Word: clouding
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...explosion and fire at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear plant suddenly became as close as wind and rain could carry it last week--and as menacing as a nightmare. While Soviet authorities insisted that there was little to worry about outside the Ukraine and neighboring regions, the cloud of deadly radioactive dust from Unit No. 4 that first spread over Scandinavia and Eastern Europe now crossed oceans and land masses, falling on an ever widening range of food and water supplies in dozens of countries. It also continued to poison the political and diplomatic atmosphere...
...that spewed from the reactor and then was carried by winds on its silent, deadly path. In the first few hours of the Chernobyl disaster, lethal forms of iodine and cesium were released into the atmosphere. They were accompanied by other highly dangerous radioactive emissions. At first the radiation cloud drifted above some of the Soviet Union's best farmland, but then it moved north toward Scandinavia. By week's end an ominous pall of radiation had spread across Eastern Europe and toward the shores of the Mediterranean. How far it would travel and whom it would affect depended...
...increase in cancer rates in the next two to three decades as a result of the mishap, people were especially angry. Said one Warsaw resident: "We can understand an accident. It could happen to anyone. But that the Soviets said nothing and let our children suffer exposure to this cloud for days is unforgivable...
...instructed to wash and cover their produce. Officials warned Swedes and Norwegians to be careful about the water they drank. The British embassy in Moscow organized an airlift of more than 100 British students from the Soviet Union, and cautioned 30 who had been in Minsk when the nuclear cloud passed overhead to shower and wash their hair every two hours...
Many people were just plain scared. In Oslo, callers were on the phone to the State Institute for Radiation Hygiene after news reports told of an invisible radioactive cloud over the most densely populated part of Norway. Sample queries: "I am a mother of small children. What measures should I take against the radiation in the air?" "I am pregnant. Are the radiation beams dangerous to the child I am bearing?" Public-health assurances that the radiation was too low to pose a hazard failed to stem the concern. "Mass hysteria in a situation like this is not uncommon," said...