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Action Ukraine Report Chornobyl +20April 26, 2006, 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear
disaster Twenty years ago this month, life in Prypiat [Ukraine] came to a shuddering end. Before dawn on April 26, 1986, less than three kilometres south of what was then a city of 50,000, the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant's number four reactor exploded. Thirty people died in the blast and fire or were exposed to lethal radiation. The destroyed hulk burned for ten days, contaminating tens of thousands of square kilometres in northern Ukraine, southern Belarus, and Russia's Bryansk region. It was the worst nuclear accident the world has ever seen. The fallout, 400 times more radioactivity than was released at Hiroshima, drove a third of a million people from their homes and triggered an epidemic of thyroid cancer in children. Over the years, the economic losses-health and cleanup costs, compensation, lost productivity-have mounted into the hundreds of billions of dollars. As evidence of government bungling and secrecy emerged in its wake, Chornobyl (as it is now known in independent Ukraine) even sped the breakup of the Soviet Union. Today the fiercely radioactive remnants of reactor four continue to smoulder beneath the so-called sarcophagus, a decaying concrete-and-steel crypt, hastily built after the accident, that now threatens to collapse. Work is about to get under way on a replacement: an arched structure, the size of a stadium, that will slide over the sarcophagus and seal it off. With its completion the destroyed reactor will be out of sight. But for the region's people it will never be out of mind, as a slow-motion catastrophe continues to unfold. [Article 12, National Geographic magazine] ======================================================== By Morgan Williams, Director Government Affairs, Washington SLAVUTYCH - The first annual International Youth Ecological Forum was held in Slavutych, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine on April 5-7, 2006. Slavutych is the new city of around 30,000 people built quickly by the Soviet Union after the Chornobyl nuclear disaster to take the place of Prypiat. The new city of Prypiat was built very close to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power station during the construction of the facility but had to be closed soon immediately after the disaster. The Forum was held as a commemoration plan of the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy and to allow young Ukrainian students who are involved in community development and social action programs to exchange ideas and to visit the Chornobyl Nuclear Power station, the 'dead' city of Prypiat and the village of Chornobyl. I was invited to represent the United States and Ukrainian business community at the Forum by the US-Ukraine Foundation (USUF) who was one of the sponsors of the event. This was my first opportunity to see the Chornobyl Power Station and the surrounding area. The U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (USUF) has been working closely with the city of Slavutych for almost 10 years. Slavutych is a participant in the CPP/Community Partnerships Project developed and managed by USUF and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). USUF brought young people to the Forum from all of the Ukrainian cities that participate in the CPP. Ludmyla Dudnyk and Christina Redko, special project coordinators in the USUF Kyiv office played a key role in the Forum and were responsible for bringing the twenty young people sponsored by USUF who attended the Forum. During the Forum there were several speakers who presented up-to-day information about the issues and problems presented today by the Chornobyl tragedy. "Radioecological problems of the exclusion zone" was the topic of a presentation by Yuriy Oleksandrovych Ivanov - Ph.D. in biology, Chief Expert, International Radiological Laboratory of the Chornobyl Center for Nuclear Safety, Radiation and Radiology. The subject of the "Medical aspects of the Chornobyl catastrophe" was handled by Volodymyr Hryhorovych Bebeshko, Ph.D. in medicine, professor, General Director of the Research Center for Radiological Medicine, member and correspondent for the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine Oleksandr Yevhenovych Novikov - Deputy Technical Director for Nuclear Safety at the Chornobyl Power Station, spoke about the " Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station - trial years." "Rehabilitation of radioactive territories" was the title of a presentation by Anatoliy Volodymyrovych Nosovsky, Ph.D. in technical sciences, professor, Director of the Slavutych Training Center at the Chernihiv State Institute for Economics and Management, Director of the Slavutych branch of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute "Techno-eco-polis Slavutych - effective socioeconomic rehabilitation," was the title of a very interesting presentation by Volodymyr Petrovych Udovychenko, Ph.D. in economics, winner of the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology, member of the Ukrainian Ecological Academy of Science, member of the Congress of Local and Regional Governments of Europe. The Forum broke up into seven round-table discussion groups after the major topics were covered by the speakers. On Thursday the Forum attendees boarded a train in Slavutych which went through Belarus on the way to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station. The group then went to the dead city of Prypiat, then