatly as remotely working beneficially impacted air pollution in some major cities by 20% and with some areas having a 30% change. A 20% difference is a great amount of change and if doing something as simple as changing the way a few people work can change the amount of pollution by that much, there could be plenty of other very simple ways to reduce all types of pollution.

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These splotches of color represent a range of micromoles per square meter of change in tropospheric NO2 over primarily urban regions in the continental United States. Credit: Kondragunta et al., 2021

In the spring of 2020, COVID-19-related restrictions in the United States led to reductions in nitrogen oxide (NO x) emissions because of the sudden drop in road traffic. But even after restrictions were lifted and the flow of traffic resumed, NO x emissions from transportation remained around 20% lower than pre-COVID-19 averages in some cities through the end of 2020.

The lingering decline in air pollution could be explained by a rise in remote working, according to a new study in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

In the atmosphere, NO x converts to nitrogen dioxide (NO ₂), a pollutant that can cause respiratory health problems. Using NO ₂ data collected by satellites, researchers tracked the fall and rise of traffic-related air pollution in five U.S. urban areas from February to November 2020: Atlanta, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin Valley in California. In the latter four regions, air pollution did not return to prelockdown levels even as people resumed normal activities in the summer and remained mobile through fall. Instead, NO ₂ levels rose to around 80% of what they were in February, then plateaued. Atlanta had a delayed rise in NO ₂ but returned to prelockdown NO ₂ levels in August 2020.

"Even though lockdowns had been lifted, 25% of the workforce was still working remotely. So if employers continue to offer remote work policies, this could become the new normal in air quality," said Shobha Kondragunta, a physical scientist at NOAA's Center for Satellite Applications and Research who was lead author of the study.

When they applied their model across major urban areas in the continental United States, the researchers found decreases in NO ₂ concentrations in most metropolitan areas from February to November 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019.

The satellites used in the study changed their algorithms in December, so the team could not continue the analysis for December and into 2021. But, Kondragunta said, "even in 2021, we are still below prepandemic NO x emissions levels."

Kondragunta et al. also found a correlation between the national unemployment rate and NO ₂ pollution in the second fiscal quarter of 2020 (April through June), which they suggest could be attributed to a drop in both passenger and freight traffic.

"Remote work can potentially explain the drops in passenger traffic, but freight traffic is driven more by the economy. The data show a larger drop for passenger traffic than freight-people are still ordering goods if they work at home, right?" said Brian McDonald, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA's Chemical Sciences Laboratory who coauthored the study.

Changes in air pollution from COVID-19 lockdowns varied regionally and are not yet fully understood. The model showed some cities, like Seattle and the Chicago suburbs, experienced smaller-magnitude increases in NO ₂ that exceeded prelockdown levels during the study period, along with some rural areas. This increase could be due to normal background variability in NO ₂, said McDonald. Understanding regional patterns in air pollution and looking at pollutants other than NO ₂ "is ultimately the goal. We want to know how air quality changed in response to lockdowns, and this study is one piece of that."

More information: S. Kondragunta et al, COVID‐19 Induced Fingerprints of a New Normal Urban Air Quality in the United States, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2021JD034797

This story is republished courtesy of Eos, hosted by the American Geophysical Union. Read the original story here.

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Remote work may be keeping some cities' air cleaner

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In the spring of 2020, COVID-19-related restrictions in the United States led to reductions in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions because of the sudden drop in road traffic. But even after restrictions were lifted and the flow of traffic resumed, NOx emissions from transportation remained around 20% lower than pre-COVID-19 averages in some cities through the end of 2020.

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Palm oil – deforestation for everyday products

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Palm oil – deforestation for everyday products

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Deforestation happens for many different things, one is majorly for palm oil. To make palm oil plantations, forests are burned or bulldozed over to make room for these large plantations. Burning these forests creates A LOT of C02 emissions. Just the general removal of the forest destroys habitats of anything living within them. This has caused a few animals that dependently live in these forests to become increasingly threatened to endangerment.

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Palm oil is literally everywhere - in our foods, cosmetics, cleaning products and fuels. It's a source of huge profits for multinational corporations, while at the same time destroying the livelihoods of smallholders. Displacement of indigenous peoples, deforestation and loss of biodiversity are all consequences of our palm oil consumption. How could it come to this? And what can we do in everyday life to protect people and nature?

5-minute info - palm oil

The issue - rainforest on our dinner tables and in our fuel tanks

The impact - suffering and death in producer countries, climate havoc

The solution - a revolution on our dinner tables and in our fuel tanks

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Palm oil - deforestation for everyday products

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Palm oil is literally everywhere - in our foods, cosmetics, cleaning products and fuels. It's a source of huge profits for multinational corporations, while at the same time destroying the livelihoods of smallholders. Displacement of indigenous peoples, deforestation and loss of biodiversity are all consequences of our palm oil consumption.

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Chernobyl was a great power plant for its time. It made its city rich and prosperous and it was nearly a paradise as it generated so much power making everything in chernobyl cheap because the city was so rich. But then disaster struck one night in April of 1986. Chernobyl reactor 4 was undergoing safety tests that night and during one of the tests the power had gotten too low and it started causing power surges. The workers that have trained to handle emergency situations made wrong decisions tried to reverse the low power and allowed too much power and steam to accumulate resulting with part of the reactor exploding and emitting radiation into the surrounding area and atmosphere. This was one of few nuclear power accidents but the people who ran Chernobyl were not trained as well as they should've been. I believe nuclear energy is safe, just as long as the right qualified people and designs are used to create it.

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In February 2022, Russia launched a military offensive against Ukraine. For further information see page on Russia-Ukraine War and Nuclear Energy.

The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel.

The resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment, with the deposition of radioactive materials in many parts of Europe.

Two Chernobyl plant workers died due to the explosion on the night of the accident, and a further 28 people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation syndrome.

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has concluded that, apart from some 5000 thyroid cancers (resulting in 15 fatalities), "there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident."

Some 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident, but resettlement of areas from which people were relocated is ongoing.

On 24 February Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that Russian forces had taken control of all facilities at Chernobyl (see below).

On 9 March the Chernobyl nuclear plant was disconnected from the electricity grid. The IAEA stated that it did not see a critical impact on safety as a result.

The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.

