♪ [steady music] ♪ ♪ [steady music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [steady music ends] ♪ Hello.

Welcome to this special South Carolina ETV program, the Chernobyl Event: An Update at 35 years.

I'm your host Angel Malone.

Approximately 35 years ago, on April 26, 1986 the largest nuclear disaster in history took place behind the Soviet Iron Curtain this accident of catastrophic proportions has ramifications for the people and nature there in the Chernobyl area, but also it had impact on the world.

During this program, our discussion with expert guests will reflect on the history of the event and the impacts still today as we look at the effect on humans and nature, consider environmental issues and talk about science and education.

Let's meet our guests, who have joined us in the studio at SCETV.

First, a long time familiar face on SCETV, Rudy Mancke.

Rudy was the naturalist and co-host of South Carolina ETV's NatureScene series that aired nationally on PBS for 25 years.

He made several trips to the Chernobyl area to document the natural history.

Currently, he serves as a naturalist in residence at the University of South Carolina.

Dr. Tim Mousseau, Professor of Biological Science at the University of South Carolina has made numerous trips to Chernobyl to study the impact of radioactive contaminants and is the leading authority on the impact of radio activity on birds, mammals and insects in the area surrounding Chernobyl.

Angie Hill is a national board certified teacher.

She teaches Chemistry, AP Chemistry, Physics, and AP Physics plus serves as the science department here at Westwood High school and Richland County School District Two Ann Timberlake's 50 years of conservation and political work includes volunteering on the Congaree Swamp Campaign, leading the Conservation Voters of South Carolina and currently she serves as South Carolina Director of the Energy Foundation.

Dr Gordon B. Smith, distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of South Carolina is a noted authority on Russian politics and author of numerous books including Soviet Politics: Struggling with Change and State Building in Russia .

Thank you all for joining us.

Now, let's take a look at a short segment that highlights the history of the Chernobyl event and sets the stage for our discussion.

35 years ago on April 26 1986, the largest nuclear disaster in history took place behind the Soviet Iron Curtain.

This event impacted nature, the plants and animals, nuclear science, the Soviet Union's political outlook and economy and U.S.-Soviet relations, as well, as the people who lived there and called it home.

The Chernobyl event had ramifications that impacted the world.

In 2011, on the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, South Carolina ETV produced in partnership with the South Carolina Department of Education and the University of South Carolina, a series of programs, entitled Nature Comes Back: 25 Years After Chernobyl.

These specials featured expert naturalists, scientists journalists and historians who provided insight to pull back "the curtain" on this important world event.

Rare photos and video footage captured by South Carolina ETV's NatureScene production team when they were allowed to visit in 2003 document evidence of the devastation caused by an accident of catastrophic proportions.

Design flaws led to a power surge, which caused massive explosions.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant experienced a meltdown of the reactor core.

Fire ensued for about 10 days and radioactive particles pierced the atmosphere.

People in the area were scared.

They knew something had happened, but even though the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost or openness had months prior allowed for enhanced freedom of speech and press, there was a blackout on news of the event.

Not until two days later, when Sweden forced the Soviet hand because a radioactive cloud was nearing their border, did the truth break to the Soviet people and to the world.

The news blackout impacted U.S. President Ronald Reagan summit talks concerning arms control giving our leaders more reason to distrust the Soviets.

History recounts that attempts to cover up the incident ultimately contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union.

And the cost to humans and to nature, devastating.

Pripyat, was a city built for the Chernobyl workers and their families.

Before the disaster, around 60 thousand made it their home.

In the days following the incident, the whole community left in a hurry and never returned.

The people there and in the surrounding areas were exposed to damaging radiation.

Food sources were threatened.

In nearby Belarus, a major agricultural area, crops were contaminated, animals on the farms and in the forest, the plants and the humans all experienced radiation exposure.

It caused genetic mutations in plants and animals.

Children of exposed mothers have exhibited birth defects.

Many young and old, have endured cancer.

We may never know, the real cost to human life.

For some, this tragic event that occurred far across the globe in 1986 may be little remembered, but it is important.

It was important enough in 2003, for major supporters of the University of South Carolina and SCETV to secure permissions for a team of South Carolinians to visit when few were allowed to enter this area.

They documented the impact on nature and listened to stories of the local people who would come back in spite of the danger.