through the so-called 30-km zone on the way the city of Chornobyl where they had a late lunch. The train, on the way back to Slavutych, was filled to capacity, as the first group of workers at the Station had just completed their seven hour day. There are still around 3,000 people employed at the Power Station which is a huge maintenance cost considering all the nuclear reactors at the Station are shut done. There does not seem to be any end to the huge economic cost of this accident. At the time of the disaster on April 26, 1986 four nuclear reactors were fully operating, one more was 60% built, the sixth one was around 25% completed and five more where being planned for future construction. The goal of the Soviet Union was to build at Chornobyl the world's largest nuclear power station. All construction at Chornobyl was stopped as a result of the nuclear disaster. All of the remaining nuclear reactors at Chornobyl were finally shut down in the year 2000. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: For more information about the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation and their programs in Ukraine click on http://www.usukraine.org. ======================================================== Myron O. Stachiw, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 6, 2006 Dear Friends and Colleagues, I request the pleasure of your company at the opening of the exhibition "Chornobyl + 20: This is our land, we still live here," on Friday April 7 at 5:00 PM at the Ukrainian Centre of Folk Culture and Ivan Honchar Museum in Kyiv, vul. Sichnevoho Povstannia 29 (044 92 68). The exhibition of photographs and video film was created by my colleague, Serhij Mykolajovych Marchenko, and I to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster. I hope that you will be able to attend the event or to see the exhibition before it closes on April 30. Best regards, Myron Oleh Stachiw, Kyiv, Ukraine ======================================================== Washington, D.C., Friday, April 7, 2006 WASHINGTON - April 26, 2006 marks the 20-year anniversary of the nuclear plant explosion in Chornobyl, Ukraine. Ten years ago, Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak visited the Chornobyl Zone, northwest of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. That fall of 1996, the artist and a Ukrainian radio-oncologist embarked on an officially sanctioned one-day visit of the radiation-saturated fenced 40-mile wide circle called the Zone, including the abandoned town of Pripyat. What she saw and experienced, along with much material gathered and documented since 1986, is at the heart of the selection of artwork in her University of Houston-Clear Lake solo exhibition, titled Chornobyl. The exhibition features mixed media paintings that combine seemingly contradictory and disparate materials and processes - such as lead and gold, organic and inert materials, hand embroidery and torching. The thirteen works on canvas, wood, and paper, selected from several series begun after 1986 and continuing through 2005, evoke the Chornobyl cataclysm in its many manifestations. Accompanying the exhibit is the artist's essay, recounting her impressions of the Zone and reflecting on ways it influenced her ensuing artwork. (see essay at the end of this article) The contemplative nature of the exhibition is enhanced within the gallery with soft lighting and the sounds of Requeim for the Victims of Chornobyl, a moving choral work composed by Canadian Roman Hurko. Just outside the Art Gallery glass wall, a display case holds magazines, books, excerpted writings and images of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. Here the artist has also included her photogravure print "Reflected Innocence", and information about her Special Project to raise funds for the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund. In commemoration of the 20-year anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak and the Texas Print Collaborative in Houston initiated a fundraising Special Project that will continue through the duration of the exhibition. An edition and a limited number of proofs of the photogravure print "Reflected Innocence" are available for purchase through the Collaborative or the artist through May 31, 2006, with proceeds benefiting the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund (www.childrenofchornobyl.org). Those interested in supporting this Special Project are invited to click onto the designated site (http://www.texasprint.net/SpecialProjects.html) for more information, to view the print image and place an order. Funds raised are earmarked for the purchase of medical equipment - such as a pulse oximeter - for the neonatal intensive care unit of the Chernihiv City Maternity Center hospital. Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak's solo exhibition Chornobyl is on view from April 1 through May 31, 2006 in the Art Gallery of the University of Houston-Clear Lake, the Bayou Building, Atrium I, First Level, located at 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston, Texas 77058. Gallery hours are 8 AM - 6 PM Monday through Thursday, 8 AM - 12 noon on Friday, or by prior arrangement. Visitor parking is provided in front of the Bayou Building. For further information, please call UH/CL at 281-283-3446. April 21 will provide a special opportunity to view the Chornobyl exhibition as well as Byron Brauchli's show of photographs, Bicycle Pilgrimages - part of Houston Fotofest 2006 - and award-winning VASE student work. University of Houston-ClearLake invites everyone of all ages to join in celebrating the arts and meeting with the artists on Friday evening, April 21, 7 - 9 PM at UH/CL, in the Bayou Building, Atrium I, Level 2. Refreshments and music by the Manicans will be provided. For more information, please call 281-283-3446. (Attachment: Art Party invitation) On Tuesday evening, April 25, beginning at 6 PM, Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak
