The Courier-News from Bridgewater, New Jersey • Page 4

CHERNOBYL: 10 YEARS LATER THE COURIER-NEWS A-4 MONDAY, APRIL 22, 1996 (MllteD ODD aJRS WS AT A ElAKCE Burying co-workers brings anger, action KIEV, Ukraine Elizaveta Aulina has missed her rendezvous with an early death so far. But many of her former co-workers at Chernobyl have not been as fortunate. Western nuclear plants who helped investigate Three Mile Island, said the meltdowns at Cherno-byl and Three Mile Island were as dif-: ferent as "collisions at 3 mph and 60 mph." They were different, too, in their impact on nuclear safety in the United States. "We haven't done a lot since Chernobyl," Warman said. "We did our fixing after TMI." Training and emergency procedures were beefed up.

More attention was paid to preventing and handling smaller, but more frequent, problems. The payoff has been evident in the number of emergency reactor shut-: downs, which have dropped from five or 10 a year to fewer than one, he said. main one is a containment structure designed to trap radioactive materials that may be released in an accident. The importance of containment was evident during the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania. Although about half the reactor core melted, little radiation several million times less than at Chernobyl escaped.

In fact, air monitors at Three Mile Island detected three times as much radioactive iodine in the days after the Chernobyl explosion a quarter of the way around the globe than they did after the 1979 partial meltdown, said Lori Hixon, spokeswoman for GPU Nuclear, which operates Three Mile Island. Western reactors have more backup systems and are more forgiving of operator error. Michael Corradini, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin, said it took 40 seconds for the Chernobyl reactor to run out of control and explode. By contrast, even though Three Mile Island's operators made several errors, including shutting off emergency coolant to the reactor, it was several hours before the reactor core melted down, Corradini said. Different meltdowns Penn State University nuclear engineering professor Anthony Baratta, But just how doubtful comes down to whether you ask an opponent of nuclear power or a proponent.

"There is no question that such an accident could happen," says opponent Jan Beyea, a nuclear physicist and former chief scientist at the National Audubon Society. But "it's less likely with the (reactor) designs that we have" in the West. Ed Warman, a nuclear engineer, puts long odds against a Chernobyl-type catastrophe in America. "A one- in-a-million probability is too high." Soviet-designed reactors, particularly Chernobyl-type reactors, lack safety features that are standard on commercial reactors. The A.v Si 1.

i are designed to prevent such a catastrophe. By ANDREW MELNYKOVYCH Gannett News Service Here's a prescription for catastro phe: Build an unstable nuclear reactor. Put it in a building that can't contain a fire or explosion. Disable key safety systems. Then let poorly trained, unsupervised operators conduct tricky experiments.

That prescription was filled a decade ago at Chernobyl; it's doubtful it could be written in the United States. Painful aftermath lingers Refugees lost homes and normal semblance of lives to disaster. By ANDREW MELNYKOVYCH Gannett News Service KIEV, Ukraine Chernobyl refu gees are consumed by illness, emotional duress and economic hardship 10 years after the reactor explosion that shattered their lives, and there's no indication things will get better. "Somebody gets carried out feet first every week," says Volodymyr Shovkoshytny, whose family is one of 565 families in a high-rise apartment building for refugees. All the residents were evacuated after the Chernobyl accident, which drove about 130,000 people from their homes forever.

About a third of the refugees lived in Pripyat, the town built to house workers at the nuclear power plant. Shovkoshytny, Elizaveta Aulina and Anya Kozlova were among them. Now, they're leaders of the Chernobyl Union International, an organization that represents the interests of Chernobyl survivors. The people of Pripyat and nearby areas were not even allowed to leave until the ruined No. 4 reactor had been spewing its deadly radioactive rain for a full 30 hours.

"We had to sit until the wise men came from Moscow," said Shovkoshytny, then a construction engineer at the power plant. "Even the Ukrainian communists wanted us out, but Moscow said to wait." Most of the refugees wound up in Kiev, living in neighborhoods of cramped high-rises that are nothing like Pripyat or the evacuated villages. At least they are not homeless, Aulina said. "Everyone from Pripyat has a place," she said. "It may not be what they want, but they have someplace." Aulina said she has not come fully to terms with what happened to her.

