political fallout the failure of emergency management at chernobylpolitical fallout the failure of emergency management at chernobyl

30. 39, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 14. Within the Soviet leadership, the secrecy over dangerous operating procedures had a major impact on General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachevs thinking. The plant managers decided to take advantage of this to conduct a safety test an experiment to see whether, if there was a failure in the external power grid immediately after shut down, the reactors generators (then spinning down) could produce sufficient power to control the reactor during the time it would take for the reactors emergency generators to cut in (around one minute). Firstly, the accident prompted nuclear energy policy to arise as a significant public issue. The severity and long persistence of radioactive contamination challenges the affected communities in many ways. See, for example, There are several stages in the process of developing a sound emergency preparedness plan. The test was supposed to recreate conditions of a power outage, aimed at creating a . Shcherbak, , Chernobyl', 400.Google Scholar, 57. Chernobyl was the second of three major nuclear accidents: As a consequence of Chernobyl, a number of governments decided to phase out nuclear energy programs, and others decided against proceeding with new nuclear programs. l, torn (t.) 24, ark. Recovering from a Nuclear Incident - Lessons Learned from Chernobyl Cambridge University Press is committed by its charter to disseminate knowledge as widely as possible across the globe. Medvedev, , The Truth about Chernobyl, 31,48, 86.Google Scholar. Shcherbak, , Chernobyl', 397.Google Scholar, 38. Nuclear Disaster: A Spreading Cloud and an Aid Appeal; U.P.I. While the USSR's civil defense organization urged prompt and decisive measures to inform the population of the accident and move people out of harm's way, other Soviet institutions, such as the Communist Party and the KGB, feared the accident's threat to their legitimacy more than its implications for public health. This reactor design, known in Russian as reaktor bol'shoi moshchnosti kanal'nyi (high-power channel-type reactor, RBMK), descended from Soviet plutonium-production reactor designs and consists of stainless steel tubes containing uranium fuel elements in which the light-water coolant boils, surrounded by graphite blocks that serve as a neutron moderator. See The experiment was devised in such a way that if it had gone as planned, the disruption and danger to the plant would be very minimal. for this article. Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl, 54. Taubman, Phillip, At Moscow News Session: Brief and Not to Point, New York Times, May 7, 1986, A19.Google Scholar For the text of Gorbachev's May 14 address, see Vystuplenie M. S. Gorbacheva po sovetskomu televideniiu, Pravda, May 15,1986,1. Lowy Institute, The abandoned fairground at Chernobyl (Photo: Ian Bancroft/Flickr). 52-56 (Ukrainian KGB report to CPSU Central Committee, April 28,1986). RBMK reactors, like those in use at Chernobyl, following an emergency shutdown will continue to emit 7 % of their thermal output and therefore must continue to be cooled. 32, spr. 1. On 2526 April 1986 Chernobyls Unit 4 reactor was scheduled for a routine shut down. As the functional ratemeters at the plant were sensitive only up to 1000 microroentgens an hour (0.001 R/hr), the KGB reports state that at the immediate point of the accident, the radiation is up to 1000 microroentgen an hour. In reality, this was a mere l/10,000th of the actual ambient radiation at the plant. Shcherbak, Iurii Nikolaevich, Chernobyl (Moscow, 1991), 395401. 21. Boris Ivanov, Chernobyl', Voennye znaniia 40, no. Spravka, TsDAHO, f. 1, op. Known as aptechki individualnye AI-2, these first-aid kits came in bright orange plastic cases and included seven different drugs, including potassium iodide, two antibiotics (tetracycline and sulfanamide), cystamine, nausea-prevention tablets, a single-use syringe of morphine, and tablets of taren, a form of the Soviet drug aprofen included to counteract organophosphate chemical weapons. