Implications of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident

Among acknowledged accidents at nuclear power plants, the most serious has been that which destroyed the Soviet Union's Chernobyl reactor no. 4 near the village of Pripyat on April 26, 1986. Both the local and long-distance effects of that event were far greater than those from the accident at Three Mile Island (TMI) in Pennsylvania in 1979. The causes of the two accidents were actually not very different. But the severity of the Chernobyl accident was driven by the reactor's graphite core, perhaps by the lack of a containment building, and by the extraordinary sensitivity of that type of reactor during low-power operation. These problems of reactor design contributed to the accident severity because of several factors that were also present at Three Mile Island: complacency, lack of understanding of the plant, poor procedures, and many deliberate operator errors.

Nuclear plants can be safe or they can be unsafe; Chernobyl was an unsafe plant, and many would say that the type of reactor used at Three Mile Island is unsafe. Nuclear plants can also be operated safely or unsafely; TMI and Chernobyl were both operated unsafely.

Early reactions by the press and the public to the accident at Chernobyl were confusion, concern, and outrage, but initial anger against Russia subsided after the Soviets agreed to make a full accounting. Later reactions have varied from culture to culture, and have depended somewhat on the extent to which a given country relies on nuclear power. Longer-term public reactions—and possible changes in government policies—will take months or years to develop.

Although the international nuclear community is still developing an understanding of how the Chernobyl accident happened, and it will take years to assess the radiation damage to food, animals, and people, enough time has passed to estimate some of the accident effects. Early effects can be seen in the functioning of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in the Soviet Union and Europe and in the United States.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an outgrowth of President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program, both encourages the use of nuclear power and associated technology and watches over its use to reduce the possibility of proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the past the agency has not been very active on nuclear safety issues, and its safeguard role has been criticized over the last ten years as being inadequate—a complex issue that is addressed in an RFF monograph and forthcoming book, The Nonproliferation Role of the Internal Atomic Energy Agency: A Critical Assessment, by Lawrence Scheinman. Nevertheless, the IAEA coordinated their international review of the Chernobyl accident, and sponsored a conference in August 1986 at which the Soviets presented information on the accident's causes and results.

The IAEA also asked its International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group to report on what actions should be taken in response to the accident. This group has recommended an extensive expansion of IAEA activities in nuclear safety, including development of guidelines for prevention of severe accidents, providing assistance or operator training and qualification, serving as a coordinating agency for improving international radiation standards, and hosting conferences.

In the months since Chernobyl, the agency has received more favorable publicity than at any time since its founding. Rut there is a danger that in the heady atmosphere of international pleas for involvement in nuclear safety, the IAEA will promise more than it can deliver, that it may raise expectations that cannot be met with its limited resources, and that just as in the safeguards arena, unmet hopes will damage its credibility. The agency should be quite cautious in exploiting the new international interest it has attracted. The long-term gains to the world nuclear community and to the IAEA itself will be much greater if the agency takes time to think through reactions before taking action.

Effects in the USSR and Europe

Within the Soviet Union, the early days of the accident at Chernobyl were marred by the confusion that attends a major calamity, coupled with the traditional secretiveness of the Soviet system. It was in the Soviet Union that most of the radiation fell and all of the immediate deaths occurred, and it is there that the greatest effects can be expected. In addition to presenting information to the IAEA, the Russians have indicated a willingness to cooperate with further international reviews of the medical histories of those exposed to the radiation.

Soviet reactions to the accident are not likely to affect nuclear power outside the Soviet Union, but should lead to significantly improved standards of operation within that country. The Soviet government has announced the firing of several people at the top of the nuclear power program, and has outlined steps to upgrade operator training to include accident sequences in plant simulators, and to improve instrumentation for tracking reactor behavior. Many of the actions are similar to those taken by the United States and other countries after the Three Mile Island accident. Apparently the Soviets did not learn the lessons that TMI could teach. They have now learned them painfully.

The Chernobyl accident revealed that the Soviets may be ahead of the West in one area: the Russians can manage an accident well. While critical of events leading up to the accident, most western reviewers have praised subsequent actions and have been impressed by the rapid response of firefighters and large numbers of medical and technical personnel. The unexplained nuclear-related disaster at Kyshtym in 1958 may have given the Soviets experience. It is doubtful that any U.S. locale could have reacted in as timely and effective a fashion.