The transition has been harder on the displaced villagers, who knew nothing but rural life, she said. Statistics are not available, but Ukrainian health officials say psychological problems and alcohol abuse are widespread. Children show signs of strain. "Their paintings show the pain they have felt," Kozlova said of artwork collected by the Chernobyl Union. VICTIMS Gannett News Service photos Young boys are crowded into a room at the Institute of Endocrinology in Kiev, where they are being treated for thyroid illnesses resulting from exposure to excessive amount of radiation.

Health care crisis blooms "They're young guys, and we're planting them like grass seed," the engineer-turned-activist says. Aulina was to have been at Chernobyl the day of the explosion. But "Aulina her boss told her she wouldn't be needed during an experiment to test how long the reactor's steam turbines would produce electricity after the reactor was shut down. That test led to the worst nuclear reactor accident ever an explosion that produced more than 50 times the radioactive fallout from the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Health officials in Ukraine acknowledge it is difficult to distinguish Chernobyl-related deaths from those due to factors such as poor diet or alcohol abuse.

That matters little to Aulina, who says she is in good health despite having returned to work at Chernobyl for the first three years after the explosion. "I don't know or care what the scientists say. I know the guys I used to work with and I know how many we have buried," she said. "I can't tell you what dose causes what, but I know they're dying." Repeta Kolchun Cost keeps victims from getting help KIEV, Ukraine Valeriy Repeta was 50 yards from the No. 4 reactor at Chernobyl when it blew up, and Vladimir Kolchun was across the road, helping build the fifth reactor.

Repeta and Kolchun spent months in hospitals recovering from radiation poisoning, and neither has worked since. They were classified as disabled after their release from the Moscow hospital that treated the most severely injured. Repeta, an operator at the destroyed reactor, was in the control room when the explosion occurred, although he wasn't involved in conducting the disastrous experiment. The reactor "was on the other side of the wall, like that," he said, pointing at the wall of his hospital room at the Institute of Clinical Radiology, outside Kiev. Since the accident, Repeta said he has been plagued by fatigue, low resistance to infections and other health problems.

"I'm just glad to be alive," he said. The 300-bed institute is responsible for diagnosing and evaluating health problems in liquidators, evacuees, people living in contaminated areas and children of all three groups. The institute's director, Dr. Vladimir Bebeshko, said the health problems among Chernobyl survivors are worst among those present at the plant during and soon after the explosion especially the "liquidators," who dealt with the consequences of the catastrophe. "The early liquidators took the biggest doses," he said.

"They seem to be showing the most leukemias." Bone-marrow transplants are an important weapon in fighting leukemia. But Bebeshko doesn't have it in his arsenal. The insti tute has begun building an 18-bed bone-marrow-transplant unit, but needs $2 million to $3 million to complete and equip the facility. Kolchun, who has leukemia, knows that his best chance might be to get treatment outside Ukraine's borders, as others have. "We'd go, too," he said, gesturing to take in Repeta and three others in the room.

"But we don't have the money." How to help Children of Chernobyl Foundation, 272 Old Short Hills Road, Short Hills, N.J. 07078. Telephone: (201) 258-9464. Provides aid to Ukraine. The Ramapo Children of Chernobyl Fund, co Ramapo Senior High School, 400 Viola Road, Spring Valley, N.Y.

10977. Telephone: (914) 577-6466. Provides aid to Belarus. In conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl dis aster, many local affiliates of Greenpeace and the Nuclear Information and Research Service will be collecting humanitarian aid to send to Ukraine and Belarus. Details: Nuclear Information and Re search Service, 1424 16th Street, NW 404, Washington, D.C.

20036. Telephone: (202) 328-0002. NIRS can be contacted via the Internet at http:www.nirs.org Or 1 skd EVA Pripyat went from bustling to nothing By ANDREW MELNYKOVYCH Gannett News Service PRIPYAT, Ukraine A class ros- -ter and "the regimen of the day" still 'J hang on the wall in the school on Lessia Ukrayinka Street in Pripyat. In the nursery, cribs are awaiting children who will never return. On April 26, 1986, a massive acci- dent now called "Chernobyl" turned Pripyat, a community of 45,000, from one of Ukraine's most desirable ad- dresses into a ghost town.