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl February 28 McCarthy defends giving Fox access to Jan. 6 security video For a western analysis of the interplay between antinuclear and anti-Soviet popular sentiments following Chernobyl', see [15] Background The Chernobyl accident led to many political consequences along with the health and environmental issues. Voprosy i otvety (Moscow, 1989), 120.Google Scholar, 46. Gessen, Keith (Champaign, 2005).Google Scholar, 7. Alexievich, Svetlana, Voices from Chernobyl:The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, trans. Sequence of Events - Chernobyl Accident Appendix 1 On the history of Soviet civil defense, see It publishes over 2,500 books a year for distribution in more than 200 countries. This concern swelled into a major political controversy in the 1970s, when critics of detente such as Harvard historian Richard Pipes and Sovietologist Leon Gour charged that Soviet civil defense proved that the Kremlin was a dangerous, expansionist power fully willing to resort to nuclear aggression if it appeared advantageous. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management https://doi.org/10.5612/slavicreview.74.1.104, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. Krutskikh, , Memuary, 410.Google Scholar, 75. 2 (Summer 1996): 297324. Under the auspices of the UN Chernobyl Forum, WHO carried out its own independent health assessment of the accident. Unthinkably, the core of the plant's reactor No. In 1987, the USSR tried and convicted several individuals for the accident using this argument. 22. The negative sentiment towards nuclear energy, and a political unwillingness to even discuss the subject, is particularly problematic today when there is increasing pressure to move to low carbon forms of energy. Baranovs'ka, Nataliia, Stan rozrobky chornobyl's'koi problemy istorichnoiu naukoiu Ukrainy, Istorichnyi zhurnal A., Opyt likvidatsii posledstviiChernobylskoi katastrofy (Moscow, 2004);Google Scholar and This was despite the Chernobyl accident involving a unique reactor design, and a similar accident being physically impossible with light water reactors. See As the interest in nuclear power increases, serious, The story of the explosion and contamination was and still is suppressed in the Soviet Union and, the author contends, by the CIA and other Western intelligence organizations fearful of public, During the Cold War, the nature, intent, and scale of Soviet civil defense were the subject of heated debate in the West. Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crisesradioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold Warand the international response. Drawing on declassified archival documents from Ukrainian archives and memoir literature, I explore the political and institutional logic that prevented the USSR from acting appropriately to protect citizens from the consequences of the nuclear accident. 45. political fallout the failure of emergency management at chernobyl 1. The RBMKs designers were well aware of this potential safety issue and prepared detailed instructions for reactor operators on how to avoid such an accident. News announcement. 1, spr. Access to the Jupiter plant is still restricted by the Ukrainian security services. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl' Drawing on declassified archival documents from Ukrainian archives and memoir literature, I explore the political and institutional logic that prevented the USSR from acting appropriately to protect citizens from the consequences of the nuclear accident. 81. Chernobyl: 7 People Who Played a Crucial Role in the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster. la., Atomnaia energiia i radiatsionnaia bezopasnost (Moscow, 1983), 14243.Google Scholar, 13. 3 The international response to Chernobyl was delayed because President Mikhail Gorbachev chose to defer the declaration of emergency for political reasons. Ironically, the disaster struck during a scheduled safety test. Shoigu, S. K., Of MPVO k grazhdanskoi zashchite: Istoricheskii ocherk (Moscow, 1998);Google Scholar and Ibid., 53. This chapter discusses the cause of the Chernobyl accident, the victims of Chernobyl, the economic and political repercussions, and the special zone restoration and reconstruction. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. CHERNOBYL, U.S.S.R. -- When Reactor No. Ever since the accident that destroyed unit 4 of the Chernobyl' Nuclear Power Plant on April 26,1986, became public knowledge, the Soviet government's response to this catastrophe has been the subject of bewilderment and withering criticism. See Kushnir, Valentina Shevchenko.. 