political fallout the failure of emergency management at chernobyl political fallout the failure of emergency management at chernobyl

Gnatiuk, Neobkhodimosf MPVO-GO, 19. Political Science 1991 THE ACCIDENT at the Chernobyl nuclear power station (NPS) on 26 April 1986 was a disaster of global proportions that has changed the politics of nuclear power in the Soviet Union and abroad. In December 1986, Pikalov received the USSR's highest military award, the Hero of the Soviet Union, for his service at Chernobyl'. Russian forces seize Chernobyl nuclear power plant - BBC News The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl 109 Party authorities, meanwhile, believed that keeping accidents secret would protect their legitimacy while posing little attendant political risk be cause they had successfully utilized this strategy in the aftermath of several nuclear disasters. Krutskikh, , Memuary, 410.Google Scholar, 75. Pipes, Richard, Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War, Commentary Gessen, Keith (Champaign, 2005).Google Scholar, 7. According to Gnatiuk, the civil defense staff of the RSFSR carried out exercises at all nuclear power stations in Russia prior to the Chernobyl disaster. Vypiska iz Norm radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti NRB-76,' TsDAHO, f. 1, op. Copyright 2015 Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies 55, no. 4, no. Medvedev, , The Truth about Chernobyl, 31,48, 86.Google Scholar. Nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl reactor blaze took the West German authorities completely by surprise. An employee of Chernobylinterinform told me this during a June 2010 visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. More broadly, the Chernobyl accident has had a major impact on public and political attitudes towards the safety of nuclear energy. Josephson, Paul R., Atomic-Powered Communism: Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR, Slavic Review Feature Flags: { Gorbachev touted the term heavily in his address to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress, in February 1986, as a critical component of socialist democratism. Has data issue: true Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management https://doi.org/10.5612/slavicreview.74.1.104, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. 65. Gessen, Keith (Champaign, 2005).Google Scholar, 7. Shcherbak, Iurii Nikolaevich, Chernobyl (Moscow, 1991), 395401. Medvedev, , The Legacy of Chernobyl, 49.Google Scholar, 55. View all Google Scholar citations "useRatesEcommerce": false CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 8. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. 44. 55, no. This reactor design, known in Russian as reaktor bol'shoi moshchnosti kanal'nyi (high-power channel-type reactor, RBMK), descended from Soviet plutonium-production reactor designs and consists of stainless steel tubes containing uranium fuel elements in which the light-water coolant boils, surrounded by graphite blocks that serve as a neutron moderator. Hurricane Katrina: Remembering the Federal Failures PDF Chernobyl and Its Political Fallout: A Reassessment - Demokratizatsiya On the construction of the sarcophagus, see Baranovs'ka, Chornobyl's'ka trahediia, 207-39, and on state measures to provide housing and employment to evacuees, see ibid., 182-85. It also led to a distrust and unease between Soviet citizens, specifically those in the evacuated and nearby areas, and President Gorbachov's regime. Slavic Review is an international interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, past and present. On the May 6 news conference, see Valentina Shevchenko has made contradictory statements to this effect. 2-4 (KGB report on conditions around ChNPP, April 26,1986). 28. Alexievich, Svetlana, Voices from Chernobyl:The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, trans. 65. To the extent that public and political attitudes towards nuclear energy are affected by perceptions based on Chernobyl and Fukushima, governments must be prepared to carefully and fully explain all the facts, to dispel the belief that nuclear energy is simply too risky to consider. Brown, , Plutopia, 285.Google Scholar, 20. 2337, ark. 2995,11.12-13 (report to Ukrainian CP Central Committee on Chernobyl liquidation effort, June 12,1986). EPA examines the events following the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe in order to better prepare itself for equally devastating nuclear accidents or acts of terrorism. Chernobyl contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and continues to impact on confidence in nuclear energy around the world. 