Yesterday, 26th April marked the 29th anniversary of the worst nuclear disaster in world history – the Chernobyl catastrophe. 

And unfortunately, it’s not over yet: preventing further major releases of radioactivity into the environment seems to be a race against time.

As a new Greenpeace report detailing the efforts at the sight shows, there are no real solutions in sight.

Nearly three decades after the start of the Chernobyl disaster, its atomic legacy is a stark and ominous reminder that nuclear power can never be a safe energy source.

In 1986, two explosions destroyed Chernobyl reactor unit 4, located in the Ukraine. Its graphite core burned for ten days. The radioactive releases heavily contaminated what became a 2,600 sq.km exclusion zone – which included 76 cities, towns, and villages.

Due to the power of the explosion, fire, and reactor core meltdown, radioactivity was projected to high enough altitudes that the plume was carried thousands kilometers away, sweeping across the whole of Europe and contaminating vast tracts of land.

In terms of radioactive caesium (Cs137), a total of at least 1.3 million sq.km of land was contaminated to varying degrees – an area roughly twice the size of France. And this contamination will last for many generations, given the 30-year half-life of Cs137.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens and cleanup workers were exposed to significant levels of radiation – at least 300,000 of these workers received radiation doses that were 500 times the limit for the public over one year.

The catastrophe continues

Twenty-nine years later, people continue to suffer from the affects of the accident, with well-founded scientific estimations in the range of many tens of thousands of cancers and deaths.

One of the increasing concerns at the site is the integrity of the building structures. The explosion in 1986 caused serious damage. And, due to the high radiation levels, work on the damaged building after the accident had to be scrapped.

Ageing and corrosion have only further deteriorated these structures. In addition, some that were damaged in the accident, for example by cracking, are only now being discovered due to the inaccessibility of the site.

A collapse of the sarcophagus, leading to a release of radioactive substances into the environment around the site, cannot be ruled out. And this could pose serious problems.

There are more than 1.5 million tonnes of radioactive dust inside the ruins. If the sarcophagus were to collapse, a high volume of radioactive material would be released, and could lead to an exposure to radiation as far as 50 kilometers away.

There are also nearly 2,000 tonnes of flammable materials inside the sarcophagus. In the event of a fire, even without a collapse, heat from the fire could cause the release of a high level of radioactive dust particles.

Containment remains underfunded

In order to help minimize this risk, the Shelter Implementation Plan was agreed to in 1997. The cornerstone of this medium-term proposal is the New Safety Confinement (NSC) – a massive, self-supporting, domed, hall-like steel structure: 257 metres wide, 165 metres long, and 110 metres high.

It cannot be assembled directly above the destroyed reactor due to high radiation levels. However, it is currently being assembled in two parts to the side of the damaged reactor. These will be joined together, and then slide over the reactor on a hydraulic lifting system – a process that will take three days to complete. When it is completed, it will be the largest movable structure on earth.

The total cost of the Shelter Implementation Plan is currently estimated at €2.15 billion. Due to delays and significant cost increases, there is now a shortfall of hundreds of millions of euros.

This week, an international conference hosted by the German government will focus on the on-going threats from Chernobyl. The nations who have funded this project will discuss how to fill these enormous deficits.

The shelter itself is designed with the exceedingly limited goals of preventing further water leaking into the destroyed reactor and becoming contaminated – as has happened as the current sarcophagus has deteriorated – and to contain radioactive material in the event of the total collapse of the existing reactor sarcophagus.

It is projected to last for only 100 years.

No plans to remove the fuel that represents the main hazard

As the author of the new Greenpeace report concludes, “a major drawback of the SIP, however, is that recovering the fuel-containing material is not part of the project, although the greatest threat to the environment and people comes precisely from these fuel-containing, highly radioactive substances.

“While the protective shell is designed to make it possible for this fuel-containing material to be recovered at a later point in time, the financial means to actually implement fuel containing material recovery are not provided by the SIP. Thus, the long-term threat posed by the destroyed reactor block will not have been averted by the current efforts underway.

“In short, it must be stated that 29 years after the worst nuclear disaster the world has yet seen, the damaged reactor is still a danger. A real solution to the situation is nowhere in sight.”

