Hello, Maj-Lena Finnander Linderson!
It has been 40 years since Chernobyl. Do you know where you were and what your reactions were when the disaster struck?
"I was in Lund studying physics and it was a nice springtime with the Valborg celebrations approaching and also a Lundakarnevalen year with lots of planned activities. When the contamination at first was discovered, it was thought to be from one of our own reactors at Forsmark, north of Stockholm. It became big news in media given that we recently (1980) had had a referendum on nuclear power in Sweden and I was concerned. Didn’t we have better security in our power plants? First after a few days, USSR admitted that there was a severe accident at Tjernobyl and the terrifying disaster became clear. It was hard to take in the magnitude of the disaster and what it actually could lead to, so for a while, I guess we were all quite affected. However, after some time, the fire and spread came more under control and our personal lives here in south Sweden continued as before."
You were a new doctoral student in Physical geography back in the early 90’s, and got involved in studying radioactive fallout in Skåne. Thinking back on it today, what comes to your mind?
"I was very happy to be able to contribute to an important study and it also widened my perspective as a PhD student. There was of course much to learn and to reflect about concerning the accident at that time. A discouraging fact that I think of today is that my project colleagues at nuclear physics had after 10 years noted from soil samples that the concentration of the radioactive substance (137Cs) in the soil did not change much and thus the decrease in radioactivity was mainly due to radioactive decay. The same is valid even now after 40 years, as I understand it from recent reports. This of course indicates long time implications for nature and land-use in contaminated areas."
Your work contributed to a study and an article in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity in 2000. What did you learn and what did the study show?
"The study compares the deposition of radioactive137Cs in Skåne, resulting from the Soviet and Chinese nuclear weapons tests as well as from the Chernobyl accident, combining air and soil samples with precipitation data. The origin of the deposition of 137Cs in the area is, in about equal parts, from nuclear weapons tests and from the Chernobyl nuclear accident and amounts to about 1-3 kBq m-2. The study enabled a good and detailed knowledge in retrospect of the deposition from measurements of the deposition per mm of precipitation from just a few stations, and of the precipitation from a network of stations."
In what way do the events in Chernobyl matter today? What should we learn?
"To avoid engaging here in the pro and con nuclear power, I would like to focus on my own experience in research and stress the importance of measurements and data in ambient conditions. For our study we had access to various measurements that could be used to reconstruct events and impacts. If we do not measure precipitation, temperature, concentrations and fluxes, then the information is lost. It will not be possible to go back in time."
There have been many TV-documentaries and series about Chernobyl the last couple of years. Any of those that caught your attention?
"I saw the documentary on SVTplay (Swedish television, free to watch here!) and started watchin the drama serie on HBO. Besides giving a good outline of the full disaster and the impact it had, directly for the people that gave their lives and suffered hard when it happened, it also stresses the difficulties in a very closed and authoritarian society. There was obviously a lack of information and a lack of preparedness which led to the situation becoming much worse than necessary."
Thank you Maj-Lena!
