The Chernobyl Disaster: The Increase In Energy And Its Community

Throughout history, scientific advancement in energy has enhanced civilization. As civilization grows, so does the increase in energy sources. Many of those advancements people rely on. Society enjoys the fruits of someone else’s labor without knowing intricate details about how lethal some of these energy source can be. The Chernobyl incident emphasizes the dangers the use of nuclear and radiological energy can have. The Chernobyl incident, caused irreversible change on the environment and its community.
On April 26, 1986, a reactor rupture at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and caused an explosion. This explosion caused a fire and released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere miles from the city Chernobyl. Because
The capacity of exposed radiation was enormous, “accident of 1986 released vast quantities of radioactive materials and significantly contaminated about 200,000 square kilometers of land” (Mousseau). Acute radiation syndrome caused the death of over 30 Chernobyl plant workers and first responders a few days and weeks after initial exposure. Per the NRC and UNSCEAR “More than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer may eventually be linked to radiation exposure in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia” (Lallanilla). Acute radiation is an illness that causes digestive problems to include, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. This exposure to radiation has complicating effects on the nervous system, heart, and lungs. Some studies show an increased rate of childhood leukemia from the Chernobyl incident in West Germany, Greece and Belarus. These children were likely exposed to high dose of radiation which can damage genes and chromosomes. Thyroid cancer is very rare in children, this rapid increase was surely related to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. This occurred among people who were young children and adolescents at the time of the accident accordingly lived in the most contaminated areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Many adults exposed also suffered from thyroid cancer to include leukemia. “Leukemia was the first malignancy to be linked to radiation exposure among atomic bomb survivors (54) and has the highest radiation related relative risk of all cancers, particularly following exposure in childhood” (Hatch). These developments are awful long lasting remnants of what this catastrophe did to