As with the more recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, there is no foreseeable solution for Chernobyl. Despite the continuing decline of the nuclear power industry worldwide, hundreds of ageing nuclear reactors continue to operate, while new reactors are being built – which increases nuclear risks significantly.

No such thing as ‘nuclear safety’

Almost certainly whenever the next accident happens in the 21st century, efforts will still be underway to contain and manage the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi sites.

What Chernobyl, Fukushima, and hundreds of smaller nuclear accidents have clearly shown is the inherent risk of the nuclear technology: there will always be an unforeseen combination of human failure, technology error, and natural disaster that could lead to a major reactor accident and massive release of radiation.

The lessons are clear – there is by definition no such thing as ‘nuclear safety’. The only way to make sure that the next Chernobyl and Fukushima does not happen is to phase nuclear out.

Kendra Ulrich is a senior global energy campaigner with Greenpeace Japan.

This article was originally published by Greenpeace International.

We are still trying to fully understand the extent of the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill five years ago, one of the worst environmental disasters in US history.

Following the Macondo well explosion in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, five million barrels of oil were spilled in the deep-sea. In an attempt to avoid spills reaching coastlines, BP and government agencies sprayed over two million liters of oil dispersants – chemicals that break oil into small droplets – at depth for the first time in these conditions.

The impact of the oil spill was readily apparent on Gulf communities and the coastal and shallow ecosystems, yet the effects on deep-water communities beneath the surface, were less obvious.

During the three-month period when oil was spewing from the wellhead, there was immediate concern over the large volumes of oil being released, and rightly so. This led to several cleanup approaches aimed to prevent oil slicks from forming and reaching the coast.

There was less attention and concern initially on injecting chemicals, notably dispersants including the product Corexit 9500A, into the deep sea without prior testing or knowledge of the consequences this action may cause. Within weeks of the initial explosion, for example, scientists detected giant deep-water oil plumes that persisted in the region.

Deep water corals damaged

Dispersants have commonly been used in surface oil-spill cleanups. They help break down oil into smaller droplets that can then scatter throughout the water column.

Prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, though, scientists and people in industry had never tested dispersants in deep waters under low-temperature, high-pressure conditions. Nor were their toxic effects tested on the coral communities that form the foundation of these ecosystems.

Cold-water corals, such as those found in the Gulf, provide habitat, feeding and nursery grounds for numerous marine organisms and commercially important fish. They are long-lived, slow-growing animals. This makes them more vulnerable to disturbances as it takes a long time – on the order of decades and or centuries – to return to a pre-disturbance state.

In 2012, scientists located several spill-affected coral communities in the vicinity of the spill origin. Corals there were covered in a brown material containing Deepwater Horizon oil and traces of dispersants. Additional impact areas were later found.

Whether this damage was caused by sinking oil particulates, dissolved oil, dispersants, or a combination of all of these sources was unclear. We set out to understand the impact on corals – important knowledge given the extent of current and planned oil drilling in the deep sea.

Dispersants – the greater of two evils

To study existing and future spill effects, we first needed to test the toxicity of the oil and dispersant on these corals and uncover whether adding dispersants may have done more harm than good.

Under the supervision of my advisor Erik Cordes at Temple University and in collaboration with Dannise Ruiz-Ramos and Iliana Baums from Pennsylvania State University, we conducted experiments on three different species of corals (Paramuricea type B3, Callogorgia delta and Leiopathes glaberrima) common to the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Corals were collected with remotely operated vehicles and a series of short-term (96 hours) exposures were conducted shipboard. During this time we tested the effects of both dissolved and non-dissolved oil. We also tested dispersant and oil-dispersant mixtures to determine overall toxicity and responses to these pollutants.

We photographed the corals and monitored them for signs of stress commonly observed in corals, such as retracting their feeding polyps, releasing mucous, dead tissue and bare skeleton. Corals were also assigned health ratings at each time point, with dead corals at zero and healthy corals at five.

Ratings were primarily based on the percentage of the coral that was alive in addition to the above mentioned stress responses.

Our recently published findings show all corals had more severe health declines in response to dispersant alone and the oil-dispersant mixtures than in the oil-only treatments.

Corals exposed to higher concentrations of dispersant, alone or mixed with oil, had the greatest health declines. In some cases the corals even appeared to do best in the oil-only treatments.