It remains important enough today for scientists to continue to study the effects of the radiation.

The Chernobyl event on April 26, 1986 for ever impacted people and nature.

And 35 years since the tragedy, it remains the world's worst ever civil nuclear disaster.

<Angel> What an interesting segment.

For some, this incident that happened or this disaster that happened in 1986, it's far remembered.

Why are we still talking about this 35 years later?

<Dr.

Gordon Smith> Well, it still resonates today.

It's an ongoing political, economic, biological, discussion and investigation that still resonates to this day.

<Angel> Absolutely.

Thank you for sharing that so as a professor emeritus at USC what is the work that USC and SCETV involve themselves in to look at the Chernobyl event and bring this information back to our concerned citizens?

<Dr.

Smith> The University has always been interested in looking at environmental issues.

I myself am a political scientist.

So, I should throw the ball over to our experts here, who have been part of USC delegations that have gone over a span of years looking at the long term effects of the Chernobyl event.

<Rudy Mancke> I think is an interdisciplinary approach.

I mean, I think that's what we what we still talk about it for, because it was not just a explosion of radioactive volcano.

It affected humans and it affected other animals and plants.

And it was a political problem and situation and still is today.

And it also affects your view of whether nuclear energy is something that's good, bad or in the middle, and the risks that are involved and I think it made people aware of all of that.

I love those combinations of things.

I really do.

The interdisciplinary approach is a great way to educate people.

And Chernobyl is a perfect way to put lots of pieces of different puzzles together.

<Dr.

Tim Mousseau> As he said, Chernobyl really was at the nexus of both political and environmental and energy issues and all that went about this point in time, it represented the largest of a series of accidents before that, a few years before Chernobyl, we had a large nuclear accident here in the United States at Three Mile Island, which sort of educated people of the potential hazards and Chernobyl really kind of hammered that home and when combined with the political issues that were going on around the world at the time, it really did inspire a lot of interest.

It was also the largest nuclear accident, as somebody already mentioned and it contaminated vast areas of Ukraine and Belarus and Russia, but also many parts of central Europe and as far away as the United Kingdom were affected as evidenced by food being removed from the shelves and not being able to harvest the plants, major impacts all around.

<Ann Timberlake> In South Carolina, although we're only the 40th largest state in size, we are the third largest generator of nuclear energy.

<Angel> That's right.

<Ann> And we have a long history in this state.

So, I think South Carolinians have a particular interest when the first, our first nuclear plant was built at the Robinson Plant up in Hartsville.

At that time, it was the first in the southeast.

That was 1971.

That time I think it was the largest in the country.

So, we have a long history <Angel> Saying you're definitely correct on that.

That interconnectedness that's there.

And then learning from someone else's experiences, learning from another country's experiences.

So, tell me, how was it as you all have traveled there, how has the Soviet Union changed from that time, until now?

[random laughter] <Dr.

Smith> I probably started going there before, earlier than anybody else on this panel, I guess.

I first went over to Russia as an undergraduate student for a summer language program in 1970 and I've been there 50, 60 times.

I don't know.

I've sort of lost count but I think that the one thing about it might surprise people why political science factors into to this.

But one thing that I think is really important understand is the year before the Chernobyl accident happened, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

And he came in after two very short term heads of the Communist Party that were old and died in office.

And he came in as a reformer and he started - He was going to build his political base and persona around three reforms.

One is democratization.

One was Perestroika, which means reconstruction, economic reform and the last and most important for this discussion is glasnost, which was candor or frankness or discussion.

For decades, Soviet leaders had lied to their public or covered up events.

He proclaimed he was going to introduce this new era of reform and honesty in dealing with people, showing respect for the citizens.

Well it's funny how all of that ended, like a year later, [laughter] Chernobyl happened, because they denied that it happened for several days, even to their own citizens.

They delayed any kind of announcement or warnings on evacuations and they wouldn't allow foreigners into the area until 1990, four years later, didn't ask for foreign help and assistance or anything and that just made a joke of Gorbachev's big new plan of liberalizing reforms and glasnost and discussion of public issues and that still exists.

That's still an issue in Russian politics today with Putin of can leaders engage with their own citizens in an honest way or do they dissemble all the time, which undercuts their support among the citizenry and we're seeing that with Putin, today.

