Decade
of Resistance 
shundahai@shundahai.org
Shundahai Network
Dedicated to Breaking
the Nuclear Chain
Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning "Peace and Harmony with all Creation"
April 25, 2006
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Helping to Soothe Pain, Fear After Chernobyl
Twenty years ago, an explosion halfway around the world ignited a series of partnerships with Pittsburgh - ranging from robots to ophthalmology - some of which last to this day. In the early morning of April 26, 1986, a string of safety mistakes coupled with a flawed design led to a fireball that blew the lid off Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, located in Northern Ukraine, close to the Belarusian border. Radiation-laden dust spewed into the air and settled over Ukraine, Belarus and part of Russia. The explosion subjected at least 5 million people to the fallout. Fewer than 50 deaths were attributed to the explosion and severe radiation poisoning, according to a United Nation's report released last September. But the report estimates Chernobyl-related diseases eventually could kill almost 10,000 people. Others believe the number could be more than 20 times higher. In the last two decades, Pittsburgh doctors have raised money and volunteered to conduct cancer screenings; scientists created a robot to map the tomb encasing the meltdown; engineers improved the safety of the remaining Soviet reactors; ophthalmologists performed eye exams on thousands of Ukrainian children; and humanitarian groups contributed to relief efforts. These are some of their stories. A family reaches out This week, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh will lead potential contributors on a tour of community centers in Ukraine to build support for programs that help children affected by the Chernobyl disaster. Since the early 1990s, the federation has arranged donations to improve the lives of people in the former Soviet Republic. When a local family asked about helping with Chernobyl relief efforts, Michael Steiner, the director of major donation development for the federation, agreed to show them firsthand how their money could help. Steiner declined to identify the participants. "People would usually say, 'Chernobyl was so long ago, and it's over,' " Steiner said. "It's not true. The devastation of nuclear disasters is not so quickly gone and done with." To avoid pressuring people, Steiner declined to name them or how much the federation is hoping they'll donate, but said the family has donated to relief programs in the former Soviet Republic before and has a personal interest in helping children because they lost a child. In addition to touring community centers that treat children born with birth defects, or those with health problems that might be related to Chernobyl radiation, Steiner will take the family to the Ukrainian National Chernobyl Disaster Museum in Kiev. Helping the children Four years after the explosion, thyroid cancer rates began rising in children exposed to Chernobyl radiation in Ukraine and Belarus. Dr. Tom Foley, a University of Pittsburgh professor emeritus and pediatric endocrinologist at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, had helped with thyroid cancer screenings in children in Poland, through the nonprofit Child Health International. The organization asked him to help screen children in the area surrounding Chernobyl. "Thyroid cancer can have an excellent prognosis, if you pick it up early," Foley said. He still makes yearly trips to Eastern Europe to help with screenings. The United Nations reports that 4,000 children developed thyroid cancer because of Chernobyl radiation, considerably more than previously found in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Nine children have died there from thyroid cancer, according to the U.N. So far, 116,000 children have been screened. More than 20,000 children are expected to develop thyroid cancer in the near future. "The unknown, I think, is the great fear," said Foley. Engineering change When the reactor blew, at least 15 similar nuclear reactors were operating in former Eastern bloc countries, all with the same flawed Soviet design and capable of experiencing the same disaster. Monroeville-based Westinghouse Electric Co. helped change that. In the two decades after the explosion, Westinghouse won several multimillion-dollar contracts to upgrade computer and diagnostic systems at many nuclear stations in the former Soviet Republic. Westinghouse even managed $125 million in operational and safety improvements at the remaining Chernobyl reactors. "When you go in there, you could definitely tell that improvements were needed," said William Carnes, a project manager at Westinghouse who was at Chernobyl between 1997 and 1998. "There was no doubt that it showed its age." Chernobyl kept running until 2000, when the Ukrainian president turned off the last working reactor. Westinghouse continues to help manage the decommission process. Thanks to upgrades and technological advancements, a repetition of the 1986 Chernobyl accident is now virtually impossible, according to a German nuclear safety agency report. While there, Carnes was invited to accompany some of the Ukrainian engineers on their first trip back to a nearby town they had been forced to immediately evacuate following the explosion. "It was very heartbreaking to see them look at their apartments and realize they hadn't been in it for so long," Carnes said. Pittsburgh ophthalmologists Fifteen years ago, a 20-person team of ophthalmologists and nurses from Pittsburgh cleared up a controversy surrounding one of the health effects from the Chernobyl fallout. In the early 1990s, the Ukrainian government assured people that radiation wouldn't increase the risk of developing cataracts. But people living there -- suspicious because their government lied about the initial blast -- had doubts. So when the charity Chernobyl Children's Relief Fund, operated by Marta Farley -- a Ukrainian who left more than a decade before the blast, eventually settling in Pittsburgh -- asked the Ukrainian people how it could help them, they said they wanted to know the truth about cataract risk. A team of eye doctors and nurses led by Dr. Andrew Eller, a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center ophthalmologist, accepted the challenge. "The people were really nice and extremely cooperative, and very willing to participate in the study," Eller said. "It was really a wonderful experience." Over three weeks, the doctors examined the eyes of almost 2,000 children from three Ukrainian villages -- two in the fallout zone and one outside, eight hours east of Chernobyl. They found that children in the fallout zone had more minuscule "flecks" or defects in their eyes, but because the flecks were so tiny, they probably wouldn't cause cataracts. Perhaps more valuable, the charity donated the equipment the doctors used to the Ukrainians. When they returned to the U.S., they mailed to children eyeglasses donated by the Lions Club. Farley said Eller did more than just check the children's eyes. Armed with a briefcase full of medicine, he treated other illnesses, too. "Andrew Eller, he would be the one who would get up at 5 o'clock in the morning ... and there would be mothers with these very sick kids standing in line -- and there would be Andrew," said Farley, who recently moved to Houston. "He would say, 'I'm not a pediatrician, but I will look at them and I will give them whatever I can,' and he did." Pioneer In April 1999, a robot called Pioneer embarked for a place in the Ukraine few men dare approach -- the sarcophagus holding the radiation-soaked ruins of the Chernobyl power plant. It's unclear whether the robot completed its mission. The $3 million Pioneer, built by RedZone Robotics in Homestead and donated to the Chernobyl clean-up effort, now sits in a storage shed in the Ukraine, according to a March memorandum sent to the U.S. Department of Energy by the National Academy of Science of Ukraine Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Plants. Attempts to contact the institute and the academy were unsuccessful. The 3 1/2-foot-tall robot that crawls on tracks was built to withstand high radiation levels. It was equipped with several cameras, radiation sensors, a drill and a ramming device. It could create 3-D maps and clear debris. Seven years ago, RedZone engineers escorted the robot overseas and trained Ukrainians to use it. "I have no idea what happened to the robot after that," said Adam Slifko, one of the RedZone engineers who helped create Pioneer. Allison M. Heinrichs can be reached at aheinrichs@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5607.
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