New York Times: Continuing questions about Chornobyl
It has been 25 years since the worst nuclear power accident in history at the Chornobyl plant in Ukraine, and we still aren’t certain what health damage it may ultimately cause. That gap needs to be filled by a vigorous research program — both to improve readiness to cope with another bad nuclear accident and to enhance understanding of the long-term effects of low doses of radiation.Although Chornobyl is rightly synonymous with disaster, international health authorities have found the damage from fallout downwind to be far less than originally feared. The latest evaluation — a United Nations committee in 2008 — concludes that emergency workers who struggled to bring the plant under control suffered great harm but the wider public was barely affected. Read the story here