<Rudy> Was that part of the reason that the Soviet Union collapsed in 91'?

<Dr.

Smith> A very big part of it.

<Rudy> it was right after that.

>> among citizens that Gorbachev's problems is seeing all these reforms that a lot of the well educated Russian citizens were wanting and looking forward to.

Then that ended up looking like a farce after Chernobyl and Gorbachev was "tap dancing" trying to please everybody and not doing a very good job of it.

And ultimately, there was turn over and a lot of the other republics that made up the Soviet Union and when Ukraine voted to bail from the Soviet Union that was the death knell for the U.S.S.R.

It was inconceivable that the Soviet Union could continue to exist without this huge Republic of Ukraine as one of its members and the Ukraine had been so badly treated by Soviet leaders over the years.

Stalin forced collectivization of agriculture on Ukrainian farmers back in the 1930s.

They came in, confiscated their crops, took all their cattle and sold them on market and used the funds to finance industrialization in other parts of Russia.

And Ukrainians remember that.

Ukrainians have long memories of these sorts of things.

And, you know, it's even interesting that the name Ukraine means borderland.

Oukraina means at the border.

The Russians think about Ukraine sort of the way that we sometimes think about states like Iowa where I come from.

It's kind of a flyover state or something.

And even just recently, Putin, well I guess it's not that recently, five or six years ago when there was some discussion about Ukraine joining the E.U.

or NATO, Putin said kind of scoffed and said, That's idiotic.

Ukraine's not even a real country.

It's an area, but it's not a real country.

<Angel> Well, with that being said and I appreciate you sharing that piece of so far as leadership is concerned and how that directly impacts what happens before, as you're planning and trying to prevent and have precautions for disaster, but then also after, when it does happen, when you can't prevent it, how you handle those things.

So, I want to ask you Angie, how do you feel that this is important so far as science is concerned to ensure that students, our leaders of tomorrow know about this?

<Angie Hill> Absolutely.

First of all, we have sitting on this panel, experts in political science.

We have naturalists.

We have biologists.

We have, of course, myself as an expert in pedagogical skills.

And I see this as such an incredibly rich opportunity for us to have discussions in the secondary level and particularly to help improve scientific literacy among our students.

I will also add to that, that, you know, a lot of times when we first start off in science class, just regular old science class, the kids think of collecting data that is that's all associated with numbers and crunching numbers, but you never really get the full story of what's going on until you start to include all the qualitative data that helps really tell the story.

So, I see this discussion as one that is an opportunity to help broaden what we do in the secondary classrooms based on the South Carolina science state standards.

Absolutely.

<Angel> Absolutely.

I can't help but to think about learning about half lives and radioactivity and how long - right - how long it's going to be a hot place.

Or when will that decrease some?

So, my question to you all is you know how did not letting the people know in enough time, as you said - they didn't share that information - how did that cause an impact to those individuals there?

<Dr.

Mousseau> The biggest impact was that it increased the exposure of radioactivity to the population, particularly the children.

In fact, there are photos of school children from Pripyat, the town right next to the reactor, who were brought to one of the bridges close by - we've all been to - to watch the reactor burning.

And they were exposed to astronomical amounts of radioactive iodine among other things which led to about 100 thousand cases of thyroid cancer in children living in the region.

And this was simply because they had not been informed of the hazards related to this accident.

The capital city of Ukraine, Kiev, it was in the middle of parades and celebrations, Mayday celebrations and they were not informed of the dangers until they read about it in the western news, in fact.

And so, this the secrecy actually ended up exposing millions of people to the hazards of the fall out.

And undoubtedly has shortened many lives as a result.

<Angel> Right.

<Rudy> And everybody that lives anywhere close in what's now the exclusion zone was removed and basically told that, you know, we'll be back soon so don't pack everything, and of course, they were never allowed back and then you've got the people who sneak back in, the re-settlers, or come-backers.

There are a number of names for them who wanted to come back and live what was left of their lives in the house that their parents and grandparents lived in.

It uprooted lots and lots of people in Ukraine and Belarus and the effects are still are still there.

Half life of plutonium is what 25 thousand years or something like that.

Some extreme amount.

So that's not going to go away anytime soon and that has affects - But it's interesting when you go back and you meet some of those folks who come back in and there's a picture over there of a couple that, you remember when we met them, just kind and gentle people who were going to die where their parents that died and live in the house.

