This is an introduction to the Proceedings of an International Conference (RADLEG 2000) held in Moscow, Russian Federation, 30 October–2 November, 2000 and organized by the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Commission, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
As a result of events in the last century, mainly related to the development of nuclear energy, mankind has been forced to deal with the restoration of the environments which contain radioactive residues. Historically, the first areas requiring environmental restoration were those where the mining and milling of uranium and thorium ores were conducted and those affected by the processing and application of concentrated natural radionuclides, such as radium-226. In the second half of the century, when technologies were developing and radiation hazards were not clearly understood, a number of substantial discharges of fission products, some accidental, others deliberate, occurred resulting in the contamination of both production sites and local inhabited areas, for example, the Mayak facility in Urals, Russian Federation, and the Sellafield facility in the United Kingdom. Nuclear weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s led to radioactive contamination of some large continental areas (Semipalatinsk, Nevada, Maralinga) and of islands in the Pacific Ocean. The largest nuclear reactor accident, which occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, caused [detectable) radioactive contamination of a [wide corridor] of territories in Europe.
The operation of nuclear facilities has led to the accumulation of large amounts of spent nuclear fuel used both for civil and military purposes as well as to the production of high-level radioactive waste. In some facilities, a significant fraction of the spent fuel and radioactive waste, mainly originating from the early period [in the development] of nuclear power, is stored in conditions which do not meet present safety requirements, for example, surface water bodies and underground cavities. Of the nuclear facilities now undergoing decommissioning, some are in conditions which threaten to create [additional] environmental contamination, for example, floating disused nuclear submarines. Accidents at some of these facilities could lead to [additional] contamination of both local and distant areas due to river, marine and atmospheric transport.
A number of scientific meetings have been devoted to various aspects of the environmental restoration of [these] contaminated areas. At the International Symposium on the Restoration of Environments with Radioactive Residues held in Arlington, United States of America, from 29 November to 3 December 1999, many aspects of the rehabilitation problem were discussed with primary attention dedicated to the problems in the USA as the host country.
In his opening address to the conference, Minister Adamov reminded the conference attendees that in the Russian Federation, they have, for the past decade, been endeavouring to establish an environmental restoration programme, but there is a problem of financing. The United States launched such a programme in the 1980s. The programme was to cost over US $200 billion, and half way through 1999 work costing over US $150 billion remained to be done. That is not too much for an affluent country like the United States, which started well before the Russian Federation [took up the responsibilities of the Soviet period].
Adamov continued ... "When considering the man-made disasters of the 20th century, it is fair to ask whether those associated with the utilization of nuclear energy for military and peaceful purposes were the most severe. For example, many will recall the state of the river Rhine 25-30 years ago, a river which has since been thoroughly cleaned up; many will recall pictures published in the 1960s of a policeman in the Japanese city of Osaka wearing a respirator that looked like a gas mask, a scene which you will not witness if you visit Japan now. I deliberately mentioned Germany and Japan because they have not engaged in nuclear weapons development but have nevertheless had serious man-made environmental problems, with which they have coped successfully. On the other hand, those who have visited the Kola peninsula are unlikely to have seen any negative effects of the Kola Nuclear Power Plant, but they are also unlikely to forget how the area around the Monchegorsk Metallurgical Combine looks. You will naturally all be wondering what I am going to say about the Chernobyl accident, so I shall now take up that subject.
All those who participated in 1996 meetings like the “One Decade after Chernobyl” conference held in Vienna will recall the uncomfortable questions about why so many people were evacuated for no sound environmental reason and why the almost 2,000 children who had contracted thyroid cancer (a statistically significant consequence of the accident) did not receive the best possible medical treatment — or why it had been impossible for the international helpers to establish a statistically reliable picture of the public health situation in the affected areas before the accident. As to the so-called liquidators and to the affected population in general, we all know that the impact of the Chernobyl accident was far less than, [for example a number of brave emergency personnel died, but 95% of the children who contracted thyroid cancer survived]; the impact of the chemical plant accident in Bhopal, India on the people there [was much greater]. However, we have established for them social and medical arrangements comparable with those established for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors — the results being a lack of motivation to work, hypochondria, fear and stress. We all also know that parts of the areas affected by the Chernobyl accident have radiation levels lower than, for example, the state of Kerala, in India. Moreover, we all know that the 30-km zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was not very fertile and that far more land, of greater fertility, has been flooded in the course of hydroelectric power projects.
