Effects of Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion may not repeat itself in Japan
UCLA workers load irradiated uranium fuel from Boelter Hall’s nuclear reactor, located on the second floor of the building. From 1959, UCLA possessed a nuclear reactor, but it was decommissioned in 1984 because of protests and lack of use.
By Samantha Masunaga
March 30, 2011 12:50 a.m.
On the evening of April 25, 1986, crews prepared for a routine shutdown of a Ukrainian nuclear reactor. The test would determine how long emergency generators would power the plant in case of a failure and had been conducted just a year before.
This time, flaws in the reactor design caused an explosion and caught fire. Radiation spewed through the woodlands of Chernobyl, leaving severe surface contamination and a huge cloud in its wake.
In light of the partial meltdown in Japan, correlations have been drawn between Chernobyl and the Fukushima reactor. Yet the health effects of these incidents are completely different.
After the panic at the power plant, the Japanese took measures to limit their radiation exposure by evacuating the region and staying indoors to shield themselves, measures that Chernobyl residents did not take, said Thomas McKone, deputy head of the Indoor Environment Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at UC Berkeley.
“(Chernobyl) was really the worst possible scenario,” McKone said.
These precautions could prevent effects of radiation exposure such as significant blood change, hair loss, nausea and the increased risk of cancer, said Keisuke Iwamoto, radiation biologist and associate professor of radiation oncology at UCLA.
Radiation damage occurs when high-powered radiation infuses energy into atoms and particles in the body, which can create mutations, kill cells and damage tissue. However, McKone said this harm is similar to that caused by other environmental pollutants.
Along with tissue damage, radiation can increase the likelihood of early aging or specific cancers, such as thyroid cancer or leukemia, depending on the kind and rate of exposure.
While only 50 people were killed in the Chernobyl incident, 2,000 to 4,000 locals may eventually get radiation-based cancers, and 4,000 cases of thyroid tumors have already been reported. This all occurred within an 18-mile radius.
The release of radiation has also led to concerns about the Japanese food supply.
While some radioactive particles can accumulate on agriculture and show up in milk products, fish or the terrestrial food chain, both McKone and Iwamoto emphasized that the effects are low.
“Food is always an issue, but you have to look at your long-term levels,” McKone said, adding that one meal with slightly higher radiation levels would not have long-term effects on health.
But the fear over radioactive food could have a more harmful effect on local nutrition. After the Chernobyl incident, residents of Ukraine and Belarus refused to trust the government and refrained from eating fresh fruits and vegetables. These people eventually developed scurvy, McKone said.
With this historical precedent, McKone is worried that people will panic and refuse to eat food from Japan, despite the various areas that the products could come from and the country’s monitoring of radiation levels.
For reactor workers in Japan, the threat of radiation poisoning is real. The allowable amount of exposure per year for a reactor technician is 50 millisieverts, McKone said.
These workers often face an additional 0.2 percent cancer risk, McKone said. Though this level may seem low, the percentage increases to 8 percent over 40 years on the job, McKone said. Add the possibility of volunteer workers being exposed to a yearly limit of radiation at one time, and the risk of cancer becomes more serious.
Closer to home was the perceived threat of the radiation cloud that floated to California last week. However, these particles would have been diluted by the time they got to the West coast.
Furthermore, the levels of radiation emitted by the cloud were not high enough to be a health concern.
While these fears may seem threatening to a panicked population, McKone said such concerns are misdirected.
“It’s easier to monitor radiation in food than E. coli,” he said. “If we were consistent, we would send people all kinds of warnings.”
With reports from Marcus Torrey, Bruin contributor.
