Abstract

This is an abstract. The original and complete version, in French, is published at http://fr.discu.org/wiki/Tchernobyl_vu_par_l%27IAEA (it was published because Wikipedia relayed the disinformation debunked here).

The "Chernobyl Forum" published a balance of a nuclear disaster (Chernobyl). This balance, in my opinion and for reasons explained here, is void and very underestimated.

I am have no expertise in any pertinent matter, therefore I will only analyze established elements which are easy to understand without any particular skill.

In a hurry? Please read the short story.

Please send any comment to nat@makarevitch.org.

Vocabulary

The Chernobyl disaster occurred in 1986 at a nuclear power station.

The IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency, is an United Nations' agency created in order to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy". It promotes civil uses of atomic energy.

The Chernobyl Forum is a group of UN agencies, founded by the IAEA and financed by it as well as by the WHO (World Organization of Health, another United Nations agency). In the present we will designate it by 'the Forum'. The Forum published the balance analyzed here.

A liquidator is a person sent near the power plant after the accident, to clear or to clean the zone. Some liquidators were particularly exposed to the radiations.

Summary

The Forum trumpeted in a press release (September, 2005) that, according to a scientific study done by the United Nations, the Chernobyl disaster caused and will cause, all in all, 4000 deaths.

It seemed somewhat underestimated to me. I tried to enlighten this assertion.

My conclusion: assert that the disaster will kill 4000 persons, as trumpeted, is plain disinformation.

The next section contains a list summarizing the main elements supporting this conclusion, detailed in the complete document (French).

Conclusions

The official conclusion emitted by the Forum is written in a opaque way: premature deaths of around 4000 people from the 600 000 affected by the higher radiation doses. These 4000 deaths are from a badly defined subset because the higher radiations doses is not defined. Moreover it somewhat conveys that other exposed people were and are not endangered, but it appears that 5 million exposed Soviet citizens were (and some are) exposed, along with much more people in other countries, and at least some of them were (or are/will be) somewhat endangered.
No scientist explicitly emitted or endorsed this conclusion. The press release states that "100 scientists validated the report" but we can not find their names, associated to the fact that they validate the conclusion (400 deaths). These names may be those of authors of works quoted in the Forum's reports.
The manager of one of the studies (health) stated that the scientists did not want to include numbers for predicted deaths, but public relations officials wanted them in the summary.
The official conclusion refers to reports which only exist in draft state. They are not scientifically published so were not reviewed, therefore those reports are not asserted by the scientific community, although they are presented as such.
The authors and the proofreaders of every hypothesis in the available (draft) reports are not clearly named, so nobody endorses it.
None of the diffused conclusions is, under the same shape, in reports. In particular:
- The studies concern only the effects in Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia (Belarus) but the official conclusions do not clarify it clearly, so implicitly present a global balance.
- The 'health' report only analyzes cancers and leukemia while the radiations cause the other infringements, certainly less directly lethal, and also has mutagen and teratogenic effects.
The conclusion, presented as published by the UN, is that of some agencies and not of the Organization which is only quoting it.
The most involved agency (IAEA) will only exist as long as atomic energy will stay in use, therefore its pledge of the exactness of its own conclusions seems insufficient because it is clearly judge and party, therefore biased towards a pro-atomic view.
The IAEA and the WHO, main implied organizations, restrain themselves to not publish any information considered as annoying by the other one. The pledge of WHO in the study concerning health-related aspects is therefore itself... subject to pledge, because the WHO can only publish material approved by IAEA.
Other UN agencies implied are close to the IAEA and at least a top manager was since hired by a nuclear equipment manufacturer.
The 'health' report explicitly states major and explicit doubts as for the quality of its own forecasts:
- a cancer inferred by radiations declares itself after at least 10 years and on average 20-25 years, now this delay is not sold and the observations supporting the study dated from 1998 (so in most 12 years after the explosion).
- to foresee the number of cancers which will arise eventually is difficult because of:
  - bad data quality;
  - dubious model adequation;
  - one cannot distinguish the respective effects of the disaster and those of the socioeconomic context degradation.
Some methods used in the 'health' report raised controversy because:
- Neglected low radiations, although scientific sources state that they are dangerous.
- It uses a model stemming from observations realized in a very different context (people irradiated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The scientists who led the study did not even want to try to refute the model inadequacy.
- Are supported by measures concerning only a subset of the only Russian liquidators (other, native of Ukraine and Belarus, were not sampled). This Russian sample set is not qualified (it may be composed unexposed liquidators) so the representativeness remains unsure. This invalidates the results.

