Debating the cost of Chernobyl

April 20, 1996
Web posted at: 4:20 p.m. EDT (2020 GMT)

KIEV, Ukraine (CNN) -- From the moment the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant was discovered 10 years ago, it has been a battle over numbers between local authorities and outside experts.

The battle has cost lives: those sent in to clean up the mess -- the so-called liquidators -- were told by authorities in Kiev that the numbers on their Geiger counters made little difference.

"They just told us to wear our respirators," said Anatoli Sargovets, one of the liquidators. "But what sort of respirator would protect when the metal of the car was completely saturated?"

Sargovets, now paralyzed, says that the paralysis began soon after his days at Chernobyl. But doctors only recently have said it is connected to the accident -- adding another victim to the growing numbers.

It is those numbers which were at the heart of one of the debates at the G-7's nuclear summit -- the Ukrainian government asked for billions of dollars in aid to help deal with the effects of the accident and its clean up. And officials say the West must believe them.

"Billions, not millions," says Prime Minister Yevgeny Marchuk. "That's what the Chernobyl tragedy cost us and that's how it strangled our economy."

But Western experts say they don't believe the figure should be that high, and that a wide variety of diseases are now being counted as Chernobyl-related to extract more aid to help the ailing state health care system.

Ministers in Ukraine, though, say that after years of covering up victims, they are just coming clean.

"Some specialist said ... Chernobyl influence is very negligible," says Environment Minister Yuri Kostenko, "and they link only some kinds of health disasters with Chernobyl factors. It's not true."

The West says the reactor must be shut down. For that, say officials in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, the international community must pay.

"For us in this field (the) crucial issue is the sources for financing not only the closure of the Chernobyl power station, but also creating compensating capacities," says Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Konstantin Grishenko.

Despite the dangers, Ukraine says it cannot live without nuclear power. That is acceptable, say atomic experts, if the plants are maintained and if energy consumption levels are lowered through conservation. But few in Ukraine will even discuss that possibility.

While the debate over numbers goes back and forth, one thing is clear -- the cost of Chernobyl is much higher than either Western experts first thought or Ukrainian government officials were willing to admit.

From Moscow Bureau Chief Eileen O'Connor

Related stories

• G-7 leaders pledge test ban treaty by end of the year - April 20, 1996
• Chernobyl 10 years later: still contaminated, still poor - April 19, 1996

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