Pripyat was the company town for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, formally known as the V.I. Lenin Atomic Electric Generating Station. Four reactors were in operation there; two others were on the way. Atomic energy workers were con- sidered elite in the former Soviet Union, and Pripyat was a model town built for them. Wide, parklike streets were lined with trees and flower beds.

Apartments were spacious by Soviet stan-' dards. Residents could exercise at a -sports club or swim laps in a glass- enclosed Olympic-sized pool. Today, about the only people in Pripyat are decontamination work- ers and researchers. Traffic consists mostly of police patrols and trucks carrying radiation-tainted soil. In the apartment buildings, snow drifts in through broken windows and open doors.

A few engineering text- books lie scattered in a stairwell. The only signs of life are piles of rat droppings in dark corners. All told, 130,000 people were moved out of the aptly named "Zone of Estrangement," a 36-mile circle centered near Pripyat. The zone en- compasses scores of villages and col- i lective farms, some within the shadow of the power plant. It also takes in the 800-year-old i town of Chernobyl.

Once home to 13,000 people, Chernobyl now pro- vides temporary housing for the 7,000 who work rotating shifts in the zone. Dmytro Hrodzinsky, head of a scientific commission assessing Chernobyl's aftermath, worries radiation will be washed into the Pripyat when heavy snows melt this spring. "We've been worried about flooding since 1986, but we haven't had any since then," he said. 'iio is The ongoing, low-level exposure puts an enormous question mark over their future. "We still don't know how small doses affect health," Antypkin said.

"We're happy that, thank God, by the 10th anniversary we haven't seen an increase in leukemia, blood disorders, other cancers," Antypkin said. But other cancers may increase In coming years, he warned. Yin 3 cant radioactive contamination. And that's just in Ukraine. Double those numbers to get a sense of the overall toll.

Most of the rest are in Belarus, where the health-care system is worse than in Ukraine. Hospital hallways in Ukraine are dimly lit, due to an energy shortage. As many as six or eight patients occupy rooms that would hold no more than two in the United States. Waiting areas for families are small, dark and often devoid of chairs. The Research Center for Radiation Medicine, which treats cleanup workers and people evacuated from contaminated areas, has modern laboratory equipment, much of it donated the accident sickness soon afterward.

Ukraine claims 150,000 dead from Chernobyl-related diseases in that country alone, but others say that figure grossly exaggerated to win Western aid. Evacuated: About 130,000 people soon afterward, plus 100,000 over next four years. Health problems: Worst among children and 600,000 cleanup workers. Thyroid cancer among children up hundredfold. Other cancer rates also up.

Psychological stress among many residents. Costs: Cleanup, evacuation, other costs up to $200 billion. Lingering dangers: About 270,000 people live in dangerously contaminated areas. Water bodies, forests, former farmland are contaminated. Cracks have opened in concrete sarcophagus that covers destroyed reactor.

Nuclear industry: Chernobyl accident prompted many nations to close, cancel or convert existing or planned nuclear power stations. rary. It turned out to be forever. The evacuation came tqo late for little Victor Kozlov. He already had absorbed high doses of short-lived but dangerous iodine-131.

He is among the nearly 800 Ukrainian children diagnosed with thyroid cancer since Chernobyl. The thyroid cancer rate in Ukraine and nearby Belarus is more than 10 times normal. Like Victor, who had surgery in Paris, many Ukrainian children have gone abroad for treatment. N.J. foundation helps Others remain in Ukraine but depend on foreign medical assistance.

For example, the New Jersey-based Children of Chernobyl Foundation, which has donated $38 million in med-icaaide to Ukraine, supplied a year's Dr. Yuri Hayda uses an ultrasound device to locate the best spot to take cells from 12-year-old Kostya Parshukov's thyroid gland to test for cancerous cells. by Western European nations, said its director, Dr. Volodymyr Bebeshko. But, with a full battery of immunology tests requiring $2,500 of chemicals per sample, the machines are often too expensive to use.

Money is the problem at Kiev's Institute of Cardiology, too. Dr. Irina Smirnova, who directs epidemiological research at the institute, said a link is emerging between radiation exposure and high blood pressure. "We're now getting imported medicines, but they're very expensive," she said. Although Chernobyl victims are entitled to free health care, "we can't write free prescriptions for expensive drugs." fk; vfiitf.