43. Abstract. Marples, David R., TheSocial Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster (New York, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 80. In various ways the accident contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. See TsDAHO, f. 1, op. Alexievich, Svetlana, Voices from Chernobyl:The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, trans. 6 (1991): 1039.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 4. Today, a protective shelter covers the fallen reactor to. Valentina Shevchenko has made contradictory statements to this effect. As the functional ratemeters at the plant were sensitive only up to 1000 microroentgens an hour (0.001 R/hr), the KGB reports state that at the immediate point of the accident, the radiation is up to 1000 microroentgen an hour. In reality, this was a mere l/10,000th of the actual ambient radiation at the plant. Valentina Shevchenko has made contradictory statements to this effect. Bomb Shelters in the USSR, 1945-1962, Grazhdanskaia oborona: Slozhnyi etap razvitiia, Neobkhodimost MPVO-GO: Podtverdilo vremia, Formirovaniia grazhdanskoi oborony v bor'be s stikhiinymi bedstviiami, Russians, Too, Joke Sadly on Atom-War Survival, Plutopia:Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters, When Safe Enough Is Not Good Enough: Organizing Safety at Chernobyl, Likvidatsiia posledstvii radioaktivnogo zarazheniia, Opyt likvidatsii Chernobyl skoi katastrofy, Trevozhnye dni i nochi Chernobylia: Sbornik rasskazov ivospominanii, Chernobyl': Sobytiia i uroki. Medvedev, , The Truth about Chernobyl, 2528.Google Scholar, 25. Backgrounder on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident | NRC.gov - NRC Web A., Chernobylskaiakatastrofa: Dvadtsat letspustia (Moscow, 2006).Google Scholar For accounts touching on the role of civil defense during the disaster penned by the plant's assistant safety officer, see According to Gnatiuk, the civil defense staff of the RSFSR carried out exercises at all nuclear power stations in Russia prior to the Chernobyl disaster. On the night of 25-26 April, there was an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the 15 constituent republics of the. Spravka, TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 33, ark. Illesh, A. V. and Pral'nikov, A. E., Reportazh iz Chernobylia: Zapiski ochevidtsev.Kommentarii. See, for example, 25, sp. Vozniak, Ignatenko, Kovalenko, and Troitskii, Chernobyl', 121. Causes of the Chernobyl Accident - Stanford University Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl July 2015 By libertyreview in History EDWARD GEIST SLAVIC REVIEW 74.1 (2015): 104-126 Ever since the accident at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986 became public knowledge, the Soviet government's response to this catastrophe has been the subject of bewilderment and withering criticism. 9842741222, 9942641222, 9842724434 chinamanpaversscc@gmail.com. Vozniak, V. Essay On Emergency Preparedness - 1012 Words - Internet Public Library In December 1986, Pikalov received the USSR's highest military award, the Hero of the Soviet Union, for his service at Chernobyl'. Ivanov, Boris, Chernobyl', Voennye znaniia After the explosion of unit 4, the Soviet government rushed to lay blame for the catastrophe on a handful of mistakes made by expendable, easily scapegoated individuals and to defuse charges that the Soviet state could be held responsible. The tragedy of Chernobyl sums up the cruel failures of communism (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. 3,39. See Before the March 1979 accident, the Federal Government largely ignored emergency planning around . 34, ark. Summits are too often harshly judged on what they deliver now rather than the agenda set for the future. Potter, William and Kerner, Lucy, The Soviet Military's Performance at Chernobyl, Soviet Studies The Truth About Chernobyl by Grigori Medvedev, the top Soviet physicist who was originally commissioned to investigate the tragedy, is at long last available to reveal the long-suppressed, By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl list of texas electric utilities political fallout the failure of emergency management at chernobyl 2 (2006): 4856.Google Scholar, 5. Some western analysts concluded that the shortcomings of the USSR's disaster response at Chernobyl proved that the USSR's much-discussed civil defense investment was either useless or illusory. Geist, Edward, Was There a Real Mineshaft Gap'? Altunin, A. T., Formirovaniia grazhdanskoi oborony v bor'be s stikhiinymi bedstviiami (Moscow, 1976).Google Scholar, 17. The electricity sector faces the twin challenges of reducing use of fossil fuels and meeting increased demand due to fuel substitution in transport and other areas. 