JUST over 40 years ago, on 26 April 1986, Reactor No. 4 at the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded, blasting tonnes of radioactive debris one kilometre high into the atmosphere over the Soviet Union, Europe, Britain and North America.
The clouds of fallout spread 200 times more radioactive material than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
Today, the legacy of Chornobyl lingers on under a massive metal containment structure – 200 tonnes of uranium, plutonium, irradiated dust, solid and liquid fuel, and a molten slurry of uranium fuel rods, zirconium cladding, graphite control rods, and melted sand.
This radioactive debris will remain lethal to humans for thousands of years.
Nuclear apologists downplay the human cost, but various medical studies suggest that Chornobyl caused a significant increase in cancer deaths.
By 1992 it was estimated that 70,000 “liquidators” were invalids and 13,000 had died.
By 2006, estimates rose to 50,000 then to 100,000 deaths.
By 2010, Soviet scientist Alexey Yablokov and colleagues estimated a death toll of 112,000 to 125,000 liquidators.
Based on more than 5,000 Russian medical studies, Yablokov also concluded that almost a million premature deaths would result from Chornobyl.
The TORCH report (The Other Report on Chernobyl), by Dr. Ian Fairlie, predicts between 30,000 and 60,000 excess cancer deaths worldwide due to the accident.
There are many other lingering medical problems, including increased thyroid cancers in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia; altered child development patterns (teratogenesis); and other health disturbances among those who were adults at the time of the Chornobyl disaster, as well as their offspring.
Regards,
Kenneth HIGGS,
Raymond Terrace.
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