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Chernobyl's Impact on France Was a Thousand Times Underestimated    [

    Technological Accident
    Le Monde | Editorial

    Tuesday 25 April 2006

    The Chernobyl accident, the greatest industrial catastrophe of the Twentieth Century, will remain the perfect example of bad information management.

    In France, no one denies that the Chernobyl cloud caused radioactive fallout. But it took almost twenty years for the official evaluation to finally coincide with that proposed by an independent laboratory, Criirad. Recent evaluations contradict the soothing ones furnished by official services in 1986. Now we observe, that for certain elements, the differences in measured concentrations go from 1 to over a thousand-fold!

    Incompetence or lying? Even if a posteriori methods of reconstitution allow room for scientific debate, the magnitude of such divergences authorizes the question. In 2001, a suit against X ... for "failure to protect the population against radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident" was filed by the French Association of Thyroid Disease Sufferers (AFMT) and Criirad, an association founded in 1986 to take independent measures of radioactivity. The investigation under way will perhaps allow a determination of whether the authorities willfully hid the scope of Chernobyl's impact on the French, even as their neighbors were encouraged to protect themselves.

    At the international level as well, the establishment of an open and uninterrupted debate is opposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s efforts to minimize the accident's consequences. The World Health Organization (WHO), which would be best able to deal with the health consequences of widespread radioactivity, has trouble working independently of the IAEA. The funds for conducting studies have been much reduced since 1996. In the country principally affected, Belarus, Mr. Lukashenko's government does not allow a complete assessment of the drama a part of its population continues to live.

    Such attitudes can only exacerbate the sometimes exaggerated criticisms of anti-nuclear associations and feed public distrust with respect to an energy that continues to be based on lies. French interest in the recent public debates on nuclear waste management, as on the future EPR reactor, shows that these questions cannot be reserved for technocrats only.

    In a society in which technological questions are ever more pregnant - GMO, nanotechnologies, genetics, mobile telephony - Chernobyl is the counter example to never repeat: these questions must be freely debated and open to counter-expertise if we want technologies to render the true service we may expect from them.

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    Chernobyl's Impact on France Was a Thousand Times Underestimated
    By Herv Morin
    Le Monde

    Monday 24 April 2006

    Chernobyl's cloud passed over France during the days that followed the explosion of Reactor Number 4 at the Ukrainian nuclear power station on April 26, 1986. The big question is to determine the scope of radioactive particulate fallout on French soil, especially in view of the strong rainfall in the beginning of May of that year. In twenty years, those evaluations have considerably evolved. On May 7th, then May 16th of 1986, the Central Protection Service against Ionizing Radiation (SCPRI), directed by Pierre Pellerin, broadcast measures of the total activity of radioactive particulate deposits on the ground. On the second measure, they ranged from 25 Becquerels a square meter in Brittany to 500 Bq/m2 over the whole eastern part of France: a modest number.

    In 2005, a measure from the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Security (IRSN), a distant successor of SCPRI, that pieces together the fallout from May 1986 shows a far different landscape: the deposits of Cesium 137 alone exceeded 20,000 Bq/m2 in certain areas (Alsace, the region around Nice, southern Corsica), with some points in excess of 40,000 Bq/m2! How can this difference by a factor sometimes in excess of a thousand be explained?

    For Corinne Castanier, Director of Criirad, an independent laboratory that undertook its own measures of radioactivity starting in 1986, one can choose between it being the sign of "SCPRI's incompetence or that of a deliberate lie." Criirad, civil party to a suit against X for "failure to protect the population against radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident" filed jointly in 2001 with the French Association of Thyroid Disease Sufferers (AFMT), leans toward the second hypothesis. She expects to demonstrate that the authorities minimized fallout and failed to take the sanitary measures that were necessary - and that several neighboring countries applied - like the restriction on consumption of certain foods. In December 2005, a report transmitted to Judge Marie-Odile Bertella-Geffroy, charged with directing the investigation of the Chernobyl cloud's passage over France, asserted that radioactive measures were "obscured" by the authorities in charge at the time. According to this report, SCPRI rendere the data in its possession in an incomplete manner.

    Since 1986, numerous measures of radioactivity have been constituted. In 1997, the Institute for Nuclear Protection and Security (IPSN), SCPRI's successor, produced one based on measures of the contamination of milk and vegetables. In 2003, a new measure was proposed, relating deposits and rainfall. Some data from Criirad are integrated into that report. The ensemble of different measures reveals levels of contamination much higher than those previously reported. But that result is contested, notably by Professor Aurengo. A specialist in nuclear medicine charged by the government to conduct a work group on the subject, he declares himself "appalled" by the IPSN results in a letter to that government. He describes them as "methodologically debatable and very probably wrong ... published with no scientific validation." To take his remarks into account, the IPSN has included atmospheric measures in its reconstitution. A new measure was produced in 2005: "The result stayed very close to that of 2003 and with repect to France dovetails well with Criirad's data," summarizes Didier Champion, Director for the Environment and Intervention at IRSN.

    The latest episode: on March 27, the scientific council of IRSN (which succeeded IPSN) confirmed the validity of the Institute's work concerning Chernobyl fallout in France. In a certain way, it's also a tribute to Criirad's work, since the IRSN drew from the association's data - without, however, associating Criirad with the works in question.

    The 1 to 1,000 relationship between the 1986 measures and those of today still needs to be explained. "The first measure of May 7, 1986, was very rough and unsophisticated. The numbers submitted look a lot like those of the dry radioactive particulates, much less concentrated than the wet deposits due to precipitation," hazards Didier Champion. Unfortunately, he notes, no one left at IRSN knows how SCPRI proceeded: "It's a bit of a puzzle for us." A puzzle all the more difficult to reconstitute given that a judicial investigation is under way and each actor adheres to his own position.

    For IRSN Director General Jacques Repussard, the first measures of 1986 were constituted through a network that lacked density, which expressed itself through a "street lamp effect," with many areas resting in the shadow: "They did what they could with the means they had at hand." Twenty years later, he notes, it's not certain that in the event of an emergency, the alarm network would be adequate to satisfactorily supply the impact forecast models that have been developed.