The Chernobyl Disaster: An International Perspective

Abstract

The most important human issue in industrial crisis management remains the health and safety of people, both as individuals and of large populations at risk. The events of Three Mile Island, Bhopal, and Tylenol evolved—in large measure—as local or national crises, and responses to cope with these events were primarily local and national. In contrast, the catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Ukraine elicited major international responses, particularly from Western European and American authorities, for a critical period before the Soviet Union admitted openly that an accident had occurred. While the event of Chernobyl signifi cantly affected a sizeable worker population and residents in the immediate vicinity, it had an adverse but lesser impact on the rest of the Soviet Union, Europe, Asia, and North America. This paper provides some background on the accident, examines how large amounts of radioactive materials were re leased into the environment, how they may have found their way into humans, how nations responded to the accident, and what some of the inter national implications for decision and policy making may be.