The accident destroyed the Chernobyl 4 reactor, killing 30 operators and firemen within three months and several further deaths later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Another person is reported to have died at the time from a coronary thrombosis. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was originally diagnosed in 237 people onsite and involved with the clean-up and it was later confirmed in 134 cases. Of these, 28 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more workers subsequently died between 1987 and 2004, but their deaths cannot necessarily be attributed to radiation exposure. Nobody offsite suffered from acute radiation effects although a significant, but uncertain, fraction of the thyroid cancers diagnosed since the accident in patients who were children at the time are likely to be due to intake of radioactive iodine fallout. Furthermore, large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and beyond were contaminated in varying degrees. See also sections below and Chernobyl Accident Appendix 2: Health Impacts.

The Chernobyl disaster was a unique event and the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power where radiation-related fatalities occurred. The design of the reactor is unique and in that respect the accident is thus of little relevance to the rest of the nuclear industry outside the then Eastern Bloc. However, it led to major changes in safety culture and in industry cooperation, particularly between East and West before the end of the Soviet Union. Former President Gorbachev said that the Chernobyl accident was a more important factor in the fall of the Soviet Union than Perestroika - his program of liberal reform.

The Chernobyl site and plant

The Chernobyl Power Complex, lying about 130 km north of Kiev, Ukraine, and about 20 km south of the border with Belarus, consisted of four nuclear reactors of the RBMK-1000 design (see information page on RBMK Reactors). Units 1 and 2 were constructed between 1970 and 1977, while units 3 and 4 of the same design were completed in 1983. Two more RBMK reactors were under construction at the site at the time of the accident. To the southeast of the plant, an artificial lake of some 22 square kilometres, situated beside the river Pripyat, a tributary of the Dniepr, was constructed to provide cooling water for the reactors.

This area of Ukraine is described as Belarussian-type woodland with a low population density. About 3 km away from the reactor, in the new city, Pripyat, there were 49,000 inhabitants. The old town of Chornobyl, which had a population of 12,500, is about 15 km to the southeast of the complex. Within a 30 km radius of the power plant, the total population was between 115,000 and 135,000 at the time of the accident.

The RBMK-1000 is a Soviet-designed and built graphite moderated pressure tube type reactor, using slightly enriched (2% U-235) uranium dioxide fuel. It is a boiling light water reactor, with two loops feeding steam directly to the turbines, without an intervening heat exchanger. Water pumped to the bottom of the fuel channels boils as it progresses up the pressure tubes, producing steam which feeds two 500 MWe turbines. The water acts as a coolant and also provides the steam used to drive the turbines. The vertical pressure tubes contain the zirconium alloy clad uranium dioxide fuel around which the cooling water flows. The extensions of the fuel channels penetrate the lower plate and the cover plate of the core and are welded to each. A specially designed refuelling machine allows fuel bundles to be changed without shutting down the reactor.

The moderator, the function of which is to slow down neutrons to make them more efficient in producing fission in the fuel, is graphite, surrounding the pressure tubes. A mixture of nitrogen and helium is circulated between the graphite blocks to prevent oxidation of the graphite and to improve the transmission of the heat produced by neutron interactions in the graphite to the fuel channel. The core itself is about 7 m high and about 12 m in diameter. In each of the two loops, there are four main coolant circulating pumps, one of which is always on standby. The reactivity or power of the reactor is controlled by raising or lowering 211 control rods, which, when lowered into the moderator, absorb neutrons and reduce the fission rate. The power output of this reactor is 3200 MW thermal, or 1000 MWe. Various safety systems, such as an emergency core cooling system, were incorporated into the reactor design.

One of the most important characteristics of the RBMK reactor is that it can possess a 'positive void coefficient', where an increase in steam bubbles ('voids') is accompanied by an increase in core reactivity (see information page on RBMK Reactors). As steam production in the fuel channels increases, the neutrons that would have been absorbed by the denser water now produce increased fission in the fuel. There are other components that contribute to the overall power coefficient of reactivity, but the void coefficient is the dominant one in RBMK reactors. The void coefficient depends on the composition of the core - a new RBMK core will have a negative void coefficient. However, at the time of the accident at Chernobyl 4, the reactor's fuel burn-up, control rod configuration, and power level led to a positive void coefficient large enough to overwhelm all other influences on the power coefficient.

The 1986 Chernobyl accident

On 25 April, prior to a routine shutdown, the reactor crew at Chernobyl 4 began preparing for a test to determine how long turbines would spin and supply power to the main circulating pumps following a loss of main electrical power supply. This test had been carried out at Chernobyl the previous year, but the power from the turbine ran down too rapidly, so new voltage regulator designs were to be tested.

A series of operator actions, including the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms, preceded the attempted test early on 26 April. By the time that the operator moved to shut down the reactor, the reactor was in an extremely unstable condition. A peculiarity of the design of the control rods caused a dramatic power surge as they were inserted into the reactor (see Chernobyl Accident Appendix 1: Sequence of Events).

The interaction of very hot fuel with the cooling water led to fuel fragmentation along with rapid steam production and an increase in pressure. The design characteristics of the reactor were such that substantial damage to even three or four fuel assemblies would - and did - result in the destruction of the reactor. The overpressure caused the 1000 t cover plate of the reactor to become partially detached, rupturing the fuel channels and jamming all the control rods, which by that time were only halfway down. Intense steam generation then spread throughout the whole core (fed by water dumped into the core due to the rupture of the emergency cooling circuit) causing a steam explosion and releasing fission products to the atmosphere. About two to three seconds later, a second explosion threw out fragments from the fuel channels and hot graphite. There is some dispute among experts about the character of this second explosion, but it is likely to have been caused by the production of hydrogen from zirconium-steam reactions.

Two workers died as a result of these explosions. The graphite (about a quarter of the 1200 tonnes of it was estimated to have been ejected) and fuel became incandescent and started a number of fires, causing the main release of radioactivity into the environment. A total of about 14 EBq (14 x 10 ¹⁸ Bq) of radioactivity was released, over half of it being from biologically-inert noble gases.*
* The figure of 5.2 EBq is also quoted, this being "iodine-131 equivalent" - 1.8 EBq iodine and 85 PBq Cs-137 multiplied by 40 due its longevity, and ignoring the 6.5 EBq xenon-33 and some minor or short-lived nuclides.
About 200-300 tonnes of water per hour was injected into the intact half of the reactor using the auxiliary feedwater pumps but this was stopped after half a day owing to the danger of it flowing into and flooding units 1 and 2. From the second to tenth day after the accident, some 5000 tonnes of boron, dolomite, sand, clay, and lead were dropped on to the burning core by helicopter in an effort to extinguish the blaze and limit the release of radioactive particles.
The damaged Chernobyl unit 4 reactor building
The 1991 report by the State Committee on the Supervision of Safety in Industry and Nuclear Power on the root cause of the accident looked past the operator actions. It said that while it was certainly true the operators placed their reactor in a dangerously unstable condition (in fact in a condition which virtually guaranteed an accident) it was also true that in doing so they had not in fact violated a number of vital operating policies and principles, since no such policies and principles had been articulated. Additionally, the operating organization had not been made aware either of the specific vital safety significance of maintaining a minimum operating reactivity margin, or the general reactivity characteristics of the RBMK which made low power operation extremely hazardous.

