Organization & Environment

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The Chernobyl Disaster: An International Perspective

Jacob I. Fabrikant
Organization Environment 1987; 1; 2
DOI: 10.1177/108602668700100401

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
 The Chernobyl Disaster:
An International Perspective
1,2
Jacob I. Fabrikant, M.D., Ph.D.
University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco

Abstract
The most important human issue in industrial crisis management remains
the health and safety of people, both as individuals and of large populations
at risk. The events of Three Mile Island, Bhopal, and Tylenol evolved—in
large measure—as local or national crises, and responses to cope with
these events were primarily local and national. In contrast, the catastrophic
accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Ukraine elicited
major international responses, particularly from Western European and
American authorities, for a critical period before the Soviet Union admitted
openly that an accident had occurred. While the event of Chernobyl signifi-
cantly affected a sizeable worker population and residents in the immediate
vicinity, it had an adverse but lesser impact on the rest of the Soviet Union,
Europe, Asia, and North America. This paper provides some background on
the accident, examines how large amounts of radioactive materials were re-
leased into the environment, how they may have found their way into
humans, how nations responded to the accident, and what some of the inter-
national implications for decision and policy making may be.

The Soviet Response

During the initial events of the Chernobyl accident, international author-
ities-both governmental and scientific-turned to the Soviet government
for the information they needed to assess risk and protect public health. So-
viet authorities today maintain that they provided reliable information on the
accident to foreign governments and the International Atomic Energy
Agency as soon as it had been obtained. However, the public record, the
media, and Western authorities disagree. It took 36 hours to obtain reliable,
though limited, information-well after the early events of the accident were
detected in the Scandinavian countries.
The Soviet authorities apparently were aware of the severity of the acci-
dent, but not of its details, such as the radioactive releases into the environ-
ment and their dispersion pathways. Thus, these critical data were not avail-
able to Western scientists. The Soviet authorities also recognized that the

1
Presented at the First International Conference on Industrial Crisis
Management, New York University, Graduate School of Business Adminis-
tration, New York, September 5-6, 1986
2
Research supported by the Director, Office of Energy, Health and Envi-
ronmental Research of the United States Department of Energy under Con-
tract DE-AC03-76SF00098

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
nuclear plant was located deep within the Soviet territory of the Ukraine, far
from the Soviet borders, and given normal meteorological conditions, such
as wind patterns, they claimed that an immediate announcement of the acci-
dent to other nations was not necessary. However, the Soviets admitted that
while there was no failure in communication between Chernobyl and
Moscow, the local authorities did not appreciate or understand the signifi-
cance of the accident at that time, and could not predict the catastrophic
events to follow.

The Initial International Response To Soviet Reports Of The Accident

The first official statement came several days following the accident,
after Sweden, Finland, and Denmark had detected sharp increases in radio-
activity and Sweden’s ambassador to Moscow requested an explanation
from the Soviet Union (Boone, et al, 1986; Mosieev, 1986). The Soviet an-
nouncement on April 28th, which was carried on Soviet television, said in its
entirety: &dquo;An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as
one of the reactors was damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the
consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to those affected. A Gov-
ernment commission has been set up.&dquo; During the following weeks, it was
difficult to assess the potential consequences of the accident, since the So-
viet authorities provided little concrete, reliable information about the
causes, nature, and severity of the accident. Western press coverage gener-
ally portrayed the accident as having potentially severe consequences in-
cluding significant loss of life, and contamination of population centers,
farmlands, and water supplies.
The United States and European governments displayed considerable
concern. While charging that the Soviet government had a responsibility to
disclose the details of the nature and scale of the Chernobyl accident and
the associated releases of radioactivity, the United States was restrained in
its criticism of the Soviet regime for its handling of the affair. The United
States offered technical and humanitarian assistance to mitigate the effects
of the accident. Western European governments were less cautious with
their criticism of the Soviet regime’s behavior during the incident. Greater
European annoyance was probably due to the fact that Sweden, Finland,
Norway, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, the Netherlands, and Luxem-
bourg experienced radiation levels anywhere from 5 to 100 times greater
than normal. Western European foreign ministers, meeting in Venice, dis-
played anger and outrage toward the Soviets for failing to inform their own
citizens and the citizens of other European countries that a potentially haz-
ardous situation existed. Nonetheless, like the United States, several
Western European governments, notably West Germany and Sweden, of-
fered various forms of medical and technical aid to the Soviets (Boone, et al,
1986).
What Happened At The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant?
Details of the sequence of events of the Chernobyl nuclear accident are
still incomplete, but a good deal is already known from the descriptions of

