Igor Linge, Deputy Director of Nuclear Safety Institute

– The safety of nuclear power plants has been seriously improved in the 23 years following Chernobyl Accident

Apr 26 is the 23rd anniversary of the accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The safety of nuclear power plants has been seriously improved in the 23 years following the accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Today, 40% of the money allocated for the construction of a nuclear power plant is spent on its safety. Chernobyl was not the only reason for such a serious approach to safety. One more serious accident took place at Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in the United States in 1979. Since then nuclear safety has been given top priority by all operating nuclear power plants. Today, normally operating NPPs have almost zero radiation effect on the environment. But there is a problem of heat emission. Efficiency coefficient cannot be 100%. So, the rest is emitted into the environment. In any case, nuclear power plants are much less hazardous than thermal power plants.

The attitude towards nuclear energy has always been controversial. Chernobyl is just one of the cards of this game. Lots of things have happened in the past 23 years. For example, the Swedish authorities first decided to shut down all of its nuclear power plants, then they put off the phase-out deadlines and quite recently they began to consider the possibility of building new plants amid harsh protests by the opposition, i.e. nuclear energy has become a cause of political struggle.

The key reason for nuclear renaissance is the wish of states to gain energy independence and stability. NPP construction requires long-term investments, which pay off in quite a long time. The second reason is ecology. These two factors have almost equal value, simply, some states give priority to the former, while the others to the latter.

Chernobyl 23 years after is a complex of social problems related to different restrictions and the use of contaminated products – though it is a disputable question whether these products can be considered as contaminated or not: the point is that our standards are much tougher than those applied in many other countries and this causes certain controversy. There is also a problem of liquidators (people who fought the consequences of the accident): the state has granted them lots of privileges but finds it hard to pay them on a regular basis as this is really huge money. This leads to social protests and hunger strikes. One more problem is lack of new scientific data. The numerous surveys held in the field of radio-ecology and radiation after Chernobyl medicine have said nothing new. The point is that we had studied this field quite deeply before Chernobyl and everything that happened afterwards was not new to us.

The radiation situation is improving much quicker than at the period of half-decay of cesium. I can say that the situation has substantially improved.