April 26, 1986 stands for the birth of a new order – the birth of a new order of risks and, for Beck, the birth of the rules of the Global Risk Society (GRS). These days, we are celebrating the 23^rd anniversary of the Chernobyl accident that cost thousands of people their lives and many chronic illnesses. Quel Bonheur! Even after 23 years, the 30 km surrounding nuclear reactors are the most perilous places in the world, in terms of exposure to radioactive materials, and the effects of the disaster still continue, with the region’s population experiencing rising numbers of health problems (e.g. augmentation of mortality rates and various cancers). Due to the fire in the reactor, which lasted two weeks, the accident affected large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and Western Europe, owing to windy weather conditions. According to the report of the Chernobyl Forum, children were most at-risk, and childhood thyroid cancer was one of the main health problems reported. In 2002, 4000 thyroid cancer cases were identified in the region, but the report stresses the uncertainty of not knowing how many people were really exposed to fatal doses of radiation and how many people died as a result of exposure to the radiation stemming from the accident[1]. Hence, this is one of the points that Beck makes: uncertainty of the consequences…

After the Chernobyl disaster, it caused many question marks publicly criticized about benefits of nuclear power for humanity. However, it also became a very hard topic to capture because of the difficulties that states have had with energy bottlenecks while the consumptive needs of a globalized world have been perpetually increasing. Whether and how much nuclear energy (NE) is functional, practical, useful, and advantageous is one of the questions to be sized up while considering related discussions about NE. However, another question to be asked (and has been asked day by day) is how much we can feel safe, how much we can be protected and shielded against risks we face while, on the one hand, growth of nuclear energy continues, and on the other, misuse of NE arises as more than a probability, as a reality?

As recently cited in the English Times of April 19[2], misuse was approved. In the article, the cost of China’s achievements in the NE competition to become the super-power of the world during and after the Cold War is discussed. Also, it is disclosed again - as has been revealed many times before - how the risks that threaten human health and the future of humanity have become real and have caused an estimated 190 thousand human casualties and exposed 1,5 million people to nuclear fallout in the remote areas of nuclear test grounds of the wastes of the Gobi desert in China from 1964-1996. And now, victims of those tests are demanding compensation for their diseases linked to radiation: cancers, leukemia, and other chronic illnesses…And this is the problem that should be considered deeper: Indeed, what compensates their life? It is the question that the modern mode of thinking should be answering. In a simplistic manner, because rational, reasonable, sage, scientific, and, in sum, modern man couldn’t any more control, command, and rule over what he manufactured through technology, he cannot estimate which kinds of future disasters or casualties may occur because of risks he created. Frankly saying, science-fetishists modern man lost his ability to control nature and c’est la fin: the Chernobyl disaster was an accident…However, it was not an accident resulting from high pressure in the reactor’s cooling system, it was the accident of the claims of modern, industrial society that we are living in a very controlled environment guided by precise, constant, reliable scientific advancements.

For the first time, German sociologist Ulrich Beck put the characteristics of risks in modern societies into words and questioned the advancement of technology in terms of a sociological perspective, seeing high-dependence of modern societies on scientific innovations without questioning as the actual question. For Beck, we are living in a “risk society”, which is derived from uncontrollable, unexpected, and unintended consequences of industrial modernity once it tries to regulate nature[3]. Threats we face today and dangers that follow us in this modern age have a unique character and are very different from pre-modern times. In pre-modernity, dangers were seen as God-driven. When a disaster occurred, people responded that it was fate and destiny. Hence, no questioning and no trouble... Because in pre-modern times, religion and God were a fundamental part of social life, and the belief in God helped people to internalize the consequences when a disaster, earthquake, or another catastrophe occurred. Hence, no one was responsible for what people lived through[4]. However, the codes of modern societies are not defined by religious dogmas and ideologies. They are very more related with understanding, controlling, and commanding nature for man’s service as enlightenment ideology does with sciences and advancements in technique and technology. However, how much do we really control our lives?

In risk discussions, which Giddens and Beck pioneered, the human-made character of risks in the modern age is emphasized. Risks in the modern age are manufactured by modernity itself, and they produce uncontrollable consequences in terms of spatial, temporal, and social impacts, as the Chernobyl ‘accident’ revealed[5]. That is to say, spatially, the impact of Chernobyl, in terms of geographic position, was not limited within the national borders of where the explosion took place. It went beyond the frontiers of nation-states – Belarus, Ukraine, or the Russian Federation. Just two days after the incident, scientists and workers at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden encountered abnormal levels of radioactive particles on their clothes and doubted any leakage in the plant. Temporally[6], how many years it will take to clear the contaminated area and how the radioactive left-over of Chernobyl can be eliminated are problems still waiting to be solved. Hence, just one incident gives rise to a perpetual, life-long process which affects new generations, especially in terms of their health. No one knows when the effects of radioactive particles on infants will cease. And socially, the anxiety and the fear of the future resulting from Chernobyl is psychologically quite devastating for families living in areas surrounding the Exclusion Zone (30km away from the centre of explosion), because people are uncertain about their health, and even governments cannot give persuasive and convincing information to their citizens about what they have been really living through. Above all, who is actually responsible for all these explosions and uncertain consequences? The so-called responsible workers who were regulating and controlling the parameters of the reactor? Is it that so simple? Actually no one is responsible, but also everyone is responsible! If an action takes place, there should be someone who did it. And Beck conceptualizes the answer with the “organized irresponsibility” of industrial modernity[7], which means ignoring and turning a blind eye to the potential risks that came to exist with headforemost industrialization[8]

In that sense, sociologically, Chernobyl should be seen as more than an accident that had an impact upon thousands of people. It is an accident that changed our perception about what kinds of risks were made and now existed. However, the risk is not the point; rather it is perception of risk in the modern age that really matters[9], which needs more elaboration.  

M. Salih ELMAS
Researher, Sociology
E-mail: msalihelmas@gmail.com