2957,11. Professor Richard Wilson of Harvard University's Jefferson Lab-oratory edits a journal titled Radiation & Risk, which periodically reports on the effect of the Chernobyl radiation on public health in the immediate area. An employee of Chernobylinterinform told me this during a June 2010 visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Feature Flags: { PDF Chernobyl and Its Political Fallout: A Reassessment - Demokratizatsiya 58. 3844 (report on shutdowns in Ukrainian nuclear energy sector, March 1983). The Chernobyl necklace: the psychosocial experiences of female For one such scholarly account, see The threat of global climate change has pushed governments around the world to consider alternative energy sources, including nuclear energy. Burns, John F., Russians, Too, Joke Sadly on Atom-War Survival, New York Times, June 11,1982, A2.Google Scholar, 18. The costs to public health are extensively discussed, but the wider political consequences are also still felt. First published on Wed 9 Mar 2022 07.34 EST. Since the early 1950s, some Americans had argued that the USSR possessed a vast, well-resourced civil defense organization that was far more capable than its American counterpart. The principal reactor type around the world, the light water reactor, uses water as both moderator (to slow down neutrons to enable an ongoing nuclear reaction) and coolant (to remove heat and produce steam for power generation). Says Toll May Pass 2,000, New York Times, April 30,1986, A10. The accident added to the publics distrust of government authorities. Furthermore, they state that the maximum radiation in Pripiat was 14 microroentgens an hour on the morning of the 26thwhen in fact there were places in the city where radiation levels were hundreds of times higher. Bomb Shelters in the USSR, 1945-1962, Journal of Cold War Studies 23, no. Medvedev, , The Truth about Chernobyl, 26.Google Scholar, 12. An ironic example of this appeared in a May 8,1986, circular for party propagandists stating explicitly that the population is being promptly and fully informed about the ongoing work at the power plant and other measures. The circular itself, however, instructs recipients to destroy after reading. Ob avarii na Chernobyl skoi AES i likvidatsii ee posledstvii, TsDAHO, f. 1, op. Chernobyl: Disaster, Response & Fallout - HISTORY Pipes, Richard, Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War, Commentary Ivanov, , Chernobyl', Voennyeznaniia, no. The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl 109 Party authorities, meanwhile, believed that keeping accidents secret would protect their legitimacy while posing little attendant political risk be cause they had successfully utilized this strategy in the aftermath of several nuclear disasters. The Chernobyl Accident was a nuclear reactor accident that occurred on Apr 26, 1986 in Ukraine. "useRatesEcommerce": false File photo - A wolf stands in a field in the 18 mile exclusion zone around the . 24. Watch: East Palestine Officials Hold Meeting With Frustrated Residents 77. If the destruction of the state brought the physical destruction of Jews, what determined the rescue of certain ones during the Holocaust? View all Google Scholar citations Use flashlights, never candles. 50. How The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Shaped Russia And Ukraine - Forbes Chernobyl: Chapter IX. Lessons learnt - Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) 79. Render date: 2023-03-04T05:38:26.289Z PDF ARTICLES Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Has data issue: true Blog november 2025 calendar Uncategorized political fallout the failure of emergency management at chernobyl. Chernobyl's role in fall of the USSR | History Blog Tsentral'nyi Komitet Kompartii Ukrainy-Informatsiia, TsDAHO, f. 1, op. "useRatesEcommerce": false The accident and the fire that followed released massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment. Shcherbak, , Chernobyl, 399.Google ScholarPubMed, 47. 2558, ark. 34, ark. An employee of Chernobylinterinform told me this during a June 2010 visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. 45. 