Immediate impact of the Chernobyl accident

The accident caused the largest uncontrolled radioactive release into the environment ever recorded for any civilian operation, and large quantities of radioactive substances were released into the air for about 10 days. This caused serious social and economic disruption for large populations in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Two radionuclides, the short-lived iodine-131 and the long-lived caesium-137, were particularly significant for the radiation dose they delivered to members of the public.

It is estimated that all of the xenon gas, about half of the iodine and caesium, and at least 5% of the remaining radioactive material in the Chernobyl 4 reactor core (which had 192 tonnes of fuel) was released in the accident. Most of the released material was deposited close by as dust and debris, but the lighter material was carried by wind over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and to some extent over Scandinavia and Europe.

The casualties included firefighters who attended the initial fires on the roof of the turbine building. All these were put out in a few hours, but radiation doses on the first day caused 28 deaths - six of which were firemen - by the end of July 1986. The doses received by the firefighters and power plant workers were high enough to result in acute radiation syndrome (ARS), which occurs if a person is exposed to more than 700 milligrays (mGy) within a short time frame (usually minutes). Common ARS symptoms include gastrointestinal problems ( e.g. nausea, vomiting), headaches, burns and fever. Whole body doses between 4000 mGy and 5000 mGv within a short time frame would kill 50% of those exposed, with 8000-10,000 mGy universally fatal. The doses received by the firefighters who died were estimated to range up to 20,000 mGy.

The next task was cleaning up the radioactivity at the site so that the remaining three reactors could be restarted, and the damaged reactor shielded more permanently. About 200,000 people ('liquidators') from all over the Soviet Union were involved in the recovery and clean-up during 1986 and 1987. They received high doses of radiation, averaging around 100 millisieverts (mSv). Some 20,000 liquidators received about 250 mSv, with a few receiving approximately 500 mSv. Later, the number of liquidators swelled to over 600,000, but most of these received only low radiation doses. The highest doses were received by about 1000 emergency workers and onsite personnel during the first day of the accident.

According to the most up-to-date estimate provided by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), the average radiation dose due to the accident received by inhabitants of 'strict radiation control' areas (population 216,000) in the years 1986 to 2005 was 31 mSv (over the 20-year period), and in the 'contaminated' areas (population 6.4 million) it averaged 9 mSv, a minor increase over the dose due to background radiation over the same period (about 50 mSv).

Initial radiation exposure in contaminated areas was due to short-lived iodine-131; later caesium-137 was the main hazard. (Both are fission products dispersed from the reactor core, with half lives of 8 days and 30 years, respectively. 1.8 EBq of I-131 and 0.085 EBq of Cs-137 were released.) About five million people lived in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine contaminated (above 37 kBq/m ² Cs-137 in soil) and about 400,000 lived in more contaminated areas of strict control by authorities (above 555 kBq/m ² Cs-137). A total of 29,400 km ² was contaminated above 180 kBq/m ².

The plant operators' town of Pripyat was evacuated on 27 April (45,000 residents). By 14 May, some 116,000 people that had been living within a 30-kilometre radius had been evacuated and later relocated. About 1000 of these returned unofficially to live within the contaminated zone. Most of those evacuated received radiation doses of less than 50 mSv, although a few received 100 mSv or more.

In the years following the accident, a further 220,000 people were resettled into less contaminated areas, and the initial 30 km radius exclusion zone (2800 km ²) was modified and extended to cover 4300 square kilometres. This resettlement was due to application of a criterion of 350 mSv projected lifetime radiation dose, though in fact radiation in most of the affected area (apart from half a square kilometre close to the reactor) fell rapidly so that average doses were less than 50% above normal background of 2.5 mSv/yr. See also following section on Resettlement of contaminated areas.

Long-term health effects of the Chernobyl accident

Video: Experts talk about the health effects of Chernobyl (Recorded 2011)

Several organizations have reported on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident, but all have had problems assessing the significance of their observations because of the lack of reliable public health information before 1986.

In 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) first raised concerns that local medical scientists had incorrectly attributed various biological and health effects to radiation exposure. Following this, the Government of the USSR requested the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to coordinate an international experts' assessment of accident's radiological, environmental and health consequences in selected towns of the most heavily contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Between March 1990 and June 1991, a total of 50 field missions were conducted by 200 experts from 25 countries (including the USSR), seven organizations, and 11 laboratories. In the absence of pre-1986 data, it compared a control population with those exposed to radiation. Significant health disorders were evident in both control and exposed groups, but, at that stage, none was radiation related.

In February 2003, the IAEA established the Chernobyl Forum, in cooperation with seven other UN organisations as well as the competent authorities of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. In April 2005, the reports prepared by two expert groups - "Environment", coordinated by the IAEA, and "Health", coordinated by WHO - were intensively discussed by the Forum and eventually approved by consensus. The conclusions of this 2005 Chernobyl Forum study (revised version published 2006) are in line with earlier expert studies, notably the UNSCEAR 2000 report which said that "apart from this [thyroid cancer] increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality or in non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure." There is little evidence of any increase in leukaemia, even among clean-up workers where it might be most expected. Radiation-induced leukemia has a latency period of 5-7 years, so any potential leukemia cases due to the accident would already have developed. A low number of the clean-up workers, who received the highest doses, may have a slightly increased risk of developing solid cancers in the long term. To date, however, there is no evidence of any such cancers having developed. Apart from these, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said: "The great majority of the population is not likely to experience serious health consequences as a result of radiation from the Chernobyl accident. Many other health problems have been noted in the populations that are not related to radiation exposure."

