r$joo | l>Mo told that they should leave. For example, people will be told if a change in their water source is necessary, if different grain should lx) given to their livestock or if different typos of crops should he grown. “It's impossible to resettle a 30 million population, so wo have to learn how to live wilh this. It's not easy to change your place of living and find new' work," Demadenyo said. "We have some different ap proaches," he said of his Amer ican colleagues, "but the goal is the same." That includes giving people specific information about the extent of the contamination on their property, something Hulse said the government hasn't done enough of The public understanding of health risks is minimal, he said, duo to lack of access It) verified scientific information and the central government’s lack of credibility us an information source. Pooplo living in the area will be able to locate their farm or homo on a computer screen, model the behavior of the radi ation on the land over time and usk the computer about the na ture of present and future radi ation risk. The system will pro vide detailed suggestions to help farmers raise uncontami nuted crops An estimated 15 million people live in the areas contam inated by Chernobyl fallout. More than 300,000 people wore evacuated within an 18-milo ra dius of the root tor. But evacua tion efforts have lieen stymied us people have begun returning to their ancestral homes, de spite warnings that radiation continues to be a threat. The project was initiated in 1991. Indore the fall of the So viet government, at the person al request of Gennady Yagodln, then minister of the Soviet State Committee on Public Edu cation. He approached Baldwin and Hulse, while they were in Russia on an academic ex change program, about the fea sibility of developing an inde pendently managed study of ra diation hazards and quickly se cured funding for preliminary field work, which began last June. Special software was devel oped specifically for this pro ject by Hulse; Kit Larsen, a sys tems analyst at the University Computing Center; and Michael Hamilton, director of the Uni versity of California's James San Jacinto Mountain Reserve. The study is supported by the Russian government.