Chernobyl Anniversary

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident to date: the explosion that ripped through the Chernobyl nuclear power station on April 26, 1986. At a time when many are proposing nuclear power as the logical, even the only, alternative to oil/gas/coal energy, it might be a good day to meditate on the horrors that nuclear energy is capable of springing on the world. It's only "clean" as long as it's contained. Here's what can happen when accidents, or terrorist acts, release it into the world:

Debate still rages about the human cost of the accident.

This week, environmental group Greenpeace said the eventual death toll could be far higher than official estimates with up to 93,000 cancer deaths attributable to the disaster.

The World Health Organization puts at 4,000 the number of extra deaths in the worst-hit areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, with 5,000 in less affected zones.

Ukrainian doctors, who have observed patients exposed to radiation for 20 years, point to a dramatic rise in thyroid cancer among those who were children in 1986.

Thyroid cancer can be treated if detected early. Mobile laboratories conduct checks in villages near the exclusion zone, where unemployment is high and most residents worry more about making ends meet than about their health.

Doctors fear for the future.

"Though 20 years have passed, Ukraine will feel the consequences for a long time," said Hryhory Klymnyuk from the Cancer Institute at Ukraine's Academy of Sciences.

"There are not only direct medical consequences but possible changes in genes. I think future generations will be under threat from various illnesses, including tumors." (From When Home is a Blighted Land: Tales from Chernobyl)

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