48. The experiment resulted in the core becoming unstable and overheating, leading to a series of steam and other explosions, the destruction of part of the reactor structure, and the graphite core catching fire. This was despite the Chernobyl accident involving a unique reactor design, and a similar accident being physically impossible with light water reactors. CHERNOBYL SYMBOL OF SOVIET FAILURE. Vypiska iz Norm radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti NRB-76,' TsDAHO, f. 1, op. But the lethal Soviet political fallout is just. 7 (July 1977): 134;Google Scholar and Leon Gour, War Survival in Soviet Strategy: Soviet CivilDefense (Coral Gables, 1976). 3,39.Google Scholar, 70. Firstly, the accident prompted nuclear energy policy to arise as a significant public issue. On April 26, 1986, a sudden surge of power during a reactor systems test destroyed Unit 4 of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union. 1. 2-3 (report to CP Ukraine Central Committee on events at ChNPP, April 1986). A major event of the 20th century had occurred. Bomb Shelters in the USSR, 1945-1962, Grazhdanskaia oborona: Slozhnyi etap razvitiia, Neobkhodimost MPVO-GO: Podtverdilo vremia, Formirovaniia grazhdanskoi oborony v bor'be s stikhiinymi bedstviiami, Russians, Too, Joke Sadly on Atom-War Survival, Plutopia:Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters, When Safe Enough Is Not Good Enough: Organizing Safety at Chernobyl, Likvidatsiia posledstvii radioaktivnogo zarazheniia, Opyt likvidatsii Chernobyl skoi katastrofy, Trevozhnye dni i nochi Chernobylia: Sbornik rasskazov ivospominanii, Chernobyl': Sobytiia i uroki. Radiation: The Chernobyl accident - WHO | World Health Organization Request Permissions. 1 (unmarked document, apparently from April 26,1986, outlining radiation protection norms). That could set up a political fraught situation for President Joe Biden. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions Chernobyl: People Who Played a Crucial Role in the World's Worst Schmid, Sonja, When Safe Enough Is Not Good Enough: Organizing Safety at Chernobyl, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 1. 67, no. 2957,11. CHERNOBYL, U.S.S.R. -- When Reactor No. Today, a protective shelter covers the fallen reactor to. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl ESA - Mapping Chernobyl fires from space - European Space Agency Karpan, N. V., Chernobyl: Mest mirnogo atoma (Kiev, 2005);Google Scholar and Sequence of Events - Chernobyl Accident Appendix 1 (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Razmyshleniia, Voices from Chernobyl:The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, Atomic-Powered Communism: Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR, Atomnaia energiia i radiatsionnaia bezopasnost, Was There a Real Mineshaft Gap'? Marples, David R., Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR (Toronto, 1986), 111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 9. 34, ark. In December 1986, Pikalov received the USSR's highest military award, the Hero of the Soviet Union, for his service at Chernobyl'. Lowy Institute. Gorbachev, M. S., Sobranie sochinenii, vol. Baranovs'ka, Nataliia, Chornobyl's'ka trahediia: Narisi z istorii (Kiev, 2011).Google Scholar For an overview of Ukrainian historiography on Chernobyl until 2006, see On April 26th, around 01:23 AM, a critical failure of Chernobyl's reactor No. Krutskikh, , Memuary, 410.Google Scholar, 75. On the organizational history of the Soviet nuclear power sector prior to Chernobyl', see The exact sequence of events that unfolded in the days following the disaster and the forces that shaped it have, however, remained obscure. 26 kvitnia 1986r., DA SBU, f. 64 op. 64. The negative sentiment towards nuclear energy, and a political unwillingness to even discuss the subject, is particularly problematic today when there is increasing pressure to move to low carbon forms of energy. Plokhy delves deeper into the political fallout of Chernobyl, which played a significant role in the break-up of the Soviet Union as dismay grew in Ukraine and Belarus about how public safety was at the whim of party politics in distant Moscow. For instance, Paul Josephson states in his history of the Soviet nuclear power program that Soviet planners never anticipated an accident of such a scale, and apparently they never accumulated the medicines and equipment needed for nuclear civil defense purposes, except perhaps for the elite in capital cities. Paul R. Josephson, RedAtom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (Pittsburgh, 2005), 260. 