That pride in place, was just totally shattered and for lots and lots of people they never came back in and most of the people that are the settlers are older people many of whom have probably died since you and I saw them last.

It breaks your heart because here's a government that really didn't seem to care genuinely about the people, which seems so absurd to me and yet it happens often in the world then and now.

And that's another one of those interesting ramifications.

I think that's why USC got involved with this, just getting back to the fact that the University of South Carolina, the school was the dean and the school environment and he knew Bill Murray who this studio is named for, who was very active in supporting educational television in South Carolina very interested in the East-West relations on a variety of levels.

So, Bruce and Bill Murray and Sherry Beasley and some others got their heads together and said maybe we ought to send a delegation to Chernobyl and see if there's not a way that we as a university interdisciplinary can get involved.

So, Bill Murray and the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust put up the money and then 1998 made the first trip.

MUSC was involved, because they should have been involved certainly to study this, the School of Public Health on the campus.

I love this interdisciplinary approach.

I think that is the strongest kind of education that we can have.

It all happened because of these people early on.

<Ann> Rudy was USC one of the first academic institutions to have that kind of visit there?

<Rudy> From America, I think so.

Now there were others from France and other places that were involved directly because they were impacted.

And many of the places, Sweden was one of the first people to announce it.

I mean they had do something and so they became involved.

I thought it was interesting too and with Fukushima later that one of the groups that came in early to study Chernobyl were the Japanese.

And you can see some of their signs left behind.

I noticed that on that first trip, but that's why this is still important to talk about.

It just had so many effects.

There are little dominoes that they keep dropping down.

And it's affecting people's lives to this very day.

<Angel> So I had a question for you, Dr Mousseau, how has the life for people changed?

How is it now?

And then also with that what about the wildlife and just nature in general?

How is it, now, 35 years later?

<Dr.

Mousseau> Two big questions.

[laughs] The lives of the people are indirectly affected by Chernobyl to this day.

The economy of Ukraine and other Soviet former Soviet Republics again are still suffering from that disaster.

The health impacts of the initial exposure are still being felt by the people living there we and as we all know many of the diseases like cancer, often have a long refractory period between exposure and the actual expression of the disease and so some of the health outcomes are still being felt in a big way.

In terms of the wildlife.

That's something, I know a little bit more about.

[laughter] We've been working on studies of plants and insects and birds.

We started with birds and moved into plants and insects and more recently the mammals, as well.

And one of the really striking things about Chernobyl Rudy mentioned this before, is that when you first arrive there it looks kind of normal.

There are trees there.

There are birds there.

There's everything you might expect to see.

It just happens though that the radioactivity is very patchy and vast parts of the Chernobyl exclusion zone are actually relatively non-radioactive and other areas are extremely radioactive.

Where it's extremely radioactive, the plants and animals and birds aren't - are just not doing that well.

And they have cancers.

They have shorter life spans.

They have other kinds of developmental abnormalities.

They have cataract in their eyes.

Just the way that people who are exposed to radiation from other sources might also have.

And their population sizes are lower.

One of the most striking observations we made a few years ago was that many of the male birds in these radioactive areas were sterile.

They're incapable of reproduction.

Again we've seen those kinds of effects in humans that are exposed to radiation for cancer treatment.

And so they're expressing many of the sorts of diseases that you would normally see in a radioactive landscape.

But Chernobyl because of its size is rather unique and that we can look at what the population and whole ecosystem level consequences are from this kind of exposure.

<Ann> Tim, you mentioned the patches of this exposure throughout the area.

Is that thought to be wind patterns or just the lay of the land?

<Dr.

Mousseau> Yeah.

So, it's a combination of the fact that this accident was actually a nuclear fire that was burning for 10 days.

And the weather changed over the course of this ten days, the wind changed direction.

It was raining some days and not others.

And because of this variable meteorology, there are patches of radioactivity scattered across Ukraine and within the zone itself, but also across other parts of Europe.

So, parts of Scandinavia, Sweden, Finland, Norway are quite radioactive still to this day, as a result of the winds blowing in that direction.

<Rudy> It was just interesting, too for me to think of and I guess this is just the psyche of the Soviet Union.