The Chernobyl Forum report says that people in the area have suffered a paralysing fatalism due to myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation, which has contributed to a culture of chronic dependency. Some "took on the role of invalids." Mental health coupled with smoking and alcohol abuse is a very much greater problem than radiation, but worst of all at the time was the underlying level of health and nutrition. Apart from the initial 116,000, relocations of people were very traumatic and did little to reduce radiation exposure, which was low anyway. Psycho-social effects among those affected by the accident are similar to those arising from other major disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and fires.

A particularly sad effect of the misconceptions surrounding the accident was that some physicians in Europe advised pregnant women to undergo abortions on account of radiation exposure, even though the levels concerned were vastly below those likely to have teratogenic effects. Robert Gale, a hematologist who treated radiation victims after the accident, estimated that more than 1 million abortions were undertaken in the Soviet Union and Europe as a result of incorrect advice from their doctors about radiation exposure and birth defects following the accident.

Some exaggerated figures have been published regarding the death toll attributable to the Chernobyl disaster, including a publication by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). However, the Chairman of UNSCEAR made it clear that "this report is full of unsubstantiated statements that have no support in scientific assessments", and the Chernobyl Forum report also repudiates these claims.

The number of deaths resulting from the accident are covered most fully in the account of health effects provided by an annex to the UNSCEAR 2008 report, released in 2011. The report concluded: "In summary, the effects of the Chernobyl accident are many and varied. Early deterministic effects can be attributed to radiation with a high degree of certainty, while for other medical conditions, radiation almost certainly was not the cause. In between, there was a wide spectrum of conditions. It is necessary to evaluate carefully each specific condition and the surrounding circumstances before attributing a cause."

According to an UNSCEAR report in 2018, about 20,000 cases of thyroid cancer were diagnosed 1991-2015 in patients who were 18 and under at the time of the accident. The report states that a quarter of the cases (5000 cases) were "probably" due to high doses of radiation, and that this fraction was likely to have been higher in earlier years, and lower in later years. However, it also states that the uncertainty around the attributed fraction is very significant - at least 0.07 to 0.5 - and that the influence of annual screenings and active follow-up make comparisons with the general population problematic. Thyroid cancer is usually not fatal if diagnosed and treated early; the report states that of the diagnoses made between 1991 and 2005, 15 proved to be fatal.

Progressive closure of the Chernobyl plant

In the early 1990s, some $400 million was spent on improvements to the remaining reactors at Chernobyl, considerably enhancing their safety. Energy shortages necessitated the continued operation of one of them (unit 3) until December 2000. (Unit 2 was shut down after a turbine hall fire in 1991, and unit 1 at the end of 1997.) Almost 6000 people worked at the plant every day, and their radiation dose has been within internationally accepted limits. A small team of scientists works within the wrecked reactor building itself, inside the shelter.

Workers and their families now live in a new town, Slavutich, 30 km from the plant. This was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, which was just 3 km away.

Ukraine depends upon, and is deeply in debt to, Russia for energy supplies, particularly oil and gas, but also nuclear fuel. Although this dependence is gradually being reduced, continued operation of nuclear power stations, which supply half of total electricity, is now even more important than in 1986.

When it was announced in 1995 that the two operating reactors at Chernobyl would be closed by 2000, a memorandum of understanding was signed by Ukraine and G7 nations to progress this, but its implementation was conspicuously delayed. Alternative generating capacity was needed, either gas-fired, which has ongoing fuel cost and supply implications, or nuclear, by completing Khmelnitski unit 2 and Rovno unit 4 ('K2R4') in Ukraine. Construction of these was halted in 1989 but then resumed, and both reactors came online late in 2004, financed by Ukraine rather than international grants as expected on the basis of Chernobyl's closure.

Chernobyl today

Russian military operation 2022

On 24 February 2022, Russian forces took control of all facilities of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Control levels of gamma radiation dose rates in the Chernobyl exclusion zone were exceeded. The SNRIU said that the rise in radiation levels was likely due to "disturbance of the top layer of soil from movement of a large number of heavy military machinery through the exclusion zone and increase of air pollution." It added: "The condition of Chernobyl nuclear facilities and other facilities is unchanged." Radiation readings from the site were assessed by the IAEA to be low and in line with near background levels.

On 9 March at 11.22 the Chernobyl plant lost connection to the grid. The SNRIU said that backup diesel generators were running and had 48 hours of fuel. The IAEA stated that, based on the heat load of spent fuel in the ISF-1 storage pool, and the volume of cooling water it contained, there would be sufficient heat removal without electrical supply. It said that it saw no critical impact on safety as a result of the loss of power, but said that the loss of power would likely create additional stress for the about 210 staff who have not been able to rotate for the past two weeks.

Professor Geraldine Thomas, director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, said: "They [the used fuel bundles] will not be producing significant amounts of heat, making a release of radiation very unlikely. In the unlikely event of a release of any radiation, this would be only to the immediate local area, and therefore not pose any threat to western Europe - there would be no radioactive cloud."

On 13 March Energoatom reported that transmission system operator Ukrenergo had succeeded in repairing a power line needed to restore external electricity supplies to Chernobyl. The site was due to be reconnected to the grid a day later, but Ukrenergo reported in the morning of 14 March that the line had sustained further damage "by the occupying forces". Later on 14 March Ukrenergo said that external power had been restored at 13.10 local time, and at 16.45 the plant was reconnected to Ukraine's electricity grid.

On 31 March control of the site was returned to Ukrainian personnel.

For more detailed information, see page on Russia-Ukraine War and Nuclear Energy.

Unit 4 containment

Chernobyl unit 4 was enclosed in a large concrete shelter which was erected quickly (by October 1986) to allow continuing operation of the other reactors at the plant. However, the structure is neither strong nor durable. The international Shelter Implementation Plan in the 1990s involved raising money for remedial work including removal of the fuel-containing materials. Some major work on the shelter was carried out in 1998 and 1999. About 200 tonnes of highly radioactive material remains deep within it, and this poses an environmental hazard until it is better contained.

The New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure was completed in 2017, having been built adjacent and then moved into place on rails. It is an arch 110 metres high, 165 metres long and spanning 260 metres, covering both unit 4 and the hastily-built 1986 structure. The arch frame is a lattice construction of tubular steel members, equipped with internal cranes. The design and construction contract for this was signed in 2007 with the Novarka consortium and preparatory work onsite was completed in 2010. Construction started in April 2012. The first half, weighing 12,800 tonnes, was moved 112 metres to a holding area in front of unit 4 in April 2014. The second half was completed by the end of 2014 and was joined to the first in July 2015. Cladding, cranes, and remote handling equipment were fitted in 2015. The entire 36,000 tonne structure was pushed 327 metres into position over the reactor building in November 2016, over two weeks, and the end walls completed. The NSC is the largest moveable land-based structure ever built.

