(3 of 10)
Soviet officials were reluctant to seek much outside assistance while still trying to pretend that not much had happened. Tuesday morning at 8:10, a scientific liaison officer from the Soviet embassy in Bonn appeared, unannounced and without an appointment, at the office of the Atomforum, a nongovernment agency that represents West Germany's nuclear power industry. He asked Atomforum's Peter Haug if the Germans knew anyone who could advise his country on how to put out a graphite fire. A similar request went out the same day to the Swedish nuclear authority. The U.S. Government stepped forward to offer assistance, but the Soviets politely rejected it, saying that they had the means to deal with the situation. Moscow did invite Dr. Robert Gale, a UCLA bone-marrow-transplant specialist, to provide medical aid to Chernobyl victims.
As the reactor continued to burn, military helicopters reportedly flew over the site and dropped wet sand, lead and boron onto the burning reactor. Available evidence at week's end suggested that the fire was dying out.
The most frightening part of the nuclear accident was the radiation that spewed from the reactor and then was carried by winds on its silent, deadly path. In the first few hours of the Chernobyl disaster, lethal forms of iodine and cesium were released into the atmosphere. They were accompanied by other highly dangerous radioactive emissions. At first the radiation cloud drifted above some of the Soviet Union's best farmland, but then it moved north toward Scandinavia. By week's end an ominous pall of radiation had spread across Eastern Europe and toward the shores of the Mediterranean. How far it would travel and whom it would affect depended on the vagaries of meteorological patterns. For many days, perhaps weeks, it would keep millions of people on edge, despite assurances from officials worldwide that any danger was minimal.
At close range, though, the radiation-bearing plume could be deadly. The immediate danger was, of course, greatest for those nearest the disaster. Said Kerry Dance, president of GA Technologies, a San Diego reactor builder: "The people who are in trouble are those right at the site." Henry Wagner, a professor of radiation health sciences at Johns Hopkins, speculated that local residents risked exposure to extreme doses of radiation that could cause cerebral hemorrhaging, nausea, vomiting and death within hours.
While the lack of detailed information makes estimates of the health impact extremely difficult, Wagner offered further guidance. At distances of perhaps three to four miles, victims stood a fifty-fifty chance of surviving, though not without bone-marrow andgastrointestinal-tract damage. People living five to seven miles from the accident could experience nausea and other symptoms but would be unlikely to die. Smaller amounts of radiation within a range of 60 miles from the site would result in significantly increased deaths from leukemia and other forms of cancer during the next 30 years. People living 200 miles or more from the accident would run much smaller risks. The Swedes and many of those affected in Eastern Europe probably received the exposure equivalent of one to two chest X rays.