They wanted to build the most nuclear reactors right next to each other of anywhere on the face of the earth.

And they put four of them, right sit together, basically and were building a fifth and a sixth, because you could see the cooling towers that were being built.

You pick a place that is by a river with alluvial deposits, which means if there's any leakage of anything, it's going to go into the aquifer, go into the river.

You pick a place that's away from everybody, so nobody will know what's going on if you take control of this area by the Pripyat River, which is the reason the city has that name tributary into the Dnieper River that goes on down to the Black Sea.

You put all of this together, it was an area where earthquake activity was known and yet you've made all of these decisions.

You've created a boiling pot.

They knew this would never be a problem at all.

And then it was a problem and I think that's why this became such a warning for a lot of other countries.

<Ann> It makes me think of the Savannah River site on the banks of the Savannah River in a possible earthquake.

<Dr Mousseau> How about Fukushima?

Six reactors as well.

The same sort of situation.

<Angel> How would you maybe do a comparison of what happened in Chernobyl, Fukushima and then also the comparison to where we are in South Carolina?

How would you incorporate that to a classroom of students who need to look at alternative forms of energy and the benefits of nuclear energy?

<Angie> It fits perfectly into our curriculum.

This is a project.

This is a deep dive, a deep study.

Again, like I mentioned before, its interdisciplinary.

It's a interdisciplinary project.

So, it fits well into our curriculum.

We teach earth science.

We teach environmental science.

We teach AP environmentalism as a matter of fact.

We teach biology.

We teach the chemistry.

We teach the physics.

So, I can see so many different ways that going back and taking a look at Chernobyl and also through the eyes of all of you who have been there could be a very rich experience for our students.

Especially even like you said in South Carolina where, it's as a citizen, we need to be more aware.

We need to understand nuclear energy, what that means if we're living near a nuclear plant, which I actually grew up near one, honestly.

Yeah, in Oconee County So, but I don't think that students are as aware.

They're not really so sure.

And we definitely need them to be informed citizens.

So such a rich opportunity.

<Dr.

Smith> There's a social dementia to this, that's really important enough and often times it's left out.

In lots of societies, where do they choose to build big infrastructure like atomic reactors and things?

It's where the land is cheap, where there's maybe a water resource available and where the local population are poor, are ethnic minorities or racial minorities.

Those are oftentimes places where these things are cited by economic planners in capital cities somewhere.

And it has a disproportionate effect.

The farming people in the region near Chernobyl, they were not wealthy and especially the ones that are the returnees are old, the big corporate farming enterprises that the Ukrainians, the Russians had in the area all were taken away during evacuation.

I think that we need to remember that the evacuated zone in Russia Belarus, Russia and Ukraine is about the size of Georgia, about the size of Georgia.

And a lot of those enterprises and big scale farming of sugar beets and corn and wheat and those kinds of crops, people like this in the picture are not doing that.

They're doing systems subsistence farming and living in their little cottage that's heated with a wood stove and sleeping on top of the stove to stay warm.

So, my hearts go out to those people too, but the scale of it is so much bigger than just the the immediate hottest zone of Chernobyl.

<Angel> So what are those political implications when we're looking at Chernobyl and what has happened and settlers coming back into the area.

It's still a hot area.

What are those political implications for South Carolina as we are embarking and already have a nuclear site, several nuclear sites but just looking to continue to expand that alternative form of energy?

What are those political implications for here and what should citizens know?

<Dr.

Smith> I do Russian politics.

American politics is far too complex for me.

Russian politics is obscure.

<Rudy> When I think about - really just jumping - at this Savannah River Site, I think of what we now call, New Ellenton.

There was an Ellenton.

And those people were removed.

And if there's been a good bit written about this, the effects on the lives of individual human beings and that's an interesting thing and I was at Lake Murray when we did a NatureScene show up there, when the water levels were down.

So, here you have cemeteries where churches used to be.

You cannot go and visit them anymore, because they're under six feet of water when the lake - you have to remove people to do even hydroelectric projects.

I mean this is affecting people's lives and that's interesting and that's my mind is always working about those kinds of connections in the world I really believe that John was right when he said you try to touch one thing by itself, you find it hitched to everything in the universe.

One of the crazy things when my first visit to Chernobyl was seeing box elder trees there, now.

You may not know what box elders are.

