Observations on the Chernobyl Disaster and LNT

Abstract

The Chernobyl accident was probably the worst possible catastrophe of a nuclear power station. It was the only such catastrophe since the advent of nuclear power 55 years ago. It resulted in a total meltdown of the reactor core, a vast emission of radionuclides, and early deaths of only 31 persons. Its enormous political, economic, social and psychological impact was mainly due to deeply rooted fear of radiation induced by the linear non-threshold hypothesis (LNT) assumption. It was a historic event that provided invaluable lessons for nuclear industry and risk philosophy. One of them is demonstration that counted per electricity units produced, early Chernobyl fatalities amounted to 0.86 death/GWe-year), and they were 47 times lower than from hydroelectric stations ( approximately 40 deaths/GWe-year). The accident demonstrated that using the LNT assumption as a basis for protection measures and radiation dose limitations was counterproductive, and lead to sufferings and pauperization of millions of inhabitants of contaminated areas. The projections of thousands of late cancer deaths based on LNT, are in conflict with observations that in comparison with general population of Russia, a 15% to 30% deficit of solid cancer mortality was found among the Russian emergency workers, and a 5% deficit solid cancer incidence among the population of most contaminated areas.

Biological Effectiveness of Ionizing Radiation: Acute vs. Protracted Exposures

“…Biases and conflicts of interests could have influenced results and conclusions by some researchers, e.g. [52][53][54][55][56], as discussed in [29,50,51,53,57]. This may pertain also to some reports cited in [2,25].…”

“…The LNT and under-estimation of DDREF down to the values below 2 [17] tend to exaggerate radiationrelated health risks at low doses and dose rates. Such exaggeration is conductive to strangulation of nuclear energy, the cleanest, safest (if everything is done properly) and practically inexhaustible means to meet the world's energy needs [52]. This would agree with the interest of fossil fuel producers.…”

Ionizing Radiation Carcinogenesis

“…Unfortunately, these misleading cancer induction risk values may be used to implement expensive cleanup standards for environmental radioactivity. The LNT model does not predict the observed effects or lack thereof for protracted exposures to ionizing radiation exposure (Jaworowski 2010). The LNT model does not readily predict the results of a cumulative set of fractionated medical diagnostic x ray exposures of the lung where there was no indication of increased lung cancer with the observed relative risk at a cumulative doses of 1 Sv being 1.00 [95% confidence interval 0.94-1.07] contrasting with the high expected relative risk based on the atomic bomb survivors being 1.60 [95% confidence interval 1.27-1.99] (Howe 1995).…”

Psychiatric Problems of Emergency Workers in Nuclear Crisis: An Issue in Industrial Psychiatry

“…Of interest, 3 to 6 times higher incidence of carcinogenesis in this specific population comparing to general exposed populations is reported. [1] Focusing on psychiatric problem, it is little mentioned. The more serious psychological impact among the emergency workers might be expected.…”