- The World Health Organisation says it
is worried about the "unacceptably high" risk of a nuclear reactor
accident within the next few years.
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- Many of eastern Europe's reactors could
be at particular risk from the millennium bug, it warns.
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- The risk of a reactor accident somewhere
in the world before 2006 is as high as 67%, says WHO's British physicist
Dr Keith Baverstock.
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- "There will be a lot of crossed
fingers on New Year's Eve 1999," he added.
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- Dr Baverstock heads WHO's new nuclear
emergency project based in Helsinki. The new scheme will help European
countries improve preparations for coping with an accident.
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- Human failure likely
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- He says the risk lies not so much in
the failure of an engineering component as in human error, with the possibility
of computer failure as the year 2000 dawns making the prospect worse.
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- Dr Baverstock told BBC News Online: "31
December 1999 is one occasion when we ought to be even more vigilant than
we normally are.
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- "The millennium bug is a real problem.
We shall take it very seriously indeed."
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- Dr Baverstock says Finland is confident
its reactors will cope safely and he believes the same goes for all western
European countries.
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- "But it may well be quite different
in the east, where many countries depend heavily on nuclear power,"
he says.
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- Shutting down the reactors for a short
time around midnight is not really an option because any problems might
not show up until later, says Dr Baverstock.
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- "It will be very cold and they will
need the power. What will they do ? I should not like to have to decide."
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- Preventing cancer
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- As part of its work to help countries
prepare, WHO is issuing guidelines on the use of iodine tablets.
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- Iodine, given early enough, can help
prevent childhood thyroid cancer.
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- Since the Chernobyl explosion in 1986,
more than 1,000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children, have been
recorded in affected parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
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- "We used to think that iodine tablets
should be available within a 5km radius of a reactor," says Dr Baverstock.
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- "But Chernobyl showed us that the
effects spread far wider than that.
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- "So the new guidelines will say
the tablets should be quickly available to all children within 500 km of
an accident."
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