will give a gallery talk in the Art Gallery, Bayou Building, Atrium
I, Level 1. This presentation about her show Chornobyl is free and
open to the public. More information about the artist's work can
be gleaned from her website: www.LydiaBodnarBalahutrak.com. Contact
BBLydia@aol.com ARTIST'S ESSAY : By Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak, Houston, TX, Apr 2006 April 26, 1986 unleashed a cataclysmic moment of unparalleled unbridled energy. It continues to awe and humble in its divine display of horror and tragedy as well as beauty and grace. On a misty autumn day, 10 years ago, a Ukrainian radio-oncologist and I embarked on an officially sanctioned visit to the Chornobyl Zone. The Chornobyl nuclear power complex is situated 65 miles northwest of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. It is ground zero, saturated with radioactive dust, a fenced 40-mile wide circle called the Zone of Estrangement. At the first designated checkpoint, we were shown to changing rooms and issued gauze-like shoes, pants, jacket, gloves, and a mask to filter outside radioactive particles. After we donned our protective gear, our affable guide herded us into his car, and our tour began. The air was laden with moisture, a continuous sprinkling of rain. It was eerily quiet. The silence permeated the vast open spaces and shrouded the nearby forest of charred trees. There were no sounds of birdsong, no buzzing of insects, no fluttering of wings. Passing vast stretches of flat land and sheared forests, we drove toward a cluster of block-like Soviet-style structures - the town of Pripyat. Stopping, we wandered through the wildly overgrown buildings and grounds. I felt I was inside an enchanted tale. Apple trees were weighed down with scores of golden ripe fruit. Here was the story of the poisoned apple, the allure of deceptive beauty. Left untamed, nature was resolutely reclaiming herself, regenerating life and spreading her healing mantle over the dust and decay. Tree limbs were forging their way in through broken windows, saplings were breaking through concrete floors and taking root. Inside the crumbling, condemned buildings, it looked like people left in a hurry, intending to return. The children's daycare center still had neatly lined up shoes and slippers, rows of tiny metal frame beds readied for naptime, painted murals peeling off the walls, toys and dolls strewn everywhere. I picked up some children's drawings and scrawled bits of notepaper scattered on the floor. "You can take those with you," our guide informed me," but they'll need to go through the decontamination process." I followed his directives. Those saved bits and pieces of child's play were later woven into my work. As we drove back to the orientation center, I gazed out into the distance and followed the tall gray silhouette of the sarcophagus shielding the remnants of nuclear reactor No.4. It jutted out against the sky, this memorial to the desperate nightmare after the 1986 explosion. I thought of all the cleanup workers, now interred with other victims of radiation, all the tons of lead and sand dropped by helicopter through the reactor's roof to quench the fire, all the steel and concrete poured to encase the melting core. It was the recollection of all that accumulated human effort and trauma, of all the building up and layering of organic and inert material to contain the "beast", that later informed my mixed media artwork. Indeed this was at the heart of my compulsion to combine seemingly disparate materials and processes, like lead and cloth, gold-leafing and torching. Our official tour ended inside the power station. I stood in the control room of a reactor virtually identical to that of the destroyed No. 4. The graph bars and squiggles flashing on the monitors were mesmerizing, strangely familiar and alluring. In their visual patterning and color they mimicked the twists and turns of embroidery threads deftly worked into scraps of cloth. The women at the facility had gifted me with embroidered mementoes - works of their hands. I came to regard these remarkable women as Chornobyl's grace notes and later incorporated their handiwork into my art. The control room provided the coda. I was riveted by the monitor screens. Sensors were continuously relaying the temperature and other information in vivid traffic-signal colors. I imagined the screen lighting up with yellow, then orange, then red -- the flickering lights signaling condition red, a release of too much heat and radiation, an impending meltdown. Chornobyl continues to impact the lives of people who suffer from all manner of serious illness. For me, that experienced by children is most heartrending. In some measure, through the artwork, through words, and with related special projects, I address this, our human condition. I cannot save the world, but I can hopefully point in the direction of respectful vigilance, reverence, and compassion. -30- U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., Tuesday, April 4, 2006 HRES 703 IH. 109th CONGRESS Recognizing the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster and supporting continued efforts to control radiation and mitigate the adverse health