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
the Soviet scientists’ assessment presented in Vienna in August, 1986 (USSR
State Committee on the Utilization of Atomic Energy, 1986). The Soviet au-
thorities cited human error as the primary cause of the accident. At 1:00 am
on April 25th, Soviet scientists and engineers at the Chernobyl No. 4 reactor
began an experiment to test energy output in the event of a shut down. Over
the next 24 hours they committed six critical errors, overriding automatic
safety systems. The worst violation occurred at 2:00 pm when workers delib-
erately turned off the emergency cooling systems. Twelve hours later, at 1:23
am on April 26th, workers noted a dangerous increase in power output but
failed to shut down the plant as required. Workers next tried to insert control
rods to stop the chain reaction from racing out of control. Twenty seconds
later there were two intense explosions and a fireball blew the top off the
reactor building. At that point, radioactive materials and hot gases were
forced more than 1,000 meters into the air, where the wind dispersed the
toxic cloud for hundreds of miles into northern and eastern Europe.
A large amount of reactor coolant was subsequently lost and the emer-
gency core cooling systems were ineffective. The hot graphite moderator
started to burn with an intense heat. The combination of fire and decay heat
from the nuclear fuel was estimated to have reached up to 5,000 degrees
Celsius, increasing the amount and mobility of radiaoactive releases from
the damaged reactor. The graphite fire lasted some 5-6 days, resulting in a
thermal plume that lifted some radioactive materials several kilometers high.
The reactor building caught fire as a result of the initial explosions, with
flames reported up to 30 meters high and the firefighters battling in ankle-
deep molten bitumen roofing material. This fire, which threatened Unit 3,
was brought under control within 90 minutes at the cost of the lives of all the
firefighters (who received both thermal and radiation burns and extremely
high, and in some cases lethal, doses of radiation). The graphite core fire
continued until May 5th, being smothered by aerial drops of lead, boron,
sand, clay, dolomite, and water. Liquid nitrogen was also used to freeze the
ground around the reactor to prevent possible migration of radioactive mate-
rials into the ground water and nearby reservoirs and, further, to supply
some cooling to the hot reactor core (USSR State Committee on the Utiliza-
tion of Atomic Energy, 1986).

The Dispersion Pattern Of The Radioactive Plume

The reactor explosion released large quantities of radioactive materials
into the atmosphere. The radioactive plume left the Chernobyl area, moving
northwest along the Polish corridor towards Scandinavia. Finnish author-
ities soon detected elevated levels of radioactivity, as did Swedish, Norwe-
gian and Danish scientists. The radioactive plume segmented and moved
west into Europe and the British Isles, southwest to Switzerland and Italy,
and south and east to the Black Sea region and the Middle East. Reports
from Kuwait, China, Japan, and the United States indicated that within one
week or so, the entire northern hemisphere was contaminated by the radio-
activity. Measurements in the state of Washington demonstrated elevated
4

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
levels of radioactive material in the environment as the plume passed over its
Pacific boundary, 10 days after the accident.
Approximately 3% of the radionuclides in the Chernobyl nuclear reactor
were released during the course of the accident (Goldman, et al, 1986). This
included over 90% of the noble gases, xenon and krypton, 50% of the volatile
radionuclides (e.g., primarily radioiodine and radiocesium), and about 1% of
the remaining radioelements. Roughly 90% of the releases are estimated to
have occurred within the first 24 hours of the accident and the remaining
10% during the prolonged reactor graphite fire over the next week.
Thermal effects as well as atmospheric mixing caused the initial releases
of radioactivity to be distributed up to a height of about 7000 meters into the
atmosphere. Due to the varying wind directions with altitude, the radioactive
cloud became segmented, and travelled over much of the northern hemi-
sphere. About half of the radioactivity passed over Europe and the other half
was dispersed over Asia, the northern Pacific Ocean, and North America.
Both inside and outside of the Soviet Union, radioiodine and radiocesium
accounted for almost all of the radiological exposure. After 8 weeks, cesium
radionuclides were the main source of potential exposure.
The release of radioactivity from the damaged reactor contained a wide
spectrum of fission products. The most important radionuclides were ra-
dioiodine and radiocesium due to their relative abundance as well as their
radiological and chemical characteristics. After a few days of travel time, the
rare gas fraction consisted primarily of xenon. The measured air concentra-
tions of radioiodine were quite high over southern Finland, eastern Sweden,
and northeastern Poland during the period of initial cloud passage over
these areas. Most of the air concentrations over the United States were 1 or 2
orders of magnitude less (World Health Organization, 1986 (a), (b), (c)).

