The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation   (UNSCEAR) is the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate   Change. Like the IPCC, it calls on the world’s leading scientists to   assess thousands of papers and produce an overview. Here is what it says   about the impacts of Chernobyl.
 Of the workers who tried to contain the emergency at Chernobyl, 134   suffered acute radiation syndrome; 28 died soon afterwards. Nineteen   others died later, but generally not from diseases associated with   radiation(
6).   The remaining 87 have suffered other complications, included four  cases  of solid cancer and two of leukaemia. In the rest of the  population,  there have been 6,848 cases of thyroid cancer among young  children,  arising “almost entirely” from the Soviet Union’s failure to  prevent  people from drinking milk contaminated with iodine 131(7).  Otherwise,  “there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health  effect in the  general population that can be attributed to radiation  exposure.”(8)  People living in the countries affected today “need not  live in fear of  serious health consequences from the Chernobyl  accident.”(9)