RADIOLOGICAL AND HEALTH IMPACT
An Assessment by
the NEA Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health
November 1995
OECD NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY
FOREWORD
Several years after the Three Mile Island accident, in the United States, the Chernobyl accident completely changed the public's perception of nuclear risk. While the first accident provided the impetus to develop new research programmes on nuclear safety, the second, with its human death toll and the dispersion of a large part of the reactor core into the environment, raised a large number of problems of "management" not only for the treatment of severely exposed persons, but also for the decisions that had to be taken affecting the population. Clearly, the national authorities were not ready to manage an accident whose consequences were not confined to their territory.
The way the accident was managed and the lack of information provoked a feeling of distrust in the minds of the public that was reinforced by the fact that radiation cannot be perceived by humans and also that it is easily detected even at a very low level. The prospect of contaminated food, aggravated by ambiguous, even contradictory recommendations by national authorities, gave rise to a variety of reactions, and sometimes overreactions, in the management of the accident consequences in several European countries.
In the country of the accident itself, where political, social and economic conditions were worsening, the association of the Soviet regime with nuclear activities contributed to raise feelings of mistrust towards the public authorities.
Ten years later, many improvements in radiation protection and emergency preparedness have been made possible by the Chernobyl experience and we are also able to arrive at a more accurate assessment of the impact of this accident. The fact remains that the future consequences in terms of health effects remain imprecise for simple technical reasons, and, because of this, lend themselves to a competition between those who want to minimise the consequences of the accident and those who wish to promote a catastrophic assessment.
In these circumstances, having discussed in 1994 the question of the future of radiation protection with the dawning of the next millenium (NE94), the NEA Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health (CRPPH) wished to make an honest assessment, ten years on of the accident, on the state of the contaminated territories and the state of health of the populations and, on this basis, to attempt an appreciation of the risks to be expected not only for man but also for his environment.
This review does not end there. The CRPPH also details the lessons that have been learned by Member countries and the international organisations such as the ICRP, the IAEA, the EC, the WHO, etc. It has also organised international emergency exercises, the INEX Programme. Information between States and the public has been considerably expanded.
The accident was followed by numerous assistance and research programmes supported by international organisations and bilateral agreements. All these organisations are or will be publishing their results. This report differs from those in that it is a synthetic consensus view aimed at those persons who wish to know the salient points without having to go into the technical details which one can find elsewhere.
We thank all those organisations (UNSCEAR, FAO, WHO, EC) which have put information at our disposal so that this report could be as up to date as possible. However, those Agencies are still generating a large amount of information to be submitted to the forthcoming international Conference "One Decade After Chernobyl" to be held in April 1996, some of which could not be made available in time for incorporation into this report.
The report was drafted by Dr. Peter Waight (Canada) under the direction of an editing committee chaired by Dr. Henri Métivier (France). The members of the Editing Committee were:
Dr. H. Métivier IPSN, France Dr. P. Jacob GSF, Germany Dr. G. Souchkevitch WHO, Geneva Mr. H. Brunner NAZ, Switzerland Mr. C. Viktorsson SKI, Sweden Dr. B. Bennett UNSCEAR, Vienna Dr. R. Hance FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques, Vienna Mr. S. Kumazawa JAERI, Japan Dr. S. Kusumi Institute of Radiation Epidemiology, Japan Dr. A. Bouville National Cancer Institute, United States Dr. J. Sinnaeve EC, Brussels Dr. O. Ilari OECD/NEA, Paris Dr. E. Lazo OECD/NEA, Paris