The Pathways To Humans Resulting In Radiation Exposure

Following the release of radioactivity from the damaged reactor, there
were a variety of pathways which could have led to the radiation exposure of
human beings (Whicker, et al, 1987) (See Figure 1 ). First, by external expo-
sure from radionuclides that were deposited on the ground during the cloud
passage. These released penetrating gamma radiation upon decay which
can enter homes and produce a major part of the exposure to man. This
source of radiation is not easily protected against, but is modified by weath-
ering of radioactivity into soil, by agricultural practices such as plowing, and
in cities by hosing streets.
Second, the ingestion of food, primarily milk and milk products, and
meat and processed meat products, that were contaminated either by direct
deposition or by subsequent uptake from the soil into the food chain. Imme-
diately following the deposition of radioactivity, radionuclides such as iodine
deposited on pasture are consumed by cows and secreted in milk. This is a
pathway of major concern. Also, radionuclides can be deposited upon vege-
tation, and ingested directly. And third, by the inhalation of radionuclides
during cloud passage. Other pathways exist, but contribute only small
amounts to the overall exposure in comparison (Whicker, et al, 1987).

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 Figure 1. Schematic outline of health consequence model.

National And International Attempts to Protect Public Health

Following the contamination of the environment by radioactive releases,
remedial actions may be warranted to limit potential radiation exposure to
workers and to the general population. Many nations have developed nu-
merical Protective Action Guides for use by health authorities in making de-
cisions for initiating steps to protect the public and worker health and safety
in the event of nuclear accident. Some protective actions apply to short-term
conditions, e.g., radioactive cloud passage or the presence of a short-lived
radionuclide, particularly iodine (with a radioactive half-life of 8 days). Other
actions apply to long-term situations such as ground or crop contamination
with long-lived radionuclides, especially cesium (with a radioactive half-life
of 30 years). Selection of appropriate protective actions must take into ac-
count the amount and type of radionuclides present, and the various factors
that may control environmental dispersion and accessibility to humans
(Goldman, et al, 1986; World Health Organization, 1986 (c)).
Protective actions also vary in nature. For example, populations can be
sheltered or evacuated to avoid exposure or to minimize immersion by inha-
lation. In extreme circumstances, relocation (i.e., near-permanent evacua-
tion) may be required to avoid exposure from soil, local water, foodstuffs, or
from the inhalation of radioactive materials that may become resuspended.
This was done in Pripyat and Chernobyl. Streets, vehicles and buildings can
be cleaned, predominantly by washing, to remove surface contamination.
This was ordered in Kiev. Agricultural lands can be watered, scraped, plowed
or treated chemically to facilitate weathering or to fix contamination for later
removal for disposal. Cattle and other livestock can be fed stored feed to
minimize uptake of contaminated forage. Fresh produce can be carefully
washed, stored for a time to permit reduction of contamination through ra-
dioactive decay, or, if necessary, discarded or destroyed. Similarly, raw in-
gredients for processed foods may be treated, stored, discarded or blended

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
to control their radioactive content. The principal radionuclides of concern
have proven to be radiocesium in grain, and radioiodine in milk (Whicker, et
al, 1987; World Health Organization, 1986 (c); Goldman, et al, 1986).
Another protective action involves the use of thyroid- blocking agents to
modify the uptake of radioiodine in the human thyroid gland. lodine’s unique
concentration in the thyroid poses a potential risk of cancer induction at
high uptake levels. The timely administration of stable potassium iodide can
saturate the thyroid gland and the resulting reduction in thyroid uptake of
available radioiodine produces a corresponding reduction in potential radia-
tion exposure. In Poland, this remedial action was reported to have reduced
the potential thyroid dose to 11 million children by at least a factor of 6. It
was also used extensively in the Soviet Union.
Protective actions were undertaken by various nations in Europe and
Asia (Table 1 ). They were initiated at different times and were terminated at
different times. In some instances, protective actions were initiated and ter-
minated on a local or regional, rather than national basis. Moreover, there
was no uniformity in protective action among nations; no established inter-
national standards exist. As a result, it is difficult to estimate the utility or the
effectiveness of the various protective actions that were taken as a result of
the radioactive releases during the Chernobyl accident. Lack of such data
causes projections of potential future health effects from environmental data
alone to be overestimated for nations where such actions were taken. For
example, in Italy, the effects of protective restrictions were reported to have
reduced effective doses by a factor of 10 for infants, 5 for children, and 2 for
adults. In Switzerland, protective actions were reported to achieve a dose

TABLE 1
Some protective action taken by nations in Europe and Asia

7 July 1986 (per WHO Summary)

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
reduction greater than a factor of 70 for milk ingested by infants, and a factor
of 2 for all other foods for adults and infants.

