8,000 Could Get Cancer, Swedish Aide Says

Up to 8,000 Europeans and Soviet citizens could develop cancer because of radiation exposure from the nuclear plant disaster in the Ukraine, Gunnar Bengtsson, head of Sweden’s Radiological Protection Institute, said Monday.

“Our estimates show that the Chernobyl disaster is 1,000 times worse than the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 as far as radiation is concerned,” Bengtsson told a news conference.

Bengtsson said Sweden would be lightly affected, with a maximum of eight cancer cases forecast in the country over the next 40 years as a direct result of the Soviet accident.

He suggested that many more people may develop cancer in the Ukraine and nearby parts of Eastern Europe due to radiation from Chernobyl, but did not elaborate.

Swedish scientists have compared radioactive fallout from the disaster to that of a 30-megaton atomic blast--more than 2,000 times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Bengtsson said aerial and ground samples showed a continued decline in radiation levels in Sweden, although a slight temporary increase was detected around Stockholm overnight.

He said radiation in Sweden was now only about one-hundredth of the peak levels monitored last week.

Authorities say it will take up to two weeks before ground radioactivity declines to a level allowing farmers in some parts of eastern Sweden to let their milk cows out to graze.