#5 - RAS 14
NUCLEAR POWER:
WHAT FUTURE FOR CHERNOBYL SCIENCE?
SOURCE. Science, October 25, 2002, p. 725
Paul Webster, a Moscow-based writer, reports that following a meeting of United Nations agencies in New York in October, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has established an International Chernobyl Research Network. The network is the brainchild of Keith Baverstock, the European radiation health adviser to the World Health Organization. It is hoped to raise funds to launch a new and better coordinated research effort into the impact of the Chernobyl disaster on human health.
According to a comprehensive survey of Chernobyl health research issued in 2000 by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, many studies have been methodologically weak. Radiation dose estimates, diagnosis and classification of disease, and selection of control groups have all been inadequate. The only impact that has been clearly demonstrated is an increase in thyroid cancer in children exposed to radiation. Researchers propose to set up a long-term population study to track the incidence of childhood leukemia, breast and lung cancer, and genetic effects.
However, some researchers think it would be more fruitful to study the health impact not of Chernobyl but of the nuclear disasters that have occurred in the Urals in the region around the Mayak nuclear weapons facility. (1) One project funded by the European Commission is already being transferred from Chernobyl to the Urals. For this as well as other reasons, the future of Chernobyl research does not seem very bright.
NOTE
(1) For information on these disasters, see RAS No. 5 item 6.
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