The Immediate Health Effects And The Long-Term Health&dquo;Effects

We know that 31 people, all workers, have died. Two persons died imme-
diately, one from steam burns and the other from injuries caused by falling
structures. Most people died as a result of acute radiation injuries exacer-
bated by profound thermal skin burns. Two hundred and three workers have
been hospitalized with acute radiation injuries, most in Moscow, and some
in Kiev; about 30 workers remain in serious condition. Nineteen men had
bone marrow transplants, and 9 of these have died. And six men received
fetal liver transplants, and all have died. In all, some 18,000 persons were
screened for radioactive contamination and for early and continuing radia-
tion health effects (USSR State Committee on the Utilization of Atomic En-
ergy, 1986).
We have learned from Soviet authorities that over 134,000 people were
exposed to relatively high doses of radiation in Pripyat and Chernobyl. These
people were evacuated after delays of 36 hours and 6 days, respectively.
Some 114,000 persons in this group are at risk of a potential increase in the
cancer rate of perhaps 2%, or an estimated 280 added cancer deaths over
the 14,000 cancer deaths expected to occur. Of the 75,000,000 persons in the
European Soviet Socialist Republics exposed to the radioactive materials
released in the plume during the accident, the Soviet scientists have esti-
mated that about 5,000 excess cancers could be expected above the 9.5 mil-
lion cancers that would occur spontaneously over a 70-year period, an in-
crease of about 0.05%. And an increase of perhaps 1% of thyroid cancers
could result, with 150,000 normally occurring, and 1,500 added cancers over
a 30-year period caused by the radioactive iodine released and with subse-
quent milk contamination, during the first days of the accident. In all, these
are conservative estimates admittedly, and may be scaled up by perhaps a
factor of 2 or 3 or more, taking into account the uncertainties in the calcula-
tions and other factors (USSR State Committee on the Utilization of Atomic
Energy, 1986).
The Chernobyl Accident In Perspective
To place the gravity of the Chernobyl accident in perspective, compar-
ison might be made of the radioactive releases estimated with those released
during two other major nuclear reactor accidents, the Three Mile Island ac-
cident in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the Windscale nuclear plant accident in
Great Britain in 1957. Four radionuclides are sufficient for comparison since
they can cause the most damaging health effects. Radioactive iodine, re-
leased in large quantities in the fission process, lodges in the thyroid gland.
Radioactive cesium is incorporated into the food chain, and finds its way to
humans through dairy and meat products, and fruits and vegetables. Radio-
active strontium also enters the food chain, primarily in dairy products, and
seeks growing bones and teeth; children, therefore, are especially suscep-
tible. The noble gases, notably xenon and krypton, are the largest and initial

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
 components of the radioactive plume; these gases are relatively unreactive
with our tissues, and rapidly disperse into the upper atmosphere. This ex-
plains why virtually none was detected in the West, because of the Soviet
in reporting the accident.
delay
The Chernobyl radioactive releases are estimated to be vastly greater
than either the Three Mile Island and Windscale releases, and even substan-
tially greater than a 20 KT atmospheric nuclear weapon test, one more than
twice the size of the Hiroshima bomb (Table 2). The greatest concern is the
size of the population at risk. In Chernobyl, the number at risk exceeded
75,000,000 persons in the European Soviet Socialist Republics, a region far
from the nuclear plant. At Three Mile Island, the numbers were less than a
few hundred thousand, all living well within 50 miles of the damaged reactor.
Since the potential health consequences arise from the levels of radiation
and their distribution throughout the exposed population, the risks of early
and continuing radiation injuries and late health effects, notably cancer and
genetic disease, may occur with greater frequency, and in some cases
greater intensity, when large amounts of radioactivity are released and the
exposures are high, and the populations a ns are vao
―~