40, no. Known as aptechki individualnye AI-2, these first-aid kits came in bright orange plastic cases and included seven different drugs, including potassium iodide, two antibiotics (tetracycline and sulfanamide), cystamine, nausea-prevention tablets, a single-use syringe of morphine, and tablets of taren, a form of the Soviet drug aprofen included to counteract organophosphate chemical weapons. 25, sprava (spr.) See TsDAHO, f. 1, op. D'iachenko, , Opyt likvidatsii Chernobyl skoi katastrofy, 3940.Google Scholar, 35. A 1989 book for propagandists about the disaster exemplifies the government's defensive position on this topic. See, for example, 1 (January 1988): 32.Google Scholar. The principal reactor type around the world, the light water reactor, uses water as both moderator (to slow down neutrons to enable an ongoing nuclear reaction) and coolant (to remove heat and produce steam for power generation). Clean-up is scheduled for completion by 2065. Total loading time: 0 If the destruction of the state brought the physical destruction of Jews, what determined the rescue of certain ones during the Holocaust? Reports prepared for the party attest to many Soviet citizens belief in accounts of the disaster like that circulated by UPI. It maintains that the radiological conditions in Pripiat' did not objectively require evacuation on April 26, and it ignores the fact that GO officers protested the delay. 67. While the USSR's civil defense organization urged prompt and decisive measures to inform the population of the accident and move people out of harm's way, other Soviet institutions, such as the Communist Party and the KGB, feared the accident's threat to their legitimacy more than its implications for public health. On the night of 25-26 April, there was an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the 15 constituent republics of the. D'iachenko, A. Says Toll May Pass 2,000, New York Times, April 30,1986, A10. Karpan, N. V., Of Chernobylia doFukusimy (Kiev, 2011).Google Scholar, 6. Spravka, TsDAHO, f. 1, op. 45. The rem measurement is the product of the exposed dose in roentgens and a weighting factor accounting for the effectiveness of the type of radiation to cause biological damage. 2979,11.8-12 (report on Ukrainian citizens reactions to M. S. Gorbachev's May 14,1986, televised address). 26 kvitnia 1986r., DA SBU, f. 64, op. Smirnova, A. S., ed., Trevozhnye dni i nochi Chernobylia: Sbornik rasskazov ivospominanii (Kiev, 2003), 34.Google Scholar. 4 exploded, first blowing off its giant concrete lid, then letting a massive . 2979,11.8-12 (report on Ukrainian citizens reactions to M. S. Gorbachev's May 14,1986, televised address). Ivanov, Chernobyl', Voennyeznaniia, no. doubly occupied lands in Eastern Europe. 2997, ark. See PDF ARTICLES Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at 3 The international response to Chernobyl was delayed because President Mikhail Gorbachev chose to defer the declaration of emergency for political reasons. The Chernobyl reactors used water as a coolant with reactor 4 fitted with 1,600 individual fuel channels; each requiring a coolant flow of 28,000 litres per hour. Chernobyl Accident and Its Consequences - Nuclear Energy Institute } (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management https://doi.org/10.5612/slavicreview.74.1.104, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. Baranovs'ka, N., Chornobil's'ka trahediia iak argument perebudovi, in Perebudova: Zadum i rezul'taty v Ukrainy do10-richchia protoloshennia kursu na reformy (Kiev, 1996), 3845.Google Scholar. Some western analysts concluded that the shortcomings of the USSR's disaster response at Chernobyl proved that the USSR's much-discussed civil defense investment was either useless or illusory. "useRatesEcommerce": false CHERNOBYL SYMBOL OF SOVIET FAILURE - The Washington Post In 1987, the USSR tried and convicted several individuals for the accident using this argument. 34, ark. restored republic feb 28 2021. how to become a sommelier as a hobby. M. Balonov, A. Bouville, in Encyclopedia of Environmental Health (Second Edition), 2013 Introduction The Accident. 32, spr. Krutskikh, D. A., Memuary (Moscow, 2001), 4046.Google Scholar, 73. Chernobyl's effects went well beyond radiation, rippling through the social and political fabric of a deteriorating society. 