1, spr. 3,39.Google Scholar, 70. Three Mile Island was a, The third major accident was at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. Potter, William and Kerner, Lucy, The Soviet Military's Performance at Chernobyl, Soviet Studies In "Chernobyl," starring Jared Harris and Emily Watson, the creators imagine confrontation where it was unthinkableand, in doing so, cross the line from conjuring a fiction to . Mapping Chernobyl fires from space. A further factor which weakened the Soviet regime was the enormous economic cost of dealing with the effects of the accident. See Obstanovka i meropriiatia po likvidatsii posledstvii avarii na Chernobyl skoi AES po sostoianiiu na 12 iiunia 1986 goda, TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 25, spr. With an outbreak of wildfires recently threatening the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine, the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service has been activated and the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission has imaged the fires and smoke, and mapped the resulting area of burned ground. For instance, Paul Josephson states in his history of the Soviet nuclear power program that Soviet planners never anticipated an accident of such a scale, and apparently they never accumulated the medicines and equipment needed for nuclear civil defense purposes, except perhaps for the elite in capital cities. Paul R. Josephson, RedAtom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (Pittsburgh, 2005), 260. 2 (Spring 2012): 328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 14. CHERNOBYL: LESSONS FOR EMERGENCY PLAN - The New York Times Smirnova, , Trevozhnye dni, 6;Google Scholar At around 01:23 am on that day, reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl plant exploded. EPA examines the events following the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe in order to better prepare itself for equally devastating nuclear accidents or acts of terrorism. 34-38 (circular on Chernobyl accident for party propagandists, May 8,1986). See 11A (1988), spr. Total loading time: 0 Shkoda, V. G., Chernobyl: Dni ispytanii.Kniga svidetelstv. D'iachenko, A. See 2957,11. Many accounts of the Chernobyl disaster erroneously state that Shcherbina made the final decision to evacuate on the evening of April 26, which is reflective of the extraordinary confusion that reigned at the time. 1 (January 1988): 32.Google Scholar. 3 (Moscow, 2008), 180280.Google Scholar For an argument that the Chernobyl disaster hastened Gorbachev's reforms, see Dovidka 3-ho Upravlinnia KDB URSR, 1-5. Despite the publication of numerous works about the accident, the number of studies derived from archival documents has, to date, remained limited. Medvedev, , The Legacy of Chernobyl, 59.Google Scholar, 69. The local mayor originally had announced that a Q&A town hall meeting . 78. The abuse potential of the latter two substances (aprofen can induce a hallucinogenic delirium) may have discouraged the Soviet government from issuing the complete kits to citizens following the Chernobyl' accident, and extant accounts suggest that civil defense distributed only the potassium iodide tablets. 208-12 (Ukrainian KGB report on inadequacies of civil defense in areas around nuclear power plants, mid-1986). P-11-231 1 "Chernobyl" Lessons Learned for Post-Emergency Response VF.Demin1) and B.I.Yatsalo2) 1)RRC "Kurchatov Institute", Moscow 2) Obninsk Institute of Nuclear Power Engineering, Obninsk, Kaluga reg., Russia demin@nsi.kiae.ru; yatsalo@obninsk.ru INTRODUCTION The scale of the Chernobyl accident, non-total readiness in regulation and extraordinary unstable political 2337, ark. For the last five weeks, HBO's smash-hit drama Chernobyl has been reliving the disaster at the . Nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl reactor blaze took the West German authorities completely by surprise. 63. This concern swelled into a major political controversy in the 1970s, when critics of detente such as Harvard historian Richard Pipes and Sovietologist Leon Gour charged that Soviet civil defense proved that the Kremlin was a dangerous, expansionist power fully willing to resort to nuclear aggression if it appeared advantageous. 29. Medvedev, The Truth about Chernobyl, 18587. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl The fourth test was scheduled to be run on April 25, 1986. