![]() ![]() Improved monitoring has been implemented to help ensure that thyroid cancer is detected early, when it is highly treatable. As of 2005, about 15 children had died from thyroid cancer. Long-term health monitoring of these workers is ongoing. Experts say there is “some evidence” of an increased risk of leukemia and cataracts among workers who received higher doses when engaged in recovery efforts. ![]() At Chernobyl, 28 highly exposed workers died within four months of the accident.Separate studies published in 2013 by the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization concluded that health risks from radiation released during the Fukushima accident are minimal, even for those “most affected,” and there are essentially no health effects outside Japan. No deaths from radiation exposure have been attributed to the accident at Fukushima.Authorities in the former Soviet Union were slow to act to protect the supply of food and milk, which led to a spike in thyroid cancers among children and adolescents from consuming contaminated foodstuffs.These actions limited any adverse health effects from the accident. The government also distributed potassium iodide to residents near the facility to prevent their thyroid glands from absorbing radiation. The Japanese government moved rapidly to implement protective measures, evacuating people and halting food shipments from the area.Also, the plant’s suppression pool water provided scrubbing (or “cleaning”) of radioactive products that reduced the atmospheric release at Fukushima. The radioactive products were thus released from the core much more gradually, with some of the radioactive material confined by containment structures which partially retained the radioactivity. Rather, progressive heating, oxidation and meltdown of the cores occurred over a much longer period of time. At Fukushima, there were no explosions within the cores.As a result, radioactivity had a direct open path to the environment, enhanced by entrainment in the smoke from the burning graphite. The release was not confined because that type of reactor did not have a containment structure as designed in all U.S. In Chernobyl, the release started with a nuclear criticality accident which triggered an in-core steam explosion, causing an intensive ejection of the overheated core material and extensive burning of graphite and reactor materials over a long period of time.According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there was less total atmospheric release of radioactivity from the Fukushima accident compared with Chernobyl due to the different accident scenarios and mechanisms of radioactive releases.It released about 10 times the radiation that was released after the Fukushima accident. The accident at Chernobyl stemmed from a flawed reactor design and human error.The accident at Fukushima occurred after a series of tsunami waves struck the facility and disabled systems needed to cool the nuclear fuel.However, the accidents were starkly different in their cause, the governments’ response and health effects. This fact netted both accidents the highest rating on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). Both the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility in Japan and the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 required countermeasures to protect the public. ![]()
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