Who Will Prevent the Next Chernobyl? (Op-Ed)

n the past two months, we have marked two anniversaries of catastrophic nuclear power plant accidents. March 11 was the five-year anniversary of the Fukushima accident in Japan , and April 26 was the 30-year anniversary of the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine . Both accidents involved reactor-core meltdowns, both accidents received the highest severity rating by the International Atomic Energy Agency (level 7), both accidents involved the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents, and both accidents still have people waiting to return to their homes. The accidents left a legacy of large-scale radioactive contamination of the environment, and that radioactivity will persist for years to come, despite the best cleanup efforts that money can buy.

Both accidents should have underscored the necessity for personnel highly trained in the radiation sciences to be stationed onsite, and marked the beginning of a redoubling of efforts to better educate the next generation of radiation-protection professionals to preventfuture nuclear catastrophes. But ironically and sadly, they did not.


The U.S. federal government's investment in the training of radiation personnel has dropped, rather than risen, during the years since these nuclear accidents and is now at its lowest point in decades.

Admittedly, Chernobyl was a much bigger accident than Fukushima, both in terms of the amount of radioactivity released and the public health impacts. But there is another major distinction between Chernobyl and Fukushima: The Chernobyl accident was an entirely man-made event. It was the result of a "safety trial" gone terribly amiss, compounded by incompetence, and made even worse by misinformation and secrecy. The accident could have been prevented completely, and its consequences could have been mitigated, with effective training, management and regulatory oversight.

http://www.livescience.com/54550-preventing-another-nuclear-meltdown.html