Chernobyl: What exactly happened?
Chernobyl was an accident triggered by a test at the nuclear plant in the former United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), Initially, around 20,000 people had to be evacuated soon after the accident, but the exclusion zone was later expanded three-fold, resulting in the evacuation of 68,000 people.
The World Health Organization attributed 9,000 cancer and related deaths to the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and its neighbours, Belarus and Russia. The twin explosions at the site released 400 times the radioactive material than the combined atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The disaster site’s clean-up is not expected to be complete before 2065, and remains one of the world’s most expensive clean-ups at US $84 billion.
After the engineers at the site of the disaster, firefighters were the next to perish due to exposure to heavy radiation while dousing the fires at Chernobyl. Children living in nearby areas were affected by the tens of thousands, as were other residents.
What happened at Fukushima:
The Fukushima disaster was triggered by an earthquake recorded at 9.0 on the Richter scale, leading to a tsunami, that disabled the cooling of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant. It was classified as Level 7—the worst kind—by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which developed the nuclear event scale in the early nineties. Over 1,64,000 people were evacuated over time from the site. While areas around the plant were significantly contaminated, much of the radioactive material dispersed into the ocean water due to the strong oceanic current nearby, or dispersed into air.
Months later, the Japanese authorities were criticised for having evacuated citizens, as it came to be believed that the relocation, especially the stress associated with radioactive leaks, caused more harm and trauma than the event itself. Close to half the people evacuated and relocated were found, in a later survey, to have started living apart from family members with whom they had resided prior to the accident. There was a significant uptick in alcohol dependency and other signs of psychological trauma.
Cold War Nuclear Tests:
Testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underground, underwater and above the atmosphere—using weapons shipped via rockets—has been an ongoing phenomenon since 1945. There was a brief moratorium on testing from 1958 to 1961 due to environmental and human health concerns, but tests have continued since then, the latest being North Korea’s nuclear test in 2017. It is estimated that 2.4 million (24 lakh) people will eventually die as a result of testing nuclear weapons between 1945 and 1980—excluding Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
India began testing nuclear weapons in 1974 (underground), while the United States of America has conducted the largest number of nuclear explosions at over 1,000—excluding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan—the most powerful nuclear explosion test was conducted by Russia/Soviet Union (715 total tests). Testing of weapons peaked in 1961. Over 1,300 nuclear tests were conducted during the Cold War, and there had been 2,000 tests by 1996, when the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signatures by the United Nations.
