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Effects of Chernobyl
on Belarus
Facts and Figures:
Background -The
Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
The early-morning explosion of Reactor
4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant
on April 26, 1986 is still a grim fact of life for the people who
live in contaminated regions of Belarus
, the Ukraine and Russia .
The small country of Belarus, just
10 km north of the Chernobyl power plant received over 70 per cent
of the radioactive fallout due to wind and weather patterns.
Our Fund focuses primarily on the
most vulnerable portion of the Belarusian population: the children.
An estimated 800,000 lived in the affected areas at the time of
the explosion. Over the past seven years our Fund has concentrated
its aid to the district of Chaussey, one of the areas directly affected
by the Chernobyl
nuclear fallout and a primarily agricultural center.
As our organization has grown, it has allowed us to extend our aid
to other affected areas.
The
Chernobyl Accident - Facts and Figures
- Area evacuated in
Belarus : 20% of country
- Complete exclusion zone: 1,700 square Kilometers
- Persons evacuated and resettled within
Belarus : 130,000
- Numbers of persons affected: 2.2 million, out of a total population
of 10.3 million
- Children were more seriously affected than adults.
- Over 18,000 km2 of agricultural land (22%) received some fallout.
Of this, 2,640 km2 totally removed from agricultural production.
- Radioactive Iodine fallout fell over 80% of Belarus
.
- 10% of milk contaminated with excessive levels of radioactive Cesium
137.
- Thyroid cancer is normally extremely rare among children. The worldwide
average is I to 2 cases per million children. In some areas of
Belarus
, the rate is 125 cases per million children.
Date of Accident: April 26, 1986
- First evacuation from exclusion zone, 30 km from
Chernobyl : May 2,1986
-
Belarus
received most of the radioactive
fallout (70%) from
Chernobyl .
- It is estimated that 3.5 to 10% of the reactor core escaped into
the atmosphere, releasing about 50 million curies. As a measure
of comparison, the total radiation scattered by all nuclear bomb
tests to date amounts to less than 0.5 million curies.
Sources:
REPUBLIC
OF BELARUS
(COMMITTEE OF GEODESY)
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS "THE WORLD AFTER
CHERNOBYL "
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
GROUPEMENT DE SCIENTIFIQUES POUR L'INFORMATION SUR L'ENERGIE NUCLEAIRE
THOMAS J.GLOVEF;VS POCKET REF
SEQUOIA PUBLISHING
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