The hermetically sealed building will allow engineers to remotely dismantle the 1986 structure that has shielded the remains of the reactor from the weather since the weeks after the accident. It will enable the eventual removal of the fuel-containing materials (FCM) in the bottom of the reactor building and accommodate their characterization, compaction, and packing for disposal. This task represents the most important step in eliminating nuclear hazard at the site - and the real start of dismantling. The NSC will facilitate remote handling of these dangerous materials, using as few personnel as possible. During peak construction of the NSC some 1200 workers were onsite.

The Chernobyl Shelter Fund, set up in 1997, had received €864 million from international donors by early 2011 towards this project and previous work. It and the Nuclear Safety Account (NSA), set up in 1993, are managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The total cost of the new shelter was in 2011 estimated to be €1.5 billion. In November 2014 the EBRD said the overall €2.15 billion Shelter Implementation Plan including the NSC had received contributions from 43 governments but still had a funding shortfall of €615 million. The following month the EBRD made an additional contribution of €350 million in anticipation of a €165 million contribution by the G7/European Commission, which was confirmed in April 2015. This left a balance of €100 million to come from non-G7 donors, and €15 million of this was confirmed in April 2015.
Chernobyl New Safe Confinement under construction and before being moved into place (Image: EBRD)
Funding other Chernobyl work

The Nuclear Safety Account (NSA), had received €321 million by early 2011 for Chernobyl decommissioning and also for projects in other ex-Soviet countries. At Chernobyl it funds the construction of used fuel and waste storage (notably ISF-2, see below) and decommissioning units 1-3. In April 2016 the European Commission pledged €20 million to the NSA, the largest part of €45 million expected from the G7 and the European Commission. A further €40 million was expected from the EBRD in May 2016.

In total, the European Commission has committed around €730 million so far to Chernobyl projects in four ways. First, €550 million for assistance projects, out of which €470 million were channelled through international funds, and €80 million implemented directly by the European Commission. Secondly, power generation support of €65 million. Thirdly, €15 million for social projects. And finally, €100 million for research projects.

Chernobyl used fuel: ISF-1 & ISF-2

Used fuel from units 1-3 was stored in each unit's cooling pond, and in an interim spent fuel storage facility pond (ISF-1). A few damaged assemblies remained in units 1&2 in 2013, with the last of these removed in June 2016. ISF-1 now holds most of the spent fuel from units 1-3, allowing those reactors to be decommissioned under less restrictive licence conditions. Most of the fuel assemblies were straightforward to handle, but about 50 are damaged and required special handling.

In 1999, a contract was signed with Framatome (now Areva) for construction of the ISF-2 radioactive waste management facility to store 25,000 used fuel assemblies from units 1-3 and other operational waste long-term, as well as material from decommissioning units 1-3 (which are the first RBMK units decommissioned anywhere). However, after a significant part of the dry storage facility had been built, technical deficiencies in the concept emerged in 2003, and the contract was terminated amicably in 2007.

Holtec International became the contractor in September 2007 for the new interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility (ISF-2 or SNF SF-2) for the state-owned Chernobyl NPP. Design approval and funding from the NSA was confirmed in October 2010, and the final €87.5 million of €400 million cost was pledged in April 2016. Construction was completed in January 2020. Hot and cold tests took place during 2020, and the facility received an operating licence in April 2021.

ISF-2 is the world's largest dry used fuel storage facility, accommodating 21,217 RBMK fuel assemblies in dry storage for at least a 100-year service life.

The project includes a processing facility, able to cut the RBMK fuel assemblies* and to put the material in double-walled canisters, which are then filled with inert gas and welded shut. They will then be transported to concrete dry storage vaults in which the fuel containers will be enclosed for up to 100 years. This facility, treating 2500 fuel assemblies per year, is the first of its kind for RBMK fuel.
* According to Holtec: "Unique features of the Chernobyl dry storage facility include the world's largest 'hot cell' for dismembering the conjugated RBMK fuel assembly and a (Holtec patented) forced gas dehydrator designed to run on nitrogen."
Other Chernobyl radwaste

Industrial Complex for Radwaste Management (ICSRM): In April 2009, Nukem handed over this turnkey waste treatment centre for solid radioactive waste. In May 2010, the State Nuclear Regulatory Committee licensed the commissioning of this facility, where solid low- and intermediate-level wastes accumulated from the power plant operations and the decommissioning of reactor blocks 1-3 is conditioned. The wastes are processed in three steps. First, the solid radioactive wastes temporarily stored in bunkers is removed for treatment. In the next step, these wastes, as well as those from decommissioning reactor blocks 1-3, are processed into a form suitable for permanent safe disposal. Low- and intermediate-level wastes are separated into combustible, compactable, and non-compactable categories. These are then subject to incineration, high-force compaction, and cementation respectively. In addition, highly radioactive and long-lived solid waste is sorted out for temporary separate storage. In the third step, the conditioned solid waste materials are transferred to containers suitable for permanent safe storage.

As part of this project, at the end of 2007, Nukem handed over an Engineered Near Surface Disposal Facility for storage of short-lived radioactive waste after prior conditioning. It is 17 km away from the power plant, at the Vektor complex within the 30-km zone. The storage area is designed to hold 55,000 m ³ of treated waste which will be subject to radiological monitoring for 300 years, by when the radioactivity will have decayed to such an extent that monitoring is no longer required.

Another contract has been let for a Liquid Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant (LRTP), to handle some 35,000 cubic metres of low- and intermediate-level liquid wastes at the site. This will be solidified and eventually buried along with solid wastes on site. Construction of the plant has been completed and the start of operations was due late in 2015. LRTP is also funded through EBRD's Nuclear Safety Account (NSA).

Non-Chernobyl used fuel

The Central Spent Fuel Storage Facility (CSFSF) Project for Ukraine's VVER reactors is being built by Holtec International within the Chernobyl exclusion area, between the resettled villages Staraya Krasnitsa, Buryakovka, Chistogalovka, and Stechanka, southeast of Chernobyl and not far from ISF-2. This will not take any Chernobyl fuel, though it will become a part of the common spent nuclear fuel management complex of the state-owned company Chernobyl NPP.