It's a maple.

It's a common maple all over the state of South Carolina very common in America, way into the southwest, but it has become in the exclusion zone where I looked, the dominant invasive species.

And it's called American Maple.

And if you walk down this main street in Chernobyl there, there with fruit on them and right next to the horse chestnuts.

And by the way Chernobyl, what does that word mean?

Wormwood.

It is the name of one of the very common plants.

Artemisia is the name of the genus name that's all over the place.

They're very aromatic.

We have them in America too and we call it sage brush out west and have varieties of that species here.

What's interesting to see American species that were introduced there usually you think of vice versa.

These things are going both ways.

We're fiddling with the environment in little ways and in very big ways and sometimes it comes back the haunt us.

<Ann> So, go back to the question about attitudes and there's some very recent polling out that shows that nationally voters, 80% of voters favor government assisted investment in renewable and clean energy which I think is encouraging and today the economics are such that we have a lot more choices with energy.

you know back when these nuclear plants were being built it was like nuclear power or coal plants.

So, we have a changing economic and the ability to build more clean energy and as long as we're talking about clean energy there are people who point out that nuclear power is a fossil.

It's not a carbon emitter.

<Angel> Right.

<Ann> It is clean instead of clean in some respects, because there's a waste issue.

There's also back in 2017.

I would say that given what happened in Jenkinsville with the Summer, the abandonment of the Summer reactors, I don't think South Carolinians are quite as eager about nuclear power.

There was some polling done in 2017, right after that said that 45% of South Carolinians thought they should be less reliance on nuclear.

But you know it's part of the mix and we need to have a mix of energy generation.

<Angel> I think it's also just a part of awareness and knowing the power of using that type of alternative energy.

And so just did going back to Chernobyl after this event, what's happening there now?

If I wanted to go visit, I've never been.

I'm excited to go but I can't.

What's happening there now?

>> You can call up your travel agent and look up bus tour to Chernobyl.

<laughter> It's a different world now.

It has changed drastically.

<Ann> Like a tourist destination.

<Dr.

Mousseau> It's quite amazing.

I remember where do most of my research is not usually in the heart of the touristy area.

I hadn't really noticed that this had changed so much until last year.

We were visiting and we showed up in the heart of Pripyat where we had been 25 years ago, which was incredibly radioactive and I looked down the vista of this open area, this amusement park in the heart of this town, it was filled with many hundreds of tourists, most from Europe, some Americans who were just wandering around like there is nothing going on.

So, it's a major tourist destination.

Ukraine makes an enormous amount of money from tourism at the moment.

Well, not this year, but in past years.

<Rudy> And they were also recycling, maybe would be the word for it.

The helicopters that were exposed to radiation, they put in a special area.

And you weren't to go over there.

It was fenced off.

And now they're selling off the remnants of that too.

It's dollars and cents but one of the crazy things about being the early ones in, it's the most bizarre feeling I've ever had in my life to see really tremendously large buildings.

No human beings there.

You see droppings of brown hare.

It's the big rabbit-like animal that's there.

We saw moose, you know, wandering around every now and then a cow and a calf road deer hopping around black cottonwoods growing up everywhere, because the seed get blown in.

Nature is coming back in a different form, but to see that as just a few people.

Now hundreds might take the pizzazz out of it for me, but it was just amazing just walking these wide roads.

Who would've ever thought when those buildings were built that they would not be in existence in 2021?

>> It's an Orwellian tombstone.

<Rudy> It is.

I's the idea of speaking of it is a radioactive volcano is just a neat way to say it, but to think of people watching it from Pripyat and saying "Wow, this is - "this is really exciting" because nobody told them anything about it.

The earliest people that left were people who were government officials who of course owned the automobiles and got their families out pretty quickly.

But it's frustrating when you go and get all of these feelings.

It conjures up really horrific notions in your mind and it's very hard to get it out of your mind.

<Dr.

Smith> Did you get to see the new containment facility that they have built.

<Rudy> No, not the newest.

When we were there - you didn't go on the first trip when they took who was it that took it - but anyway it was a Geiger counter.

So, we measured radioactivity on the ground in Columbia.

Then we flew up and of course it's higher, because there's less atmosphere.

And so we did it in Kiev.

We did it as we drove out.

We did it at the first little blockade and the second, and of course it kept going up and up and up and up.

