4000 Deaths: Chernobyl’s Mortality Revisited

Abstract: Among the key knowledge-claims that frame modern nuclear discourse is an oft-repeated assertion that the 1986 Chernobyl disaster caused (or will cause) “no more than 4000 deaths”. This number — attributed to the 2006 report of the ‘Chernobyl Forum,’ a group helmed by the IAEA — is implicit, to some degree, in almost all policy discussions of radiological hazards: shaping understandings of everything from Fukushima to putative ‘dirty-bombs’. At the same time, however, it is ambiguous and contested on a scale that few other scientific pronouncements can match. The models from which it is derived contain a spectrum of complex assumptions and judgments, small variations in which allow for radically divergent, but equally ‘scientific,’ interpretations of the same data. Many of these interpretations hinge are inherently political in nature, in the sense that they involve questions with no inherently correct answers. This talk will look closely at the Chernobyl Forum’s finding, and its relationship to the data and research from which it is derived. By highlighting some of the choices implicit in the 4000 deaths assertion, the talk will articulate some of the politics it embodies: illuminating both the nature of the figure itself, and the IAEA’s wider relationship to nuclear risk discourse.

About the Speaker: John Downer received his PhD in 2007, from Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies. On graduating he worked at the London School of Economics’ ESRC Centre For Analysis of Risk and Regulation, and then Stanford University where he lectured for the Science, Technology and Society program and worked at CISAC as a Zuckerman- and then Stanton- Fellow. On returning to the UK in late 2012 he joined the faculty at the University of Bristol’s department of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS), where he is affiliated with the Global Insecurities Centre. His publications look at a range of questions relating to technology regulation, risk management, and the structural causes (and consequences) of disaster in complex, safety-critical systems. Primarily using case studies from the civil aviation and nuclear spheres, and drawing heavily on the STS literature, they explore issues pertaining to the limits of knowledge and expertise: the inherent ambiguities of formal assessments and the policy implications that arise from understanding those ambiguities.