Longer-term effects on Russia are difficult to estimate. Thousands of people will be monitored for many years for signs of radiation-related illnesses. The nuclear power program may be reexamined. But nuclear power is particularly important in the Soviet energy economy because of the need to export other energy resources: although the USSR has large fossil fuel reserves, in 1985 it depended on oil exports for 60 percent of its hard currency earnings. Moreover, since reactors of the design used at Chernobyl provide more than 50 percent of the electricity generated by nuclear power in the Soviet Union, it is unlikely that fundamental design changes will be made.

Nuclear power is also well established in Western Europe: of countries with the highest share of their electricity produced by nuclear power in 1985, four of the top five and eight of the top ten were there. Nuclear power is beginning to be a major source of electricity in Eastern, non-Soviet Europe, where twenty-six plants were under construction at the end of 1985. But the strongest European impact from the Chernobyl accident is likely to be in Sweden, where nuclear power has been controversial. In the late 1970s two Swedish governments fell on this issue, and in 1980 a referendum endorsed the closing of Sweden's twelve operating reactors by the year 2010.

Sweden ranks third among nations that rely on nuclear-generated electricity, and ranks highest in per capita consumption of nuclear power. Thus as the current amount of Sweden's electricity being provided by nuclear power approaches 50 percent, closing of the nuclear power plants could have severe effects on the country.

Over the last five years people in and outside the Swedish government have indicated that the referendum decision could be revisited and softened. But then came the accident at Chernobyl: Sweden was the first western country to measure radiation released from that accident, and its public the first to experience the consequent surprise and alarm. The New York Times has reported that 100,000 Swedish reindeer must be slaughtered because they had eaten radioactive lichen—a consequence that will have a profound economic and psychological shock among the Lapps who live in northern Sweden. After Chernobyl, the ruling Social Democratic Labor Party established a commission to consider accelerating the phase-out of nuclear power. "Nuclear power," said the prime minister, "must be gotten rid of."

West Germany also has a strong nuclear power program, although it has come under many attacks by public demonstrators and in the courts. The West German legal system is close to that of the United States in that groups opposed to a plant can intervene effectively against licensing of that plant. The accident at Chernobyl has aggravated the concerns of the environmentalists, and a court has recently halted operation of a new, 1,300-megawatt plant after full power tests, on the grounds that the cooling towers had not been licensed. In direct reaction to Chernobyl, the Social Democratic Party Congress has pledged to abolish atomic energy in a decade, assuming the party returns to power.

Although England was not in the direct path of the radioactivity that spread over Western Europe from Chernobyl, opposition to nuclear power has increased in the United Kingdom. The annual meeting of the Trades Union Congress barely rejected a proposal that would have committed the union to a shut-down of the UK's nuclear power industry. The margin of defeat was only 60,000 votes out of more than 10 million.

Not all governments have reacted negatively to the Chernobyl accident. France has the world's most ambitious nuclear power program, and in 1985 led the world in the percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power (65%). In October 1986 the general administrator of CEA, the French atomic energy commission, said that the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl did little to dampen his country's enthusiasm for the atom: "We in France believe that nuclear energy is the future."

Further east, Poland was in the direct path of the Chernobyl radiation plume. Nevertheless, Poland recently joined with Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania in announcing plans to increase nuclear capacity from 8 gigawatts to 50 gigawatts, with the goal of generating from 30 to 40 percent of their electricity from nuclear power by the year 2000.

Such positive responses to Chernobyl are official reactions that may reflect reaffirmation of previously held positions. Some U.S. critics of nuclear power believe that public attitudes in Europe are far more negative, and will surface within a year.

Effects in the U.S.

The growth of nuclear power in the United States stopped about ten years ago. It is true that more plants are coming on line, but there have been no new orders since 1978 and plans for many plants have been cancelled or deferred. Nevertheless, periodic events affecting energy use lead to discussions of the future of nuclear power in the United States Chernobyl was such an event.