66. Facing increasing river flood risk in Europe: adaptation measures can save lives and billions of euro. In early 1983, the ministry noted the problems of reliability and safety at nuclear power plants but evaluated the attendant costs entirely in terms of the economic losses resulting from repair shutdowns, not possible accident hazards. 34, ark. 25, spr. The abuse potential of the latter two substances (aprofen can induce a hallucinogenic delirium) may have discouraged the Soviet government from issuing the complete kits to citizens following the Chernobyl' accident, and extant accounts suggest that civil defense distributed only the potassium iodide tablets. 25, spr. Pipes, Richard, Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War, Commentary Ivanov, , Chernobyl', Voennyeznaniia, no. Chernobyl: the continuing political consequences of a nuclear accident Informatsiine povidomlennia KDB URSR do TsK KPU pro vybukh 4-ho enerhobloka Chornobyl's'koyi AES. It publishes over 2,500 books a year for distribution in more than 200 countries. A paper co-developed by the JRC and published in Nature compares the costs and benefits of flood risk reduction measures in Europe. The . Ever since the accident that destroyed unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26,1986, became public knowledge, the Soviet government's response to this catastrophe has been the, Borders have been a part of Viktors life for most of his adulthood. Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada: wildfire Chernobyl disaster Baranovs'ka, Nataliia, Chornobyl's'ka trahediia: Narisi z istorii (Kiev, 2011).Google Scholar For an overview of Ukrainian historiography on Chernobyl until 2006, see Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org) is the publishing division of the University of Cambridge, one of the worlds leading research institutions and winner of 81 Nobel Prizes. Gaidamak, V. A., Likvidatsiia posledstvii radioaktivnogo zarazheniia (Moscow, 1980), 4.Google Scholar, 26. From the 25-year-old with his finger on the wrong button to the grizzled Communist Party apparatchik who . Cambridge Journals publishes over 250 peer-reviewed academic journals across a wide range of subject areas, in print and online. Valentina Shevchenko, head of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR in 1986, insisted in a 2011 interview that the Kiev May Day parade went ahead at Moscow's insistence. Even today, 27 years after the accident, countermeasures are implemented in several regions to mitigate the impacts. The local mayor originally had announced that a Q&A town hall meeting . During the night of 26 April 1986, Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, located 130 km to the north-east of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine,(Up until 1991, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine . The fourth test was scheduled to be run on April 25, 1986. 68. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl See, for example, Potter, William and Kerner, Lucy, The Soviet Military's Performance at Chernobyl, Soviet Studies Medvedev, , The Legacy of Chernobyl, 4952.Google Scholar. See On the construction of the sarcophagus, see Baranovs'ka, Chornobyl's'ka trahediia, 207-39, and on state measures to provide housing and employment to evacuees, see ibid., 182-85. Chernobyl may have actually been a boon for wildlife. 25, spr. The severity and long persistence of radioactive contamination challenges the affected communities in many ways. Recovering from a Nuclear Incident - Lessons Learned from Chernobyl Medvedev, , The Truth about Chernobyl, 26.Google Scholar, 12. Shcherbinoi, [operation at] energy blocks # 1 and 2 has been halted with a shut-down cooling of the reactors. For a recent English-language account of these disasters, see most significant fallout occurred across western Soviet Russia, Belarus and Ukraine; and the nearby settlements of Chornobyl and Pripyat (Clark and Smith, 1988). 2558, ark. Dawson, Jane I., Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identityin Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine (Durham, 1996).Google Scholar Post-1991 Ukrainian scholarship on the disaster has expanded on this thesis. 27. 2337, ark. 28 kvitnia 1986r., DA SBU, f. 16, op. 23, no. Some analysts claimed that the USSR possessed a massive civil defense program. In early 1983, the ministry noted the problems of reliability and safety at nuclear power plants but evaluated the attendant costs entirely in terms of the economic losses resulting from repair shutdowns, not possible accident hazards. 