Chernobyl victims still require help, Ukraine tells world

ELIZABETH PIPER

KIEV — From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Apr. 27, 2002 12:00AM EDT

Last updated Saturday, Mar. 21, 2009 12:15AM EDT

Ukraine and Belarus appealed to the world yesterday not to forget Chernobyl and its victims, who still need help 16 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster spewed clouds of radioactivity across much of Europe.

Ukrainian President, Prime Minister and other officials laid flowers at a symbolic burial mound in Kiev, paying tribute to those who died after Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 exploded on April 26, 1986.

Carrying flowers, officials lit candles for the dead at a church built to commemorate the accident. Hours earlier, hundreds of Ukrainians gathered there with their heads bowed as bells tolled just after 1 a.m. -- the time of the blast.

"The Chernobyl catastrophe should never be wiped from human memory," the government says in a state newspaper. It urges human and financial support for the people involved in the cleanup and other victims.

In the newspaper statement, the government calls upon voluntary organizations, funds, every concerned citizen, to show understanding and help heal the painful problems of the liquidators . . . those who fled their birthplaces, invalids and families who lost breadwinners as a result of the accident at Chernobyl.

The Chernobyl explosion, which killed more than 30 firefighters, has been blamed for thousands of deaths from radiation-linked illness and for a huge increase in thyroid cancer.

Dozens of women silently laid red carnations at the burial mound as another year passed with Ukraine, neighbouring Belarus and Russia unable to overcome the consequences of the accident.

In Belarus, thousands gathered near the centre of the capital, Minsk, to call for government and international help to heal the scars of the fallout and to demand an end to food output from kilometres of land contaminated with radioactive debris.

Mired in poverty, many people in Ukraine and Belarus still pick mushrooms and berries that have high levels of radioactivity.

Health specialists have advised that genetic mutations and contaminated food could lead to a new generation of Chernobyl victims and prolong the tragedy for years.

Officials at the plant agree the reactor needs another covering, dubbed a second shelter, but they said that radiation levels are decreasing and the ruined reactor poses little threat.

"Today the situation at the station is stable," said the head of the Chernobyl zone's administration.

Reuters News Agency

Europe 'has failed to learn from environmental disasters'

John Vidal

Wednesday 23 January 2013 06.00 GMT

Report says thousands of lives could have been saved and damage to ecosystems avoided if early warnings heeded

The remains of Chernobyl nuclear power plant reactor number four. Europe has failed to learn the lessons from many environmental and health disasters like Chernobyl, the report warns. Photograph: Igor Kostin/Corbis

John Vidal

Europe has failed to learn the lessons from many environmental and health disasters like Chernobyl, leaded petrol and DDT insecticides, and is now ignoring warnings about bee deaths, GM food and nanotechnology, according to an 800-page report by the European Environment Agency.

Thousands of lives could have been saved and extensive damage to ecosystems avoided if the "precautionary principle" had been applied on the basis of early warnings, say the authors of the 2013 Late Lessons from Early warnings report published on Wednesday.

They accuse industry of working to corrupt or undermine regulation by spinning and manipulating research and applying pressure on governments for financial benefit. "[It has] deliberately recruited reputable scientists, media experts and politicians to call on if their products were linked to possible hazards. Manufacturing doubt, disregarding scientific evidence of risks and claiming over-regulation appear to be a deliberate strategy for some industry groups and think tanks to undermine precautionary decision-making."

The peer-reviewed study, which is aimed to improve understanding of scientific information, looks at 18 areas including radiation from mobile phones, birth control pills in the aquatic environment, and invasive species. It found that governments often introduced laws much too late to prevent deaths and massive financial costs, but were highly likely to ignore scientific warnings and resist any regulation. The authors found more than 80 cases where no regulation was introduced when it later turned out that the risk from a technology or chemical was real, or still unproven.

Nuclear power

The study says the Fukushima disaster in 2011 may have released twice as much radiation as the Japanese government admitted. The emissions of radioactive caesium-137 from Fukushima are said to have started earlier than the authorities have claimed, to have lasted longer, and to have spread over a wider area of land than previously believed.

The authors say that it is far too early to make any responsible estimate of the potential health impact of the Fukushima disaster.

The report reopens the controversy between pro- and anti- nuclear power advocates about the health damage from in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.While the World Health Organisation has claimed that only 28 people died and there could be a possible 4,000 additional cancer deaths , the EU study states that the numbers of deaths could range from "at least 17,000 to 68,000 over 50 years".

In a sharp rebuke to pro-nuclear advocates who have argued that the accident produced very few extra cancers, it argues that it is wrong to focus solely on cancer as an outcome of Chernobyl. "Post-Chernobyl non-cancer impact may be very great, including immunological disorders, and cardiovascular disease - especially among the young," it says.

Reactor accidents are said to be by far the single largest risk now facing the nuclear industry. According to the study, the probability of a future major nuclear accident has increased 20-fold since Fukushima

An urgent re-appraisal of the way that nuclear power stations are assessed for safety is long overdue, says the study. "Whatever one's view of the risks and benefits of nuclear energy, it is clear that the possibility of catastrophic accidents must be factored into the policy and regulatory decision-making process. Both the regulation of operating nuclear reactors and the design-base for any proposed reactor will need significant re-evaluation."

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 567