Author: B.I. Chernichko
Reference: Journal:Стратегия гражданской защиты: проблемы и исследования (Strategies for Civil Protection: Issues and Research), Year: 2012 Vol: 2 Issue: 1
Keywords: environmental consequences, lessons and conclusions of the accident
Abstract: The international society evaluates the Chernobyl accident as one of the most severe disasters in the history. In the emergency, tasks of civil defense were: liquidation of fire at the power plant, organization and management of radiation surveillance, alert the people living around the plant and in the 30- kilometer zone, evacuation of the population and farm animals, sanitation and medical examination of the population, decontamination of roads, buildings and equipment of the nuclear power plant, radiation safety of personnel involved in the accident, maintenance of monitoring, providing protective measures for food, raw products, fodder, water sources, farm animals, and plants.
URL: http://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/uroki-i-vyvody-iz-avarii-na-chernobylskoy-aes
Title: Effects of non-human species irradiation after the Chernobyl NPP accident
Author: Geras’kin, S.A. / Fesenko, S.V. / Alexakhin, R.M.
Reference: Environment International, 34 (6), p.880-897, Aug 2008
doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2007.12.012
Keywords: Chernobyl NPP accident; Radioactive contamination; Doses; Ecological and biological effects
Abstract: The area affected by the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident in 1986 has become a unique test site where long-term ecological and biological consequences of a drastic change in a range of environmental factors as well as trends and intensity of selection are studied in natural settings. The consequences of the Chernobyl accident for biota varied from an enhanced rate of mutagenesis to damage at the ecosystem level. The review comprehensively brings together key data of the long-term studies of biological effects in plants and animals inhabiting over 20 years the Chernobyl NPP zone. The severity of radiation effects was strongly dependent on the dose received in the early period after the accident. The most exposed phytocenoses and soil animals’ communities exhibited dose dependent alterations in the species composition and reduction in biological diversity. On the other hand, no decrease in numbers or taxonomic diversity of small mammals even in the most radioactive habitat was shown. In a majority of the studies, in both plant and animal populations from the Chernobyl zone, in the first years after the accident high increases in mutation rates were documented. In most cases the dose–effect relationships were nonlinear and the mutation rates per unit dose were higher at low doses and dose rates. In subsequent years a decline in the radiation background rate occurred faster than reduction in the mutation rate. Plant and animal populations have shown signs of adaptation to chronic exposure. In adaptation to the enhanced level of exposure an essential role of epigenetic mechanisms of gene expression regulation was shown. Based on the Chernobyl NPP accident studies, in the present review attempts were made to assess minimum doses at which ecological and biological effects were observed.
URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412007002474