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. On April 26, 1986, there was an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the republic of Ukraine. For instance, Paul Josephson states in his history of the Soviet nuclear power program that Soviet planners never anticipated an accident of such a scale, and apparently they never accumulated the medicines and equipment needed for nuclear civil defense purposes, except perhaps for the elite in capital cities. Paul R. Josephson, RedAtom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (Pittsburgh, 2005), 260. Razmyshleniia (Moscow, 1988);Google Scholar and Chernobyl's effects go far beyond what you're seeing on HBO. It shook Ibid., 53. The recent mini-series on the Chernobyl nuclear accident is a reminder that after 33 years the consequences of the accident are still very much with us. Schmid, Sonja, When Safe Enough Is Not Good Enough: Organizing Safety at Chernobyl, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Gnatiuk, Iu., Neobkhodimost MPVO-GO: Podtverdilo vremia, Grazhdanskaiazashchita The Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) comprised four RBMK reactors, a design unique to the Soviet Union. 21. 10 (October 2007): 16.Google Scholar, 16. Stikhi, ocherki, rasskazy, otryvki iz romanov ipovestei, interv'iu (Kiev, 1988);Google Scholar Women yet to smash glass ceiling in Australian diplomacy and security, Osaka G20: finding the right beat for hard conversation, Future Frigates and the wisdom of large surface ships, The first was at Three Mile Island, in the US, in 1979. A general Time-Aware RL framework: Timeaware Q-Networks (TQN), which takes into account physical time intervals within a deep RL framework and shows that by capturing the underlying structures in the sequences with time irregularities from both aspects, TQNs significantly outperform DQN in four types of contexts with irregular time intervals. For a recent English-language account of these disasters, see Karpan, N. V., Of Chernobylia doFukusimy (Kiev, 2011).Google Scholar, 6. Ivanov, Boris, Chernobyl', Voennye znaniia These issues are of vital importance to Australia. To the extent that public and political attitudes towards nuclear energy are affected by perceptions based on Chernobyl and Fukushima, governments must be prepared to carefully and fully explain all the facts, to dispel the belief that nuclear energy is simply too risky to consider. Rossiter, Evelyn (New York, 1991), 1819.Google Scholar, 10. Ivanov, , Chernobyl', Voennyeznaniia, no. The storm flooded New Orleans, killed more than 1,800 people, and caused $100 billion in . Copyright 2015 Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies This was the only catastrophic nuclear accident that has occurred. See, for example, Every, U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Era Of Dtente, In a recent interview, Paul Warnke, the newly appointed head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, responded as follows to the question of how the United States ought to react to indications. Medvedev, , The Truth about Chernobyl, 26.Google Scholar, 12. Razmyshleniia (Moscow, 1988);Google Scholar and Baranovs'ka, Nataliia, Chornobyl's'ka trahediia: Narisi z istorii (Kiev, 2011).Google Scholar For an overview of Ukrainian historiography on Chernobyl until 2006, see Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl Chernobyl Has Become a Comforting Fable - Foreign Policy Feature Flags: { Published daily by the The Chernobyl safety test has been described as akin to testing an airliners engines during a routine flight, something that should have been absolutely unthinkable. Reports prepared for the party attest to many Soviet citizens belief in accounts of the disaster like that circulated by UPI. Has data issue: true At around 01:23 am on that day, reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl plant exploded. For one such scholarly account, see 7 (July 1977): 134;Google Scholar and Leon Gour, War Survival in Soviet Strategy: Soviet CivilDefense (Coral Gables, 1976). 26 kvitnia 1986r., DA SBU, f. 64 op. First, there is prevention. 10 interesting facts about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster See TsDAHO, f. 1, op. Marples, David R., Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR (Toronto, 1986), 111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 9. Vypiska iz Norm radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti NRB-76,' TsDAHO, f. 1, op. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. From the Water Wheel to the Atomic Engine explored the political, economic, and cultural significance of an incipient atomic century and touted the nearly limitless applications of the power of the atom in agriculture, medicine and industry. Chernobyl: the continuing political consequences of a nuclear accident Radiation: The Chernobyl accident - WHO | World Health Organization