consequences related to the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Mr. GALLEGLY (for himself, Mr. HYDE, Mr. LANTOS, and Mr. WEXLER) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations RESOLUTION Whereas April 26, 2006, marks the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster; Whereas serious radiological, health, and socioeconomic consequences for the populations of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, as well as for the populations of other affected areas, have been identified since the disaster; Whereas the Chornobyl Forum, an initiative launched by the International Atomic Energy Agency and supported by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Program, and other United Nations agencies, as well as by the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, examined the scientific evidence of the human health affects and the environmental impact of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster; Whereas the findings of the Chornobyl Forum, issued in September 2005, significantly added to the understanding of the health consequences and economic impact caused by the Chornobyl nuclear disaster; Whereas the Chornobyl Forum found that approximately 5,000,000 people live in areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia that were contaminated by radioactivity; Whereas the populations of the affected areas who were exposed as children have experienced significant increases in thyroid cancer; Whereas the lives and health of people in the affected areas continue to be heavily burdened by the aftermath of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster; Whereas numerous charitable, humanitarian, and environmental organizations from the United States and the international community are committed to overcoming the extensive consequences of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster; Whereas the United States has sought to help the people of the affected areas through various forms of assistance; Whereas humanitarian assistance and public health research into the consequences of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster will continue to be needed in the coming decades when a large number of latent health effects are expected to emerge; Whereas the United States strongly supports improving nuclear safety in Ukraine; Whereas, in 1997, the United States, the European Union, and Ukraine developed the Shelter Implementation Plan for the purpose of protecting people and the environment from the dangers of the large quantity of highly radioactive material contained in the Chornobyl nuclear power plant; Whereas as the United States is the largest single country donor to the Chornobyl Shelter Fund, which was created with the purpose of funding the Shelter Implementation Plan, having pledged a total of $203,000,000; and Whereas the most critical component of the Shelter Implementation Plan will be the construction of a new shelter designed to better protect people and the environment from the radioactive remains of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives-- (1) recognizes the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster and expresses sympathy for the ongoing effects of the disaster, including adverse health consequences and deaths; (2) calls upon national and international health organizations to focus their research into the public health consequences of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster into areas identified by the Chornobyl Shelter Fund, so that the global community can benefit from the findings of such research; (3) supports continued United States assistance to the Chornobyl Shelter Fund, the Shelter Implementation Plan, construction of a facility to store spent nuclear fuel, and other efforts to mitigate the consequences of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster; and (4) urges other countries and the European Union to continue to provide assistance to the Chornobyl Shelter Fund, the Shelter Implementation Plan, construction of a facility to store spent nuclear fuel, and other efforts to mitigate the consequences of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster. -30- ======================================================== 5. LIFE RETURNS TO CHORNOBYL Andrew Osborn, The Independent, London, UK, Wed, Apr 5, 2006 Less than a mile from what is left of Chornobyl's ill-fated fourth reactor, a pair of elks is grazing nonchalantly on land irradiated by the world's worst nuclear accident. In nearby Pripyat, an eerie husk of a town where 50,000 people used to live before they were forced to flee on a terrifying afternoon in 1986, a Soviet urban landscape is rapidly giving way to wild European woodland. Radiation levels remain far too high for human habitation but the abandoned town is filled with birdsong and the gurgling of streams forged by melting snow. Nobody thought it possible at the time but 20 years after the reactor exploded on 26 April 1986, during an ill-conceived "routine" Soviet experiment, Chornobyl's radiation-soaked "dead zone" is not looking so dead after all. The zone - an area with a radius of 18 miles in modern-day Ukraine - lives on in the popular imagination as a post-apocalyptic wasteland irreparably poisoned with strontium and caesium that would make a perfect setting for the next Mad Max movie. It is a corner of Europe associated with death and alarming yet nebulous stories of genetic mutation, a post-nuclear badland that shows what happens when mankind gets atomic energy wrong. The reality, at least on the surface, is starkly different