ABSTRACT
The western television news coverage of Chernobyl during late April and May 1986 was thorough and graphic. Here was a catastrophe of global proportions unfolding before our very eyes. Many people were inevitably concerned about where the radioactive fallout would land and what the risks to human health (including their own) were likely to be. Many reports stressed that this was the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. But history has a habit of repeating itself — witness the history of near misses in the nuclear industry's track record (see Chapter One). Since the accident, the name ‘Chernobyl’ has been used as more or less synonymously with ‘nuclear accident’, regardless of the nature and magnitude of accident.