The Implications of the Chernobyl Accident

A
complete global assessment of the potential health effects of the Cher-
nobyl nuclear reactor accident requires extensive review of the available
data and the application of existing health effects consequence models. The
World Health Organization has attempted an initial integration of the poten-
tial health consequences in Europe and certain preliminary evaluations ap-
pear to be of importance to our understanding of the events (World Health
Organization, 1986; Sources A, B, and C).
The inhalation pathway provided only a minor contribution to the expo-
sure levels in persons away from the immediate vicinity of the accident. The
estimates provided by each of the 33 reporting European and Middle Eastern
nations, though uncertain, demonstrated that the ingestion of radioiodine
resulted in low-level exposures to the thyroid even in infants who had been
given protective treatment. Radiocesium, with a longer half-life and efficient
transfer through the food chain, constitutes the principal source of popula-
tion exposure. The estimates of the first year dose from radiocesium are
measurable but low. Weathering and decay as well as the mixture of food
grown in uncontaminated regions will lower the future annual exposure with
time. The assessment of external radiation from surface contamination from
TABLE 2
Comparison (in Megacuries*) of Chernobyl with other Radionuclide Releases.

Radioactivity at 3 days after shutdown or test.

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
 radioactive cesium deposits, corrections for radiation attenuation by being
indoors, and for certain protective actions, show that inhalation doses in
Europe were generally less than 10 percent of the first year exposure, the
remaining 90 percent being almost equally divided between external expo-
sure and ingestion.
The life-time exposure from these three sources is generally about 1% of
the background radiation dose to which all individuals will be exposed. Ini-
tial estimates of latent health risks outside of the immediate area of the dam-
aged reactor are not considered to be significant, at least on the basis of
presently available data. Any excess cancers or genetic disorders will not be
detectable over the large spontaneous incidence rates. Nevertheless, the
Chernobyl accident has reinforced the messages that emerge from the
health effects consequence models; specifically, that the risk to the public,
both with respect to early and late fatalities, is very site-dependent. The pop-
ulation distribution and the meteorological conditions affecting the radioac-
tive cloud are both important factors. And, the late health risks can .affect
populations located hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles from the acci-
dent (Goldman, et al, 1986).
Despite a considerable lack of dosimetric and demographic data from
the USSR and from European countries at large, and uncertainties regarding
the health consequence models, the data base is sufficient to project an esti-
mate of the upper range of exposures within and outside of the USSR. Pre-
liminary estimates of the population doses which have been made for a
number of European countries indicate that outside the Soviet Union there
should be no detectable excess cancer cases occurring in the exposed pop-
ulations. In the Soviet Union, an upper estimate affecting 75,000,000 persons
indicates a potential excess of less than 6,000 cancer cases in addition to the
9.5 million cases that will occur spontaneously over the lifetime of the popu-
lation (USSR State Committee on the Utilization of Atomic Energy, 1986).
Some of the data cited here, particularly those from the Soviet Union,
were necessarily obtained from secondary sources. Revision of these con-
clusions may be warranted as newer, more extensive data become available.
The immediate lessons learned from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor acci-
dent are that organizations and methods are lacking for reliable international
data acquisition, analysis, and guidance for preventive measures to protect
the public health and safety for populations far removed from the accident
site. Our health effects consequence models in general, and in this industrial
accident in particular, demonstrate that, insofar as nuclear accidents are
concerned, these are no longer local, regional, or national crises. These are
transboundary events, but without mechanisms to protect against inade-
quate control of technological failure, or indeed, even perception of risk and
decision and policy making. The only international agencies in place, the
International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization, lack
the resources and the machinery to acquire information on a timely basis, to
transmit essential data in a reliable manner, and to provide uniform guid-
ance. They consequently lack both the technical structure and authority to
protect the public health.

10

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
What May We Conclude?
We have learned that nuclear energy is no longer a national matter; the
Chernobyl disaster impacted many nations, with profound international im-
plications. Nuclear reactor accidents will occur and, inevitably, the indelible
mark of human error will blemish the most advanced technologies. We have
learned about the need for improved communication, perhaps the central-
ization of data acquisition, and the prompt sharing of information with deci-
sion-makers to protect the public health and safety. We will need improved
cooperation on emergency preparedness, and international agreements on
protective actions to prevent unnecessary exposure to vulnerable popula-
tions, and perhaps improved international trade agreements on food produc-
tion and distribution within nations and between nations in the event of such
international crises. And finally, we must understand the global nature of the
potential health and economic impacts on nations and their peoples, as we
move into the socio-technological world of the 21 sat century.

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© 1987 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.