Chronology

Sept. 2005

The Chernobyl Forum (a group of UN agencies leaded by the IAEA), during a press conference, publishes an abstract of its own draft report.

This abstract heading states that A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.. The World Health Organization (WHO) version version also contains this heading.

But the name of the authors of the abstract or report endorsing this ''up to 4000 deaths'' hypothesis are not cited, the heading did not clearly state that the draft report stated that those 4000 deaths are from a small subset of the human beings concerned and for a single illnesses family, the draft report does not contain the key sentence (''4000 will die''), the report is presented as an UN report although it is only published by agencies and not adopted by the UN (the IAEA has to let the UN approve its reports, please read it statute's article IV.5.E.6: its General Conference shall ... Approve reports to be submitted to the United Nations as required by the relationship agreement between the Agency and the United Nations, same for the WHO (its Constitution clearly states that there is an "Agreement between the United Nations and the World Health Organization", therefore the WHO is not the UN).

It therefore was:

not definitive, as stated, because (read below) the definitive edition draws different conclusion and is dated April, 2006,
not adopted by the UN, although presented as such (the title was Chernobyl: the true scale of the accident. 20 Years Later a UN Report Provides Definitive Answers and Ways to Repair Lives)
Not scientific, because the name of the author of the up to 4000 people could eventually die stance was not provided. In fact this sentence was nowhere to be found in the draft report and the report's editor (M. Repacholi), rejected it by declaring: The scientists did not want to include numbers for predicted deaths, but public relations officials had wanted them in the summary.

The 4000, grand total hypothesis was largely propagated (see for example this BBC's account).

The abstract was never rectifyed.

April 2006

The Chernobyl Forum discreetly publishes the definitive version of the report, where this 4000 figure was nowhere but the proposed data (see page 106) was ''9000'' (4000 + 5000), stated only for a subset of the Soviet population and for solid cancers. It was then adopted by the UN. See Nature, BBC...

Short account

Therefore the IAEA had the whole media spreading (during 7 months) their misleading abstract Chernobyl: 4000 people will die globally, although their best official minimization is now 9000 people will die from from solids cancers amongst the approx 6.6 million who were in the vicinity (solid cancers are a single family of the numerous illnesses, many others are dangerous, notwhithstanding teratogen effects. Moreover a plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the eastern United States (far from the 6.6 million people group. Therefore ''4000 total'' is quite different from this new hypothesis).

They never published any note rectifying their own misleading press release.

Remember: we pay them (approx 240 million USD per year) to be be informed in order to decide...

Wikipedia

On Wikipedia the Tchernobyl: 4000 deaths false claim published in a press release was relayed by an anonymous contributor, albeit it falsely stated that the underlying report was definitive, encompassing all illnesses and published by UN bodies.

At least a warning was proposed, without any effect.

Then, 7 months later, after release of the real definitive UN report (9000 deaths in a subset of the population and for only a family of illnesses) some history-rewriting took place, by simply replacing ''4,000'' with ''9,000', as if ''9,000'' was published since Sept. 2005, and without any account of the new perimeter (solid cancers and subset of exposed population, instead of grand total, and real UN report). Then this figure was reverted to 4,000, and any reference to critics where suppressed from the first paragraphs.

No one detailed, in the Wikipedia article, the disinformation nor the plain fact that no rectifying was published by the during or after the 7-months long period between the draft report and the UN version.

Then some chating led to a partial fix. But some dis (or mis)-information stays there, and nobody seems to care. Worse: on Wikipedia (French edition) some try to conceal or minimize the disinformation campain.

Other texts