Decommissioning units 1-3

After the last Chernobyl reactor shut down in December 2000, in mid-2001 a new enterprise, SSE ChNPP was set up to take over management of the site and decommissioning from Energoatom. (Its remit includes eventual decommissioning of all Ukraine nuclear plants.)

In January 2008, the Ukraine government announced a four-stage decommissioning plan which incorporated the above waste activities and progresses towards a cleared site.

In February 2014 a new stage of this was approved for units 1-3, involving dismantling some equipment and putting them into safstor condition by 2028. Then, to 2046, further equipment will be removed, and by 2064 they will be demolished.

See also official website.

Resettlement of contaminated areas

In the last two decades there has been some resettlement of the areas evacuated in 1986 and subsequently. Recently the main resettlement project has been in Belarus.

In July 2010, the Belarus government announced that it had decided to settle back thousands of people in the 'contaminated areas' covered by the Chernobyl fallout, from which 24 years ago they and their forbears were hastily relocated. Compared with the list of contaminated areas in 2005, some 211 villages and hamlets had been reclassified with fewer restrictions on resettlement. The decision by the Belarus Council of Ministers resulted in a new national program over 2011-15 and up to 2020 to alleviate the Chernobyl impact and return the areas to normal use with minimal restrictions. The focus of the project is on the development of economic and industrial potential of the Gomel and Mogilev regions from which 137,000 people were relocated.

The main priority is agriculture and forestry, together with attracting qualified people and housing them. Initial infrastructure requirements will mean the refurbishment of gas, potable water and power supplies, while the use of local wood will be banned. Schools and housing will be provided for specialist workers and their families ahead of wider socio-economic development. Overall, some 21,484 dwellings are slated for connection to gas networks in the period 2011-2015, while about 5600 contaminated or broken down buildings are demolished. Over 1300 kilometres of road will be laid, and ten new sewerage works and 15 pumping stations are planned. The cost of the work was put at BYR 6.6 trillion ($2.2 billion), split fairly evenly across the years 2011 to 2015 inclusive.

The feasibility of agriculture will be examined in areas where the presence of caesium-137 and strontium-90 is low, "to acquire new knowledge in the fields of radiobiology and radioecology in order to clarify the principles of safe life in the contaminated territories." Land found to have too high a concentration of radionuclides will be reforested and managed. A suite of protective measures was set up to allow a new forestry industry whose products would meet national and international safety standards. In April 2009, specialists in Belarus stressed that it is safe to eat all foods cultivated in the contaminated territories, though intake of some wild food was restricted.

Protective measures will be put in place for 498 settlements in the contaminated areas where average radiation dose may exceed 1 mSv per year. There were also 1904 villages with annual average effective doses from the pollution between 0.1 mSv and 1 mSv. The goal for these areas is to allow their re-use with minimal restrictions, although already radiation doses there from the caesium are lower than background levels anywhere in the world.

The Belarus government decision was an important political landmark in an ongoing process. Studies reviewed by UNSCEAR show that the Chernobyl disaster caused little risk for the general population. A UN Development Program report in 2002 said that much of the aid and effort applied to mitigate the effects of the Chernobyl accident did more harm than good, and it seems that this, along with the Chernobyl Forum report, finally persuaded the Belarus authorities. In 2004 President Lukashenko announced a priority to repopulate much of the Chernobyl-affected regions of Belarus, and then in 2009 he said that he "wants to repopulate Chernobyl's zone quickly".

In 2011 Chernobyl was officially declared a tourist attraction, with many visitors.

In 2015 the published results of a major scientific study showed that the mammal population of the exclusion zone (including the 2162 sq km Polessian State Radiation-Ecological Reserve - PSRER in Belarus) was thriving, despite land contamination. The "long-term empirical data showed no evidence of a negative influence of radiation on mammal abundance." The data "represent unique evidence of wildlife's resilience in the face of chronic radiation stress." ( Current Biology, Elsevier) . Other studies have concluded that the net environmental effect of the accident has been much greater biodiversity and abundance of species, with the exclusion zone having become a unique sanctuary for wildlife due to the absence of humans.

What has been learned from the Chernobyl disaster?

Leaving aside the verdict of history on its role in melting the Soviet 'Iron Curtain', some very tangible practical benefits have resulted from the Chernobyl accident. The main ones concern reactor safety, notably in eastern Europe. (The US Three Mile Island accident in 1979 had a significant effect on Western reactor design and operating procedures. While that reactor was destroyed, all radioactivity was contained - as designed - and there were no deaths or injuries.)

While no-one in the West was under any illusion about the safety of early Soviet reactor designs, some lessons learned have also been applicable to Western plants. Certainly the safety of all Soviet-designed reactors has improved vastly. This is due largely to the development of a culture of safety encouraged by increased collaboration between East and West, and substantial investment in improving the reactors.

Modifications have been made to overcome deficiencies in all the RBMK reactors still operating. In these, originally the nuclear chain reaction and power output could increase if cooling water were lost or turned to steam, in contrast to most Western designs. It was this effect which led to the uncontrolled power surge that led to the destruction of Chernobyl 4 (see Positive void coefficient section in the information page on RBMK Reactors). All of the RBMK reactors have now been modified by changes in the control rods, adding neutron absorbers and consequently increasing the fuel enrichment from 1.8 to 2.4% U-235, making them very much more stable at low power (see Post accident changes to the RBMK section in the information page on RBMK Reactors). Automatic shut-down mechanisms now operate faster, and other safety mechanisms have been improved. Automated inspection equipment has also been installed. A repetition of the 1986 Chernobyl accident is now virtually impossible, according to a German nuclear safety agency report.

Since 1989, over 1000 nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union have visited Western nuclear power plants and there have been many reciprocal visits. Over 50 twinning arrangements between East and West nuclear plants have been put in place. Most of this has been under the auspices of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), a body formed in 1989 which links 130 operators of nuclear power plants in more than 30 countries (see also information page on Cooperation in the Nuclear Power Industry).

Many other international programmes were initiated following Chernobyl. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety review projects for each particular type of Soviet reactor are noteworthy, bringing together operators and Western engineers to focus on safety improvements. These initiatives are backed by funding arrangements. The Nuclear Safety Assistance Coordination Centre database lists Western aid totalling almost US$1 billion for more than 700 safety-related projects in former Eastern Bloc countries. The Convention on Nuclear Safety adopted in Vienna in June 1994 is another outcome.

