Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Examining the Risks Associated with Visiting the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone; A Study of Breastmilk and Policies

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  • Tourism to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), site of the 1986 Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident, has increased each year since the government began allowing tourist groups to access the CEZ. Nevertheless, little guidance is available to a tourist as to what risks they may encounter and whether their visit will be safe. Policies regulating visits and safety of the CEZ are available online, but not linked to official information available to the public. The most readily available information is that vulnerable groups, including children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers, should not visit the CEZ. Concurrently, official information focuses on the scientific and safety advancements accomplished in the CEZ, making it seem like a safe destination. This may make the situation unclear to a visitor, whose readily accessible information often comes from the websites selling trips to the CEZ. This research thus aims to to use a visit to the CEZ by the researcher, who is a breastfeeding mother and thus member of the vulnerable groups normally contraindicated from visiting the CEZ, to test the activity in the researcher’s breast milk and to examine the dose recorded from radiation monitors throughout the visit. It will use this data to assess if the safety in Ukraine policies match the risk to a visitor to the CEZ. The researcher used High Purity Germanium Detector to measure activity of the breast milk, specifically looking for Cesium-137. Recordings from personal dosimetry devices worn while in the CEZ were also used to provide more data. , which provides a low background detection system. The research found that no Cesium-137 was detectable in the breast milk. This work then discusses the inconsistencies found between risk to a visitor and policies on visitation by exploring the context in which Ukrainian officials make policy, which is one of low public trust and high amounts of potentially conflicting information about the accident. This research is timely, as increased visitation to the CEZ may necessitate changes in how the Government of Ukraine communicates with the public about radiation risks and safety at the CEZ.
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  • Pending Publication
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  • 2020-10-19 to 2022-11-20

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