Toxic to corals

Although oil alone was not found to be lethal at the concentrations tested in the short term, we still need to investigate whether there is less obvious damage being done and if longer exposures elicit more of a response.

We also observed that C. delta exhibited somewhat less severe health declines in response to oil and oil/dispersant, which may be explained by its habitat preference near natural oil seepage areas along the seafloor.

We believe exposure to the dispersant used during the Deepwater Horizon clean-up efforts may be more toxic to the corals than the crude oil initially released.

Moreover, adding dispersant to oil will increase the concentration of oil in the surrounding water. That can then lead to higher, more toxic exposures of oil components upon contact with marine life.

Although further testing needs to be done in an attempt to replicate Deepwater Horizon conditions at depth, our experiments provide evidence for the toxicity of both oil and dispersant on cold-water corals. This finding should be taken into consideration for remediation efforts in the event of future oil spills.

Danielle M DeLeo is PhD candidate in Biology at Temple University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Everglades are among the last sub-tropical wilderness areas in the United States.

Their Floridian air is thick with humidity, but a cool breeze is commonly felt from both the fresh and saltwater systems that spread throughout the landscape. Open prairies provide relief from the dangers of the swamp.

A mosaic of forest, from pinelands nourished by ancient limestone, to tropical hardwoods, coral reef communities and mangroves, supports an incredible array of wildlife.

These unique systems are habitat for numerous endemics including aquatic birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians – of which many are endangered or threatened.

Hard to think of a landscape quite like the fragile Everglades – but it is politics that brought US President Barack Obama to such splendor on Earth Day. In the backyard of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, both GOP presidential contenders (with checkered environmental legacies), Obama talked of climate change impacts on the imperiled wetland community.

He went on to highlight the 100 year anniversary of the Park Service, coming up in 2016, and a new report that notes National Parks store 14 million tons of carbon each year. Point after point was made for conservation.

Hard for me to argue with his rhetoric. Easy for me to recognize his insincerity.

What Obama did not mention …

Obama did not mention his administrations new push for offshore drilling, limited funding for national parks, the leasing of natural lands to oil and gas companies, or the permitting of mountaintop removal coal mines.

No commander-in-chief will ever mention their extensive, carbon burning, wars. No executive will talk poorly of the state economic system, nor their policies that encourage the growth machine.

National monuments are good, and I have a fond place in my heart for the national parks. But state archism trends towards violence and the mass consumption of resources. This will not change.

We see the failures of state decisions everywhere. From sprawl and drought in the Southwest, industrial disasters in the Mid West, Cancer Alley along our coasts, the destruction of Appalachian mountain ecosystems and so much more. Natural resources are terribly mismanaged. As a result of state decree, and the rise of hegemonic corporations, we are in the midst of a 6th great extinction. The age of the Anthropocene is upon us.

If we are to be serious about climate, conservation and environmental health, perhaps we should investigate best management practices. Perhaps we should explore our individualist spirit.

Time for a new social order

A radically different social order is necessary if we are to permit a life worth living to our posterity. Imagine a world without archism, a place where every human being is free to bring their inclined labor to one another in mutual account. Imagine such liberty.

Decisions regarding climate, thus how to allocate resources across social / economic systems, should not belong to a few decision makers. Furthermore, the populace should not be held hostage by internal political bickering among Republicans and Democrats in the halls of power.

These decisions should be made democratically, in common, where power is equally distributed among all stakeholders. Thanks to the work of famed economist Elinor Ostrom, we know that governance of this type is not only possible, but incredibly successful.

Human dimensions are growing ever more important to the resource management process, as power redistribution from resource agencies to the communities they serve is already a growing trend.

Human dimension considerations also provide a forum for honest communication among professionals, stakeholders and community members who will be affected by management policies. These approaches work to promote collaboration between agencies and people, thus promoting democratic decision-making.

Engaging the citizenry while calling for public discourse and reasoned debate brings consensus and legitimacy to management decisions. The public process also has the power to either expose or avoid agency capture, insuring people’s needs are being reflected, not the interests of powerful institutions or industry.

Adaptive local governance, not top-down control

Such adaptive collaboration is democratic. It is a bottom up approach to natural resource conflict resolution, as opposed to the traditional top down, bureaucratic approach.