Until the early 1960s there were no serious safety standards, and those standards which did exist were often infringed in the course of nuclear weapons development and nuclear fuel cycle activities. Since the middle of the 1960s, thanks to good compliance with high safety standards, the morbidity among those working in the nuclear sector has been indistinguishable from that in the population as a whole, which has itself been exposed to an additional, manmade risk of only 10–5–10–8/year. I mention this in order to highlight the importance of ensuring that public resources are devoted to those environmental restoration problems which are of highest priority.
Why is so much attention paid to the impact of nuclear activities on people and on the environment? Of course, there is the harm which was done to the public consciousness by the completely unnecessary[?] dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and also the tendency of the mass media to focus not on real issues but rather on issues which lend themselves to a sensationalist approach and are likely to boost revenues. One real issue, perhaps the key one, is whether nuclear power will be recognized as essential for resolving the most daunting problem of the new century and the new millennium, the problem of mankind’s future energy supplies.
The fears of ordinary citizens, calmly smoking or drinking until they are blue in the face, are real fears. A hundred years ago, similar fears resulted in laws requiring that automobiles be preceded by someone carrying a flag, whereas now, in the Russian Federation, automobiles without catalyses are polluting our cities. Conferences like this one should not add to the fears of ordinary citizens, but help them to understand where their true interests lie in the face of the threat to mankind and the environment which now exists.
In the Russian Federation and elsewhere, the nuclear industry has proved that it is environmentally friendly. Conferences like this one should make that very clear, and they
should also make it clear that in a country like the Russian Federation, with an annual national budget equivalent to only about US $20 billion, prioritization in the expenditure area is particularly important. In that connection, the calls being made for a move not towards greater nuclear power generation but towards greater use of coal, calls which we hear in the current “war” between RAO EEhS (the company controlling most of Russia’s electricity production) and Gazprom (the company controlling most of Russia’s oil and natural gas resources), are very ominous. Studies of our radiation legacy and efforts to rehabilitate contaminated areas should be part of
an overall strategy for resolving our common environmental problems in a socially and economically sustainable manner. I hope you will also make that clear during this conference."
Mr. Linsley, on behalf of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in his opening address to the conference that the main objective of the conference is to address the problems arising out of the legacy of environmental radioactive contamination, which is, in itself, a reflection of the concern and importance that all nations are nowadays giving to the environment and to its preservation, [not relitigating the ending of WWII with Japan by the U.S., or establishing blame for the beginning of the "Cold War" and associated military build-up.] Yet it was only a few decades ago that there was an entirely different way of thinking about the environment. In the context of nuclear technology development, in that era, little attention was given to the environmental implications of the new developments, progress and production were the dominant considerations. In the early years of my own work I remember being introduced to the concept of “environmental capacity”, especially in the context of the disposal of wastes in the oceans, that is, how much radioactive material can an ocean accept without causing a radiation dose limit to be exceeded. This is a long way from the current environmental protection driven policies which seek to reduce concentrations of radionuclides to “close to zero” in the coastal waters of Europe (the OSPAR Convention).
The change in attitude towards the environment came about as a result of the visible effects on the environment of certain types of pollution e.g. acid rain, and was soon reflected internationally, first, at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, and more recently at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, which included the Rio Declaration, in 1992. While these Conferences marked changing attitudes to the environment in general, it was the ending of the “Cold War” that brought about the real prospect of improving and restoring the environments which had been affected by radioactive contamination, due mainly to military
related activities."
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