And this was one of those Geiger counters with the little needles.

<Angel> I think that would be hard - <Rudy> We got to the building across from them reactor number four, the sarcophagus, it was called then.

A lot of concrete, a lot of leaky water coming out.

There were birds nesting right over our heads, which is amazing.

We turned on the Geiger counter and it pegged.

<Angel> Wow!

<Ann> It went off the charts.

<Rudy> That's not good.

<Angel> No.

<Rudy> And we're standing here, nonchalantly with maybe neutrons coming out, cause they come out every now and then.

The concrete doesn't stop that.

Gamma radiation, you know, I mean there are all sorts of things going on here.

House Martins we're nesting right there and they're feeding on insects that you know are exposed.

Nature keeps sending in the troops.

<Angel> Well, it shows the resilience of nature.

<Rudy> In a sense, it does.

A lot of the birds that are there like those are migrants.

So if you come and you get irradiated here, you go to Africa as a number of those bird species do and carry a little of that with you.

That's another one of those, you know, touch thing, by itself.

You find it is with the storks that were there, the white storks that were nesting.

One of the thrills for me was that I had read that often times certain birds that have been living with humans over many years, thousands of years, basically imprint on them.

And almost every time we saw a white stork nest with a bird on it, it was where humans have returned to the site.

And that was interesting.

<Angel> Interesting, yeah.

And they were in the fields picking up insects as people were plowing the fields.

And those connections are interesting and again they were dairy farms there big time.

So the populations over their swallows was just super abundant in those early days and now they're much less common and that's part of the reason but they're also getting exposed to radiation.

It's just it's really interesting when you put the pieces of the puzzle together - I think that's what education does for people.

That's the most important thing maybe that it does.

<Angel> So how does the incident, or the accident at Chernobyl compare to other nuclear accidents, such as Fukushima?

How does that compare?

<Dr.

Mousseau> It's funny you should ask that.

I just wrote a paper on that question.

[laughter] Chernobyl was about 10 times larger than the accident of Fukushima in terms of the amount of radioactivity released.

And it's even larger than that in the sense that that most of the radioactivity from the Fukushima accident landed in the Pacific Ocean where it was quickly dispersed and diluted and to low levels below which are even detectable for the most part and in part the Japanese were extremely fortunate in some way that it occurred when it did, because had it occurred at any other time of the year much more of the radioactivity would have landed on populated areas of Japan.

But just by chance March 11, 2011, the winds were prevailing mostly towards the ocean and so - Chernobyl far and away is the largest nuclear accident at a commercial power plant.

There have been other accidents at other military nuclear installations in Russia that have probably exceeded the impact of Chernobyl, but we don't know much about them.

<Angel> Don't know much about them.

We don't get that candor.

<Dr.

Mousseau> We don't need to go there.

<Dr.

Smith> Two years ago, they just completed the construction on the new containment structure over their reactor and it's both a good news, bad news story as it almost everything in this part of the world is.

It's good because it'll probably help with some of the containment.

And because what they did after the fire was just in the heat of the moment literally, helicopters dumping concrete over the fire.

The new containment structure which was built with a lot of international support 45 different countries contributed billions of dollars to build this containment structure.

So, we're happy it's done, but that's probably the end of massive foreign assistance and the Ukrainian government is economically very weak right now.

And so paying all of the victims, the people that have suffered as a result of the disaster.

Where is that money going to come from?

The Ukrainian government is not getting the kind of international support that they had been getting before.

<Angel> So can you talk a little bit more about those economic consequences, because of that Chernobyl incident.

I understand that it's repaying those families back that have been impacted but what other economic issues.

<Dr.

Smith> Well, there are massive land areas in Ukraine but also in Belarus and Russia which farming is really not prohibited or is now prohibited because the beets, the corn, whatever they're raising is radioactive and dangerous.

So, it's had a great economic impact.

It has a continuing political impact in Russian relations, Russian- Ukrainian relations.

Ukrainian government since the Soviet Union broke up has vacillated between attempts to swing toward Moscow or swing toward the west and every time Russia sees Ukraine signing a cooperation agreement with NATO, for example, then Putin will impose some restrictions.

They shut down the pipeline of natural gas Russia is a major provider of natural gas to Eastern Europe and Western Europe and those gas pipelines run through Ukraine.