The major groups in the nuclear power debate in the United States have been the federal government, the nuclear industry, and the public. The two areas of federal concern that may be affected by the Chernobyl accident are planning for nuclear power plant accidents and safety reviews of Department of Energy reactors. In the United States, planning for the management of nuclear accidents has been afflicted by two polar views: the first holds that such an accident will never happen, and therefore emergency planning is unnecessary; the second holds that a catastrophic accident is likely if a plant operates, so plants should be prevented from operating by refusal to provide plans for managing accidents—a strategy based on a federal regulation.

Shortly after the Three Mile Island accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) established a regulation requiring emergency planning for all operating nuclear power plants. Local authorities were required to develop plans to handle emergencies, up to and including evacuation from approximately a ten-mile radius from each plant. This provision has been the stumbling block for the licensing of the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, and is currently the obstacle to a license for the Seabrook plant on the New Hampshire coast. The government of the county in which Shoreham is located has refused to submit an emergency plan, arguing that the Long Island area cannot handle a nuclear plant emergency evacuation. Governor Cuomo of New York has refused to intervene by providing a state plan, and certainly will use Chernobyl in his arguments against Shoreham. In the Seabrook case, Massachusetts authorities must submit an energy plan because parts of that state are within ten miles of the plant. Since Chernobyl, Massachusetts' Governor Dukakis has refused to propose a plan.

Although the emergency planning regulation has become extremely important in licensing controversies, the NRC has done almost no research on how local governments should manage accidents. As a result of Chernobyl, the commission may add such accident management to its research program.

The Department of Energy (DOE) operates a dozen reactors for which the NRC is precluded from doing safety reviews because of the objections of some defense proponents. Recently, however, the department has announced that the largest such reactor—the N-reactor at Hanford, Washington—will be closed for six months to improve its safety features, and the plant management contractor has been changed. Furthermore, after Chernobyl the General Accounting Office and the National Academy of Sciences began studies of the implications of the accident for the DOE reactors. After holding hearings on these studies, Congress probably will legislate a requirement that the NRC review the DOE reactors.

As to effects on the U.S. nuclear industry, the Chernobyl accident appears to have eliminated any hope for orders for nuclear plants in the next five to ten years. New orders probably cannot be expected until the mid 1990s, and then will likely be for smaller plants designed to be more tolerant of operator error. Efforts to design a safer reactor having significantly greater simplicity and controllability will accelerate.

Whether Chernobyl will also spur improvement of operating practices in the U.S. nuclear industry is questionable. Before Three Mile Island, U.S. utilities believed that the best nuclear operator was a high school graduate with a few years of specialized company training. Utility management did not understand nuclear power and could not see any advantages in thoroughly competent, well-trained, highly paid personnel, although an analogy existed to pilots in the airline industry. Lessons learned from the TMI accident have changed some attitudes, and more utilities are now managed by people who appreciate the complexity of nuclear power operation. Such managers are pushing for improved operating staffs. Perhaps the Chernobyl accident will help to further the evolution—in some cases the revolution—in attitudes. But it is doubtful that attitudes are changing rapidly enough to prevent another major accident in the United States.

The Chernobyl accident proved that lives can be thoroughly disrupted by a nuclear power accident. The 45,000 people of Pripyat may never return home, and the world has seen how food supplies can be severely damaged, causing not only local supply shortages but serious harm to regional economies. Chernobyl puts another arrow in the quiver of the opponents of nuclear power. Following Three Mile Island, the fraction of the public opposed to expansion of nuclear power in the United States rose steadily, to nearly 70 percent. Polls after Chernobyl revealed that this opposition had increased even more.

The Chernobyl accident captured world attention, demonstrating once again that technology brings hazards as well as benefits, and that the use of complex technology requires competence and vigilance. Governments have tended to react to the accident by restating previously held positions; public reactions in most countries have taken longer to develop. The principal effects of Chernobyl are likely to be a challenge to the IAEA to maintain the credibility of its safeguard function and to expand its role in nuclear safety; improvements in nuclear reactor operating practices in the Soviet Union, and possibly a unique Soviet openness to international technical cooperation; increased pressure to halt the growth of nuclear power In West Germany and some smaller European countries; and a reaffirmation of the decision to close down all Swedish reactors. In the United States, Chernobyl will probably have few major effects, possibly excepting the results of safety reviews of Department of Energy reactors by the NRC and DOE itself.