However, the impact from Chernobyl is debatable. By ANDREW MELNYKOVYCH Gannett News Service KIEV, Ukraine There's a healthcare crisis in Ukraine, but the extent to which it is attributable to the 1986 nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl is debatable. The World Health Organization and the European Union have concluded that, except for an increase in thyroid cancer among children, Chernobyl's health effects are unrelated to radiation and are largely induced by stress. Doctors in Ukraine and Belarus, who say they deal with Chernobyl's legacy every day, dispute that assessment. They concede, however, that poor nutrition, widespread pollution, social stresses, smoking and alcohol abuse complicate the picture.

Estimates of Chernobyl's impact: 8,000 to 125,000 deaths linked to the explosion and resulting radiation. 4 million or more people exposed to high levels of radiation. 1.5 million children at risk for thyroid cancer. 2.6 million people, 700,000 of them children, living in areas with signifi- Facts about What happened: During test of emergency systems, reactor No. 4 overheated and some fuel melted.

Steam explosion blew hole in concrete roof, letting radioactivity into atmosphere. Fire raged in reactor for two weeks. Cause: Inadequate safety precautions, lack of awareness of implications of electrical test, drawbacks in reactor design. Radioactivity: More than 5 million people exposed to radioactive fallout. Material released estimated at 200 times that of combined radiation from U.S.

atomic bombs dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Contaminated: More than 10,000 square miles in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Radioactive substances also detected in western Europe, and traces in Canada, Japan and United States. Killed: Soviet authorities reported 2 killed in explosion and fire and 30 dead of radiation fuel exploded, the steam tubes burst, and the lid blew off the reactor. The building was destroyed.

For almost two weeks, the ruptured reactor burned and emitted massive amounts of radiation. Even air monitors at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, scene of a relatively minor 1979 accident, detected radioactive iodine from Chernobyl. Today, the Chernobyl reactor, including solidified uranium, is encased in a steel and concrete "sarcophagus" that is beginning to crumble, and Ukraine is pushing for $1.4 billion in Western aid to build a new tomb. On April 27, the day after the explosion, residents of Pripyat and almost 100,000 others living in what's now called the "Zone of Estrangement," a 36-mile circle, were evacuated. Tey were told it was tempo Continued from Page A-1 soaking up cancer-causing radiation, which would reach millions in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

Eventually 50,000 square miles an area larger than New York state would be heavily contaminated by radioactive poisons. Now, 10 years later, the children can count friends and many of the town's grown-ups some of whom joined 800,000 "liquidators" brought from throughout the Soviet Union to clean up after the explosion among the dead or dying. In Ukraine, 1.5 million children are believed to be at risk for thyroid cancer. They're in the hands of adequately trained doctors and nurses, but there's a lack of contemporary technology and basic supplies. Victor Kozlov, another child who lived in Pripyat 10 years ago, is facing his third operation.

The first two couldn't stop his radiation-induced cancer. It has eaten away his thyroid gland. Invaded his lymph nodes. Attacked his lungs. He is 14.

Victor, and thousands of other children of Chernobyl "lost their childhoods in a hospital," his mother, Anya Kozlova, said tearfully. Pripyat was isolated immediately after the disaster. "There was no information," recalled Volodymyr Shovkoshytny, an engineer at Chernobyl. "They cut off the phones." Part of what they couldn't find out is what had gone wrong at Chernobyl. The disaster resulted from a man-made chain reaction that involved: A test to see how efficient the reactor would be at low power.

Shutting off the cooling system to keep it from interfering with the test. Allowing power to drop too low, making the reactor unstable. Bypassing other safety systems in a desperate effort to increase power. The power soaring out of control. Within fpur seconds, the uranium I Gannett News Service photo A worker from the nearby V.I.

Lenin Atomic Electric Generating Station walks past an evacuated apartment building in Pripyat. worth of a drug vital to treating thyroid cancer. At the Kiev Institute of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Yuri Antypkin is the expert on Chernobyl-related health problems. He says he's frustrated because there is never enough information.

"We need to get data on these children while they're still children," An- pkin said..