And Ukraine suffered brownouts where major cities didn't have the natural gas to run their power generators to heat the cities.

All the big former Ukrainian-Russian cities are in one big power grid usually run as a result of natural gas and the Ukrainians on the other hand would sometimes shut down those pipelines to deny Russia the profits of exporting the gas.

So now the Russians have built a pipeline from Vyborg up near Saint Petersburg under the ocean through the Baltic Sea to Germany to avoid having to run through Ukraine.

And that's bad news for Ukraine because they don't get any transit fees for the gas coming through.

So, it gets to be a very complicated scenario when you think about all the implications of it.

<Angel> So, with that being said and knowing those political and economic issues or implications that have happened because of that event, how does this affect of how does this change or impacted the landscape of the energy front, especially in South Carolina, now?

<Ann> Well, as I mentioned before, I think we're very fortunate that we have this opportunity to invest more in solar.

Wind energy will become I think even more economic for us but solar is and we have - That's the sun.

Let's harness the sun and again I think for us, we have currently as I said, We produce over half of the of the energy produced here is from nuclear energy.

We have seven reactors.

We have four.

Talking about the clustering of nuclear reactors.

There are four at the Oconee station but I think the biggest threat we have here, would be the quantity of really deadly nuclear waste that is stored at Savannah River Site even DHEC has said that in past years.

When we talk a lot there's a lot written about the ticking time bomb that the Pinewood hazardous waste site has on the shores of lake Marion and that's a concern, but at Savannah River Site there was a real concentration.

There is work underway to move it.

South Carolina collected 600 million dollars last year as a result of a suit over the delay that the federal government has had in, you know, moving that waste.

That's a good thing but the deadline for removal was extended about 15 more years.

They are making progress there.

Now at 35 plus or minus million gallons of this waste in these aging underground storage tanks that were not designed to long term hold that waste, but that is in the process of being glass vitrified, put into a glass shape.

But there's now a proposal to build a facility, to build these it's a part of a nuclear warhead that would be produced at Savannah River Site.

And that would cause more plutonium to be - Like seven metric tons more plutonium to come to the states.

I think we need to be very watchful as South Carolinians about any more nuclear waste coming to this state.

Dick Riley said years ago, he said the rule about nuclear waste is once it's there, it's not moving.

And we need to be weary of that and we've had some political leadership back in 2008.

I was involved with other environmental groups in convincing the legislature that we could no longer let our state Barnwell facility be the dumping ground for the nation.

That was for low level commercial waste.

But that sent a signal that South Carolinians don't want to be the dumping ground.

<Angel> That's right.

Well, I will say this.

That out of all of the wealth of this discussion that we've had, number one that we understand the interconnectedness of all things as it relates to the impact of nuclear energy.

Right.

So, if we are not as watchful and we have these incidents happen.

And sometimes they're unforeseen they happen anyway but then also about the great impact of advocacy, to know when enough is enough.

As well as to engage innovatively in education about those new forms or those not so new forms of energy that we can use to conserve and to better help our planet overall and then those political and economic implications of not always sometimes maybe covering up something.

[laughs] And not always sharing what can happen and the ramifications of that later on.

We see with Chernobyl with the economic and political resistance that's there.

And then also looking at just the wildlife and nature and the resilience that even after an accident, they continue to thrive in the midst of an imperfect place and so do those re-settlers that come back because the pride of being in that place that's theirs.

Right.

So, we know that there is hope to move forward, but we also have some work to do to advocate for others to make sure there is a perfect balance.

Right.

I want to thank you first of all for being here today this discussion has been amazing.

And the partnership with USC and SCETV has been wonderful to be able to bring this back to South Carolina where we are on the cusp of looking at different ways to continue to have alternative forms of energy.

So, thank you for that.

This has been an engaging and educational conversation.

Again, thank you to our special guests Rudy Mancke, Dr. Mousseau, Angie Hill, Ann Timberlake, and Dr. Smith.

We appreciate each of you being with us and South Carolina ETV to take a look at the Chernobyl event which after 35 years remains the world's worst ever civil nuclear disaster.

And thank you also to you our viewers for joining us.

You are invited to access this program online at Knowitall.org For South Carolina ETV and SCETV Education, I'm Angel Malone.

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