The Number No One Can Agree On

Name: The Number No One Can Agree On
Genre: Documentary

Observed deaths and thyroid cancers are real, but attempts to calculate Chernobyl's total human toll divide researchers.

This episode needs All Access, from $4.99 a week.

Transcript

A low-power test became the worst nuclear accident in history.
Technicians were testing one of four reactors at low power when control was lost.
The explosion and fire destroyed the reactor building.
Rescuers faced a continuing graphite fire, a major physical obstacle.
A failed badge reader left the technician outside the control room.
Intelligence assessment judged reactor-hall radiation certainly above lethal levels.
150 liquidators and plant workers were treated for acute radiation sickness.
28 people treated for that sickness died within a relatively short time.
The accident caused widespread radioactive contamination and major concern.
Expected to concentrate in the thyroid, radioactive iodine left exposed children most susceptible.
Among children exposed, about 2,000 thyroid cancer cases were reported by 2000.
In 2005, children exposed had an estimated 4,000 thyroid cancer cases.
Radiation from iodine radioisotopes caused several thousand thyroid cancer cases.
Many of 135,000 received high absorbed doses in a zone 19 miles, or 30 kilometers across.
The wider zone gave 5,000,000 people prolonged exposure.
About 600,000 liquidators helped with cleanup.
A number can organize grief but cannot settle which future deaths belong in it.
The room grows still around the unfinished calculations.
If instruments measured radiation, what measured damage people later carried?

The cancer numbers remained contested, but another injury was spreading beyond every dosimeter: fear.

All Access is $4.99 a week, $14.99 a month or $39.99 a year. The annual plan starts with three days free.

Renews until you cancel. Terms · Privacy