The Chernobyl Forum report said that some seven million people are now receiving or eligible for benefits as 'Chernobyl victims', which means that resources are not targeting those most in need. Remedying this presents daunting political problems however.

Notes & references

Notes

a. Chernobyl is the well-known Russian name for the site; Chornobyl is preferred by Ukraine. [ Back]

b. Much has been made of the role of the operators in the Chernobyl accident. The 1986 Summary Report on the Post-Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl Accident (INSAG-1) of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's) International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group accepted the view of the Soviet experts that "the accident was caused by a remarkable range of human errors and violations of operating rules in combination with specific reactor features which compounded and amplified the effects of the errors and led to the reactivity excursion." In particular, according to the INSAG-1 report: "The operators deliberately and in violation of rules withdrew most control and safety rods from the core and switched off some important safety systems."

However, the IAEA's 1992 INSAG-7 report, The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG-1, was less critical of the operators, with the emphasis shifted towards "the contributions of particular design features, including the design of the control rods and safety systems, and arrangements for presenting important safety information to the operators. The accident is now seen to have been the result of the concurrence of the following major factors: specific physical characteristics of the reactor; specific design features of the reactor control elements; and the fact that the reactor was brought to a state not specified by procedures or investigated by an independent safety body. Most importantly, the physical characteristics of the reactor made possible its unstable behaviour." But the report goes on to say that the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group "remains of the opinion that critical actions of the operators were most ill judged. As pointed out in INSAG-1, the human factor has still to be considered as a major element in causing the accident."

It is certainly true that the operators placed the reactor in a dangerous condition, in particular by removing too many of the control rods, resulting in the lowering of the reactor's operating reactivity margin (ORM, see information page on RBMK Reactors). However, the operating procedures did not emphasize the vital safety significance of the ORM but rather treated the ORM as a way of controlling reactor power. It could therefore be argued that the actions of the operators were more a symptom of the prevailing safety culture of the Soviet era rather than the result of recklessness or a lack of competence on the part of the operators.

In what is referred to as his Testament - which was published soon after his suicide two years after the accident - Valery Legasov, who had led the Soviet delegation to the IAEA Post-Accident Review Meeting, wrote: "After I had visited Chernobyl NPP I came to the conclusion that the accident was the inevitable apotheosis of the economic system which had been developed in the USSR over many decades. Neglect by the scientific management and the designers was everywhere with no attention being paid to the condition of instruments or of equipment... When one considers the chain of events leading up to the Chernobyl accident, why one person behaved in such a way and why another person behaved in another etc, it is impossible to find a single culprit, a single initiator of events, because it was like a closed circle." [ Back]

c. The initial death toll was officially given as two initial deaths plus 28 from acute radiation syndrome. One further victim, due to coronary thrombosis, is widely reported, but does not appear on official lists of the initial deaths. The 2006 report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group "Health", Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes, states: "The Chernobyl accident caused the deaths of 30 power plant employees and firemen within a few days or weeks (including 28 deaths that were due to radiation exposure)." [ Back]

d. Apart from the initial 31 deaths (two from the explosions, one reportedly from coronary thrombosis - see Note c above - and 28 firemen and plant personnel from acute radiation syndrome), the number of deaths resulting from the accident is unclear and a subject of considerable controversy. According to the 2006 report of the UN Chernobyl Forum's 'Health' Expert Group: "The actual number of deaths caused by this accident is unlikely ever to be precisely known."

On the number of deaths due to acute radiation syndrome (ARS), the Expert Group report states: "Among the 134 emergency workers involved in the immediate mitigation of the Chernobyl accident, severely exposed workers and fireman during the first days, 28 persons died in 1986 due to ARS, and 19 more persons died in 1987-2004 from different causes. Among the general population affected by the Chernobyl radioactive fallout, the much lower exposures meant that ARS cases did not occur."

According to the report: "With the exception of thyroid cancer, direct radiation-epidemiological studies performed in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine since 1986 have not revealed any statistically significant increase in either cancer morbidity or mortality induced by radiation." The report does however attribute a large proportion of child thyroid cancer fatalities to radiation, with nine deaths being recorded during 1986-2002 as a result of progression of thyroid cancer. [ Back]

e. There have been fatalities in military and research reactor contexts, e.g. Tokai-mura. [ Back]

f. Although most reports on the Chernobyl accident refer to a number of graphite fires, it is highly unlikely that the graphite itself burned. Information on the General Atomics website (but now deleted) stated: "It is often incorrectly assumed that the combustion behavior of graphite is similar to that of charcoal and coal. Numerous tests and calculations have shown that it is virtually impossible to burn high-purity, nuclear-grade graphites." On Chernobyl, the same source stated: "Graphite played little or no role in the progression or consequences of the accident. The red glow observed during the Chernobyl accident was the expected color of luminescence for graphite at 700°C and not a large-scale graphite fire, as some have incorrectly assumed."

A 2006 Electric Power Research Institute Technical Report states that the International Atomic Energy Agency's INSAG-1 report is
...potentially misleading through the use of imprecise words in relation to graphite behaviour. The report discusses the fire-fighting activities and repeatedly refers to "burning graphite blocks" and "the graphite fire". Most of the actual fires involving graphite which were approached by fire-fighters involved ejected material on bitumen-covered roofs, and the fires also involved the bitumen. It is stated: "The fire teams experienced no unusual problems in using their fire-fighting techniques, except that it took a considerable time to extinguish the graphite fire." These descriptions are not consistent with the later considered opinions of senior Russian specialists... There is however no question that extremely hot graphite was ejected from the core and at a temperature sufficient to ignite adjacent combustible materials.

