By Simon Ostrovsky, Staff Writer
The Moscow Times, Moscow, Russia
Monday, Apr. 26, 2004. Page 1

Once the area had a population of close to 120,000 people, who were evacuated in the aftermath of the disaster.

Undeterred by radiation levels that in places are dozens of times higher than acceptable norms, some 500 former residents like Dika have since returned, while 4,000 others are shuttled into the zone to work on the gradual powering down of the plant.

The area has also become a bonanza for scientists studying the effects of radiation on plant and animal life that has reclaimed much of the area.

But even as scientists work to minimize radiation levels, the danger of a new tragedy lingers, this time in the form of a radioactive dust cloud.

Experts warn that the collapse of an unstable wall in reactor No. 4 could release some of the 200 tons of nuclear fuel encased inside the unit by a protective shell of concrete and steel that was hastily thrown up in the aftermath of the disaster.

It is known that the frequency of thyroid cancer in contaminated areas has jumped since the accident, though this consequence is becoming evident only today.

Radiation-induced thyroid cancer usually takes more than 15 years to set in. It will peak in the next few years, said Volodymyr Sert, a doctor who runs a Red Cross mobile diagnostic unit that screens residents in contaminated areas.

The organization registered 68 cases in the Zhytomyr region last year compared to just 15 in 1986.

In Laski, a half-deserted town 90 kilometers west of Chernobyl, background radiation levels are 30 times higher than in Kiev, 200 kilometers to the south of the reactor site.

Thyroid cancer cases are particularly high there because iodine deficiency caused the thyroids of locals to absorb the radioactive iodine released when Chernobyl exploded, Sert said.

And these people are still at risk of receiving a new dose of radiation.

Nuclear fuel trapped in the remains of reactor No. 4 are causing the structure to deteriorate, said Yulia Marusych, a spokeswoman for the plant.

"God knows how long it will hold," she said, pointing to a meter-tall model of reactor No. 4. The real reactor loomed outside the plant's observation deck.

The aging gray shell of the sarcophagus encasing unit No. 4 leaks radiation through some 100 square meters of cracks and holes on its surface, Marusych said. A dosimeter gave a reading of 1,600 roentgens per hour, or 90 times background radiation levels in Kiev.

There are plans to construct a 100-meter-high metal shell to cover units No. 3 and No. 4. The project, funded by international donors and lenders, as well as by the Ukrainian government, comes at a $768 million price tag and is scheduled to be finished by 2008.

"I hope it will be in time," Marusych said.

The power plant stands at the center of the 10-kilometer-radius dead zone. In Chernobyl town, which stands on the perimeter of the dead zone, a skeleton firefighting crew monitors forest fires to prevent radiation from spreading. The occasional bus trundles down the main street ferrying workers from the reactor.

In contrast to the lush green fields outside Kiev, agricultural lands in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone have been abandoned -- brown plots dotted with stunted trees. Deserted houses with broken windows line the road, and only the rare farmer passes by on a horse-drawn cart.

Unlike the areas surrounding the exclusion zone, scientists say, the dead zone will remain uninhabitable.

Too heavy to be carried by the winds that blew lighter radioactive elements as far away as Austria and Scandinavia, plutonium -- with a half-life of 24,000 years -- settled around the reactor, said Valery Kashparov, who directs the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology.

But with the proper funding, less radioactive areas, including parts of the exclusion zone, could be made safe for human life in less than a year, said Kashparov, a chain-smoker who said tobacco use is much more hazardous than radiation exposure.

His institute has developed a number of techniques to make produce safe enough to consume and sell outside the contaminated areas.

"Most of the radiation absorbed by people doesn't come from being in a radioactive area, it comes form eating produce grown there," Kashparov said.

Research by the institute -- which was founded a month after the disaster to study and fight its effects -- shows that only 5 percent to 25 percent of radiation absorbed by the body comes from background radiation and contaminated air and water.

"Eighty to 95 percent comes from eating contaminated food, especially milk and mushrooms," Kashparov said.

Just by tilling and fertilizing pastures, radiation intake would drop by eight times, Kashparov said.

"Tilling the pasture means cows will eat clean grass; the cows' meat and milk will in turn be clean, yielding cleaner manure used to fertilize potatoes, which in turn are fed to pigs," he said.

"Unfortunately the government is not doing enough to inform people and to help finance the purchase of fertilizers."

Almost 20 years after the disaster, little is known about the long-term effects of radiation.

"People think that smaller doses of radiation over a long period of time are less dangerous than a large dose all at once," said Dmitry Grodzinsky, a radiobiologist at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

Sitting in his dark Kiev office, Grodzinsky warned that the effects are not smaller, just different.

"An organism which is in an area of higher radiation is constantly agitated as the radiation destroys its cells. To adjust, the organism destabilizes its own genome so that it can adapt, resulting in more mutations in its offspring," he said.

Grodzinsky gave pine trees with extraordinarily long needles as an example.

He said as far as effects of radiation exposure go, cancer is a bigger danger than genetic instability.

Radioactivity certainly spawns myths.

When the 50,000 residents of Pripyat, a town just two kilometers from the reactor, were evacuated, they were not allowed to take their pets. Within a few months rumors spread of giant mutant dogs roaming the zone.

"What really happened was that the dogs got hungry and ate all the little dogs until none where left. Natural selection reclaimed Chernobyl," Grodzinsky said.