34-38 (circular on Chernobyl accident for party propagandists, May 8,1986). The accident added to the publics distrust of government authorities. 2 (March/April 2011): 1929.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Chernobyl disaster - Wikipedia Rossii, MChS TsSI GZ, Grazhdanskaia oborona: Slozhnyi etap razvitiia, Grazhdanskaiazashchita political fallout the failure of emergency management at chernobyl. Ever since the accident that destroyed unit 4 of the Chernobyl' Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986, became public knowledge, the Soviet government's response to this catastrophe has been the subject of bewilderment and withering criticism. 2-4 (KGB report on conditions around ChNPP, April 26,1986). This fire dispersed radioactive particles from damaged fuel into the upper atmosphere, contaminating widespread areas of Europe. Under the auspices of the UN Chernobyl Forum, WHO carried out its own independent health assessment of the accident. PDF Nationalism and the Collapse of Soviet Communism Medvedev, Zhores A., Nuclear Disaster in the Urals, trans. Not long after midnight on April 26, 1986, the world's worst nuclear power accident began. Chernobyl contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and continues to impact on confidence in nuclear energy around the world. Since the early 1950s, some Americans had argued that the USSR possessed a vast, well-resourced civil defense organization that was far more capable than its American counterpart. On April 26, 1986, there was an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the republic of Ukraine. hasContentIssue true, Copyright Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. First, there is prevention. This chapter discusses the cause of the Chernobyl accident, the victims of Chernobyl, the economic and political repercussions, and the special zone restoration and reconstruction. Drawing on declassified archival documents from Ukrainian archives and memoir literature, I explore the political and institutional logic that prevented the USSR from acting appropriately to protect citizens from the consequences of the nuclear accident. In various ways the accident contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. 24. The Chernobyl disaster had other fallout: The economic and political toll hastened the end of the USSR and fueled a global anti-nuclear movement. 21. Shcherbak, Iurii Nikolaevich, Chernobyl (Moscow, 1991), 395401. An ironic example of this appeared in a May 8,1986, circular for party propagandists stating explicitly that the population is being promptly and fully informed about the ongoing work at the power plant and other measures. The circular itself, however, instructs recipients to destroy after reading. Ob avarii na Chernobyl skoi AES i likvidatsii ee posledstvii, TsDAHO, f. 1, op. Stay informed with the latest commentary and analysis on international events from experts at the Lowy Institute and around the world. On the May 6 news conference, see 10 (October 2005): 1819.Google Scholar, 15. The test was supposed to recreate conditions of a power outage, aimed at creating a . On the history of Soviet civil defense, see 79. Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crisesradioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold Warand the international response. 40, no. In 1986, . Shcherbak, , Chernobyl', 397.Google Scholar, 38. The Chernobyl Reactor #4 catastrophic failure was caused by: Neglect for prescribed operating limits and procedures, The removal of automatic protection schemes, and inherent design flaws in a nuclear device. Vladimirov, V. et al., Of MPVO k grazhdanskoi zashchite: Stranitsy iz istorii MPVOGO-PSChS sub'ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow, 2004).Google Scholar Furthermore, several Russian scholars have touched on the role of Soviet civil defense at Chernobyl', particularly writer and Chernobyl liquidator Anatolii D'iachenko. Ivanov, B., Chernobyl',' Voennyeznaniia 3844 (report on shutdowns in Ukrainian nuclear energy sector, March 1983). 2 (excerpts from NRB-76). The term may also be used to describe other events, such as the displacement of large populations as a result of war. D'iachenko, A. Brown, Kate, Plutopia:Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford, 2013).Google Scholar For an account based on rumors about the disasters that circulated prior to Chernobyl', see 2558, ark. Atamaniuk, V. G., Shirshev, L. G., and Akimov, N. I., Grazhdanksia oborona (Moscow, 1986), 1012.Google Scholar, 74. 