There are also several referrals to a graphite fire occurring during the October 1957 accident at Windscale Pile No. 1 in the UK. However, images obtained from inside the Pile several decades after the accident showed that the graphite was relatively undamaged. [ Back]

g. The International Chernobyl Project, 1990-91 - Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Summary Brochure, published by the International Atomic Energy Agency, reports that, in June 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) sent a team of experts to help address the health impacts of radioactive contamination resulting from the accident. One of the conclusions from this mission was that "scientists who are not well versed in radiation effects have attributed various biological and health effects to radiation exposure. These changes cannot be attributed to radiation exposure, especially when the normal incidence is unknown, and are much more likely to be due to psychological factors and stress.Attributing these effects to radiation not only increases the psychological pressure in the population and provokes additional stress-related health problems, it also undermines confidence in the competence of the radiation specialists." [ Back]

h. Image taken from page 31 of The International Chernobyl Project Technical Report, Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Report by an International Advisory Committee, IAEA, 1991 (ISBN: 9201291914) [ Back]

i. A 55-page summary version the revised report, Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, The Chernobyl Forum: 2003-2005, Second revised version, as well as the Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group "Environment" and the Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group "Health" are available through the IAEA's webpage on the Chernobyl accident ( https://www.iaea.org/topics/chornobyl) [ Back]

j. The United Nations Scientific Commission on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) is the UN body with a mandate from the General Assembly to assess and report levels and health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation. Exposures and effects of the Chernobyl accident , Annex J to Volume II of the 2000 United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation Report to the General Assembly, is available at the UNSCEAR 2000 Report Vol. II webpage (www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2000_2.html). It is also available (along with other reports) on the webpage for UNSCEAR's assessments of the radiation effects of The Chernobyl accident (www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html). The conclusions from Annex J of the UNSCEAR 2000 report are in Chernobyl Accident Appendix: Health Impacts

k. The quoted comment comes from a 6 June 2000 letter from Lars-Erik Holm, Chairman of UNSCEAR and Director-General of the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute, to Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations. [

l. A reinforced concrete casing was built around the ruined reactor building over the seven months following the accident. This shelter - often referred to as the - was intended to contain the remaining fuel and act as a radiation shield. As it was designed for a lifetime of around 20 to 30 years, as well as being hastily constructed, a second shelter - known as the New Safe Confinement - with a 100-year design lifetime is planned to be placed over the existing structure. See also ASE keeps the lid on Chernobyl , World Nuclear News (19 August 2008). [

m. The UNSCEAR committee in 2018 estimated that the fraction of the incidence of thyroid cancer attributable to radiation exposure among non-evacuated residents of Belarus, Ukraine and the four most contaminated oblasts of the Russian Federation, who were under 18 at the time of the accident, is in the order of 0.25 . The committee states that the uncertainty range of the fraction is large, at least from 0.07 to 0.5. [ Back]

References

1. 7. The Accident and the Safety of RBMK-Reactors, Gesellschaft für Anlagen und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS) mbH, GRS-121 (February 1996) [9. Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes, Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum, Expert Group "Health", World Health Organization, 2006 (ISBN: 9789241594172)
2. Appendix D, Graphite Decommissioning: Options for Graphite Treatment, Recycling, or Disposal, including a discussion of Safety-Related Issues , EPRI, Palo Alto, CA, 1013091 (March 2006)
The International Chernobyl Project, 1990-91 - Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Summary Brochure , International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA/PI/A32E, 1991; The International Chernobyl Project, An Overview , Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Report by an International Advisory Committee , IAEA, 1991 (ISBN: 9201290918); The International Chernobyl Project Technical Report , Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Report by an International Advisory Committee , IAEA, 1991 (ISBN: 9201291914) [
4. Mikhail Balonov, Malcolm Crick and Didier Louvat, Update of Impacts of the Chernobyl Accident: Assessments of the Chernobyl Forum (2003-2005) and UNSCEAR (2005-2008) , Proceedings of the Third European IRPA (International Radiation Protection Association) Congress held in Helsinki, Finland (14-18 June 2010) [
5. UNSCEAR, 2011, UNSCEAR 2008 Report, vol II, annex D (lead author: M. Balanov) [
6. Chernobyl - A Continuing Catastrophe, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2000 [

8. Deryabina, T.G. Long-term census data reveal abundant wildlife populations at Chernobyl Health Effects due to Radiation from the Chernobyl Accident, , Current Biology, Volume 25, Issue 19, pR824-R826, Elsevier (5 October 2015) [
Back] Evaluation of data on thyroid cancer in regions affected by the Chernobyl accident, UNSCEAR (2018) [ Back]

General sources

INSAG-7, The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG-1, A report by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group, International Atomic Energy Agency, Safety Series No. 75-INSAG-7, 1992, (ISBN: 9201046928)

Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, The Chernobyl Forum: 2003-2005, Second revised version, International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA/PI/A.87 Rev.2/06-09181 (April 2006)

Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience, Report of the Chernobyl Forum Expert Group 'Environment', International Atomic Energy Agency, 2006 (ISBN 9201147058)

Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes, Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group "Health", World Health Organization, 2006 (ISBN: 9789241594172)

The Chernobyl accident, UNSCEAR's assessments of the radiation effects on the UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) radiation website

Exposures and effects of the Chernobyl accident, Annex J of Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation, UNSCEAR 2000 Report to the General Assembly Vol. II

Ten Years after Chernobyl: what do we really know? (based on the proceedings of the IAEA/WHO/EC International Conference, Vienna, April 1996), International Atomic Energy Agency

Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impacts - 2002 Update of Chernobyl: Ten Years On, OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (2002).

Zbigniew Jaworowski, Lessons of Chernobyl with particular reference to thyroid cancer, Australasian Radiation Protection Society Newsletter No. 30 (April 2004). The same article appeared in Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), Volume 31, Number 18 (7 May 2004). An extended version of this paper was published as Radiation folly, Chapter 4 of Environment & Health: Myths & Realities, Edited by Kendra Okonski and Julian Morris, International Policy Press (a division of International Policy Network), June 2004 (ISBN 1905041004). See also Chernobyl Accident Appendix 2: Health Impacts

The chernobyl.info website www.chernobyl.info - out of date but some useful information

Chernobyl Forum information on IAEA website

Mikhail Balonov, The Chernobyl Forum: Major Findings and Recommendations, presented at the Public Information Materials Exchange meeting held in Vienna, Austria on 12-16 February 2006

GreenFacts webpage on Scientific Facts on the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident (www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl)

European Centre of Technological Safety's Chernobyl website (www.tesec-int.org/Chernobyl) and its webpage on Sarcophagus and Decommissioning of the Chernobyl NPP

Chernobyl Legacy website (www.chernobyllegacy.com)

David Mosey, Looking Beyond the Operator, Nuclear Engineering International, 26 Nov 2014

Chernobyl 25th anniversary, Frequently Asked Questions, World Health Organization (23 April 2011)

Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience, Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group "Environment", STI/PUB/1239, International Atomic Energy Agency (2006)

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Chernobyl | Chernobyl Accident | Chernobyl Disaster - World Nuclear Association

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Chernobyl accident information. The Chernobyl RBMK reactor design faults and how they were addressed. The Chernobyl New Safe Confinement. Lessons learnt from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Health impacts of Chernobyl.