Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and Their Remediation PDF Download

Author: International Atomic Energy Agency
Publisher: IAEA
ISBN: 9789201147059
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
The explosion on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the consequent reactor fire resulted in an unprecedented release of radioactive material from a nuclear reactor and adverse consequences for the public and the environment. Although the accident occurred nearly two decades ago, controversy still surrounds the real impact of the disaster. Therefore the IAEA, in cooperation with other UN bodies, the World Bank, as well as the competent authorities of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, established the Chernobyl Forum in 2003. The mission of the Forum was to generate 'authoritative consensual statements' on the environmental consequences and health effects attributable to radiation exposure arising from the accident as well as to provide advice on environmental remediation and special health care programmes, and to suggest areas in which further research is required. This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Chernobyl Forum concerning the environmental effects of the Chernobyl accident.

Author: International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description

Author: Jim Smith
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540280790
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
As the debate about the environmental cost of nuclear power and the issue of nuclear safety continues, a comprehensive assessment of the Chernobyl accident, its long-term environmental consequences and solutions to the problems found, is timely. Although many books have been published which discuss the accident itself and the immediate emergency response in great detail, none have dealt primarily with the environmental issues involved. The authors provide a detailed review of the long-term environmental consequences, in a wide range of ecosystems, many of which are only now becoming apparent. They also highlight responses and counter-measures to combat the environmental consequences and discuss health, social, psychological and economic impacts on the human population as well as the long-term effects on biota.

Author: Alexey V. Yablokov
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1573317578
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
This volume, written by leading authorities from Eastern Europe, outlines the history of the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Although there has been much discussion concerning the impacts of nuclear accidents, and Chernobyl in particular, never before has there been a comprehensive presentation of all the available information concerning the health and environmental effects of the low dose radioactive contaminants that were emitted from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The official discussions emanating from the IAEA and associated UN agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl Forum reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findings reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and as a consequence these reports have erred on the side of negative findings simply because much of what was known was not included in their assessments. This new book provides a complete and extensive summary of all known research, including that published in Russian and Ukrainian, and provides new insights to the likely long term health and environmental consequences of nuclear accidents. NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/nyas. ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full-text access to the Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member.

Author: Mary Mycio
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309094305
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
When a titanic explosion ripped through the Number Four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986, spewing flames and chunks of burning, radioactive material into the atmosphere, one of our worst nightmares came true. As the news gradually seeped out of the USSR and the extent of the disaster was realized, it became clear how horribly wrong things had gone. Dozens died - two from the explosion and many more from radiation illness during the following months - while scores of additional victims came down with acute radiation sickness. Hundreds of thousands were evacuated from the most contaminated areas. The prognosis for Chernobyl and its environs - succinctly dubbed the Zone of Alienation - was grim. Today, 20 years after the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, intrepid journalist Mary Mycio dons dosimeter and camouflage protective gear to explore the world's most infamous radioactive wilderness. As she tours the Zone to report on the disaster's long-term effects on its human, faunal, and floral inhabitants, she meets pockets of defiant local residents who have remained behind to survive and make a life in the Zone. And she is shocked to discover that the area surrounding Chernobyl has become Europe's largest wildlife sanctuary, a flourishing - at times unearthly - wilderness teeming with large animals and a variety of birds, many of them members of rare and endangered species. Like the forests, fields, and swamps of their unexpectedly inviting habitat, both the people and the animals are all radioactive. Cesium-137 is packed in their muscles and strontium-90 in their bones. But quite astonishingly, they are also thriving. If fears of the Apocalypse and a lifeless, barren radioactive future have been constant companions of the nuclear age, Chernobyl now shows us a different view of the future. A vivid blend of reportage, popular science, and illuminating encounters that explode the myths of Chernobyl with facts that are at once beautiful and horrible, Wormwood Forest brings a remarkable land - and its people and animals - to life to tell a unique story of science, surprise and suspense.

Author: Olga Kuchinskaya
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262027690
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Lessons from the massive Chernobyl nuclear accident about how we deal with modern hazards that are largely imperceptible. Before Fukushima, the most notorious large-scale nuclear accident the world had seen was Chernobyl in 1986. The fallout from Chernobyl covered vast areas in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Europe. Belarus, at the time a Soviet republic, suffered heavily: nearly a quarter of its territory was covered with long-lasting radionuclides. Yet the damage from the massive fallout was largely imperceptible; contaminated communities looked exactly like noncontaminated ones. It could be known only through constructed representations of it. In The Politics of Invisibility, Olga Kuchinskaya explores how we know what we know about Chernobyl, describing how the consequences of a nuclear accident were made invisible. Her analysis sheds valuable light on how we deal with other modern hazards—toxins or global warming—that are largely imperceptible to the human senses. Kuchinskaya describes the production of invisibility of Chernobyl's consequences in Belarus—practices that limit public attention to radiation and make its health effects impossible to observe. Just as mitigating radiological contamination requires infrastructural solutions, she argues, the production and propagation of invisibility also involves infrastructural efforts, from redefining the scope and nature of the accident's consequences to reshaping research and protection practices. Kuchinskaya finds vast fluctuations in recognition, tracing varyingly successful efforts to conceal or reveal Chernobyl's consequences at different levels—among affected populations, scientists, government, media, and international organizations. The production of invisibility, she argues, is a function of power relations.

Author: Dávid Karácsonyi
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030499200
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This open access book provides worldwide examples demonstrating the importance of the interplay between demography and disasters in regions and spatially. It marks an advance in practical and theoretical insights for understanding the role of demography in planning for and mitigating impacts from disasters in developed nations. Both slow onset (like the of loss polar ice from climate change) and sudden disasters (such as cyclones and man-made disasters) have the capacity to fundamentally change the profiles of populations at local and regional levels. Impacts vary according to the type, rapidity and magnitude of the disaster, but also according to the pre-existing population profile and its relationships to the economy and society. In all cases, the key to understanding impacts and avoiding them in the future is to understand the relationships between disasters and population change. In most chapters in this book we compare and contrast studies from at least two cases and summarize their practical and theoretical lessons.

Author: Kylienne A. Clark
Publisher: The Ohio State University
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
This book was written by undergraduate students at The Ohio State University (OSU) who were enrolled in the class Introduction to Environmental Science. The chapters describe some of Earth's major environmental challenges and discuss ways that humans are using cutting-edge science and engineering to provide sustainable solutions to these problems. Topics are as diverse as the students, who represent virtually every department, school and college at OSU. The environmental issue that is described in each chapter is particularly important to the author, who hopes that their story will serve as inspiration to protect Earth for all life.

Author: Adam Higginbotham
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501134639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
A New York Times Best Book of the Year A Time Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner From journalist Adam Higginbotham, the New York Times bestselling “account that reads almost like the script for a movie” (The Wall Street Journal)—a powerful investigation into Chernobyl and how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the history’s worst nuclear disasters. Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a “riveting, deeply reported reconstruction” (Los Angeles Times) and a definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth. “The most complete and compelling history yet” (The Christian Science Monitor), Higginbotham’s “superb, enthralling, and necessarily terrifying...extraordinary” (The New York Times) book is an indelible portrait of the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will—lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.

Author: Viktor Haynes
Publisher: Random House (UK)
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
An examination of the causes and consequences of the explosion at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, looking at the events which led up to the accident, the lessons for the future of the industry and featuring first-hand accounts by survivors, rescue workers and eye witnesses.