68. 22. A., Chernobylskaiakatastrofa: Dvadtsat letspustia (Moscow, 2006).Google Scholar For accounts touching on the role of civil defense during the disaster penned by the plant's assistant safety officer, see 23. Gorbachev, M. S., Sobranie sochinenii, vol. Dovidka 3-ho Upravlinnia KDB URSR, 1-5. Vozniak, V. But the KGB deemed this could be a manual for saboteurs and classified it Top Secret, so the operators were never aware of the danger. Legasov, V. A., Iz segodniav zavtra: Mysli vslukh Chernobyl i bezopasnost (Moscow, 1996), 57.Google Scholar, 76. Altunin, A. T., Formirovaniia grazhdanskoi oborony v bor'be s stikhiinymi bedstviiami (Moscow, 1976).Google Scholar, 17. The Interpreter features in-depth analysis & expert commentary on the latest international events, published daily by the Lowy Institute, Copyright 2023 43. Vozniak, Ignatenko, Kovalenko, and Troitskii, Chernobyl', 121. In fact, the Three Mile Island accident demonstrated that a properly designed containment building can protect public health and safety from even the most serious accident. The storm flooded New Orleans, killed more than 1,800 people, and caused $100 billion in . 2 (excerpts from NRB-76). Mapping Chernobyl fires from space. 23. Saunders, George (New York, 1979).Google Scholar, 19. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. Informatsiine povidomlennia KDB URSR do TsK KPU pro vybukh 4-ho enerhobloka Chornobyl's'koyi AES. 67. For a western analysis of the interplay between antinuclear and anti-Soviet popular sentiments following Chernobyl', see Meltdown and immediate response. The threat of global climate change has pushed governments around the world to consider alternative energy sources, including nuclear energy. This is an imperative step in making sure that everyone involved is . Some Russian-language scholarship about Soviet civil defense at Chernobyl argues that the organization's failures during the disaster resulted from a disproportionate emphasis on planning for wartime hazards and that it made major reforms in light of its experiences. 2 (Spring 2012): 328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 14. Since the early 1950s, some Americans had argued that the USSR possessed a vast, well-resourced civil defense organization that was far more capable than its American counterpart. JRC news - EU Science Hub 4-6, 3436. 1,32.Google Scholar, 54. An employee of Chernobylinterinform told me this during a June 2010 visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl' Feature Flags: { The Chernobyl disaster: what happened, and the long-term impact For one thing, it completely ignores the critical mobilisational dimension of politics during The folly of large surface ships and primacy of submarines is not clear-cut. Medvedev, , The Truth about Chernobyl, 2528.Google Scholar, 25. The Chernobyl accident caused serious contamination of large areas in Norway in 1986. I visited this shelter in June 2010 along with the shelter at ChNPP. 28. Gnatiuk, Iu., Neobkhodimost MPVO-GO: Podtverdilo vremia, Grazhdanskaiazashchita Three months later on April 26, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded, spewing radiation across Belorussia, Poland, the Baltic states, and northern Europe. Chernobyl: Chapter IX. Lessons learnt - Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) The rem measurement is the product of the exposed dose in roentgens and a weighting factor accounting for the effectiveness of the type of radiation to cause biological damage. Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl, 54. Medvedev, , The Truth about Chernobyl, 26.Google Scholar, 12. Beginning in 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, scattering a massive amount of radioactivity across the globe. The consequences of this accident exceed Stikhi, ocherki, rasskazy, otryvki iz romanov ipovestei, interv'iu (Kiev, 1988);Google Scholar While the USSR's civil defense organization urged prompt and decisive measures to inform the population of the accident and move people out of harm's way, other Soviet institutions, such as the Communist Party and the KGB, feared the accident's threat to their legitimacy more than its implications for public health. As part of the test (and in violation of safety rules) a number of the reactors safety systems were disabled. Voprosy i otvety (Moscow, 1989), 120.Google Scholar, 46. The extent of Chernobyl's geopolitical fallout is less well known.