NEA press room

Press kit: Chernobyl

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) marked twenty years since the Chernobyl accident with two publications:

• Stakeholders and Radiological Protection: Lessons from Chernobyl Twenty Years After demonstrates the importance of local involvement in addressing the needs of affected populations to reduce their radiation dose.
• International Nuclear Law in the Post-Chernobyl Period, jointly published with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is a compendium of articles on international nuclear law initiatives since Chernobyl.

Stakeholders and Radiological Protection:Lessons from Chernobyl 20 Years After
A Report by the Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health (CRPPH)
This report highlights the importance of involving local stakeholders in the long-term, post-recovery phase. The intervening twenty years of rehabilitation has shown that the active engagement of radiation protection professionals with the affected people has helped to effectively improve the living conditions in the contaminated territories. Integrating radiation protection measures into the daily lives of farmers and parents has allowed them to manage both their own radiation exposures and those of their families.

Nuclear Law in the Post-Chernobyl Period
This report demonstrates how the accident heightened awareness of the need to improve the international legal regime governing the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impact
2002 Update of Chernobyl: Ten Years On
The international radiological protection community performed a major status review of the situation around the damaged Chernobyl reactor on the 10-year anniversary of the accident. Since then, studies of the accident site and the contaminated territories continue to be undertaken, which have yielded new scientific results and highlighted important social and health aspects. This report is a complete update of the NEA's earlier publication, Chernobyl: Ten Years On. In particular, it offers the reader the most recent information on the significant new experience gained in the areas of emergency management, long-term environmental behaviour of radioactive materials and health effects. (2003)

NEA Press briefing, 11 April 2006

Other international organisations have published significant reports on aspects of Chernobyl, notably the IAEA and the WHO:

International Programme on the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident (IPHECA)
The WHO's International Programme on the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident (IPHECA) was established to support national programmes, monitor health consequences and indicate future work needed to ensure that maximum information is gained from this disaster.

IAEA: Chernobyl's Challenge
From the In Focus series: Years after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, people in the region still live with wildly varying reports about what impact the accident will have on their families' future health and the environment. The IAEA-initiated 'Chernobyl Forum' is working to give people in the affected villages greater certainty, by issuing factual, authoritative statements on the accident's health effects.

UNSCEAR Reports on the exposures and effects of the Chernobyl accident
UNSCEAR has been involved from early on in the assessment of radiation exposures and health effects.

Chernobyl.info
Website set up by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in co-operation with OCHA & UNDP to help aid and development organizations better coordinate their activities themselves by enabling them to use the site to exchange ideas, plans, projects and experiences and thus avoid needless duplication.

NEA Radiation Protection programme

NEA Legal Affairs programme

NEA Press kit: International nuclear third party liability

Recent NEA nuclear safety press releases

Last updated: 19 April 2008