from the mythology, however. The almost complete absence of human activity in large swaths of the zone during the past two decades has given the area's flora and fauna a chance to first recover and then - against all the odds - to flourish. It is a paradox that has disturbed opponents of nuclear power who point to the appalling, still unknown, human cost of the tragedy and the terrifying invisible pollution that looks likely to blight the area for centuries. That something remotely good could come of something so obviously awful does not fit with orthodox thinking about nuclear power and its all too apparent risks. The picture is further complicated by the fact that the true human cost of the tragedy and the damage wreaked on people's health by the radioactive cloud emitted after the explosion may never be fully known. Estimates of human fatalities, both direct and indirect, vary wildly, from 41 in the immediate aftermath to tens of thousands in the years that followed. It is estimated that five million people were exposed to radiation in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and that the radiation fallout - equivalent to 400 Hiroshimas - triggered an epidemic of thyroid cancer that has yet to abate. Doctors claim convincingly that cancer rates are far higher than they were before 1986 and that thousands of Ukrainians and people in neighbouring Belarus (worse affected than Ukraine because of the wind direction at the time) may have died prematurely as a result. In the dead zone's so-called Red Forest, a pine forest that took the brunt of the radioactive explosion, radiation levels today can be as high as one roentgen, more than 50,000 times normal background levels. Elsewhere, however, levels are much lower - to the point where
large animals such as elks, wild horses and wild boars appear to
be enjoying normal life spans. It is an unlikely scenario that has
begotten another improbable development - the arrival of a trickle
of intrepid eco-tourists who come to Astonishingly, most of the animals, with the exception of the herds of wild Przewalski's horses brought in to gnaw on radioactive grass to guard against forest fires, appear to have returned to the zone of their own accord. The most recent count by the authorities showed that the zone (including a larger contaminated area in neighbouring Belarus) is home to 66 different species of mammals, including 7,000 wild boar, 600 wolves, 3,000 deer, 1,500 beavers, 1,200 foxes, 15 lynx and several thousand elks. The area was also estimated to be home to 280 species of birds, many of them rare and endangered. Breeding birds include the rare green crane, black stork, white-tailed sea eagle and fish hawk. Wild dogs are also in evidence, though they are prime targets for wolves, a detail that prompted the American thriller writer Martin Cruz Smith to call his latest novel, which is partly set in the zone, Wolves Eat Dogs. The only animal that appears not to have made a comeback is the bear. But ecologists say the return of large predators such as wolves is a sure sign that things are moving in the right direction. Serhiy Franchuk, a guide and local expert who has been associated with the area since 1982, says he believes the radiation has purified the soil in an inexplicable way. "We think that the land has been cleansed," he says, pointing up a long, straight road flanked with pine forests that later give way to silver birch forests straight from the pages of Boris Pasternak's Dr Zhivago. "Nature is flourishing here, even more so than it was before the accident. When Viktor Yushchenko [the Ukrainian President] came here last year, he even suggested turning the area into a nature reserve. That gives you an idea of what is happening here." What Serhiy doesn't mention is that Mr Yushchenko simultaneously floated the idea of turning the exclusion zone into a dump for foreign nuclear waste. Anywhere else, such a plan would have ecologists up in arms but here some nature-lovers - who seem to regard radiation much in the same way as keen gardeners in the West regard manure - think it is nothing to fret about. "(If it happened) it would not take up a huge amount of territory," says Mary Mycio, author of Wormwood Forest, a book that describes itself as a natural history of Chornobyl. Ms Mycio, an American foreign correspondent in the area, and a biologist, was one of the first people to begin cataloguing nature's unlikely comeback in Chornobyl and has made 24 different trips to the dead zone. "On the surface," she says, "radiation is very good for wildlife because it forces people to leave the contaminated area. They removed 135,000 people froman area twice the size of Luxembourg. The people there now carry out very localised activities and in vast regions of the zone there are no people. It is a radioactive wilderness and it is thriving." Hunting and fishing in the dead zone is prohibited for obvious reasons and according to Mr Franchuk there are only 337 squatters - people who obstinately refused to be resettled - living in the zone. The vast majority of these settlers are elderly and though many of them talk about radiation as if it were about as harmful as rain, none of them lives in the heart of the dead zone, a six-mile exclusion area that even they dare not inhabit. A small army of about 6,500 nuclear workers comes in and out of
the zone on temporary assignments to try to patch up the cracked
sarcophagus that covers the stricken reactor, but none of them is
a permanent resident. Their impact on the environment is so minimal
that even the cooling ponds of the power Ms Mycio argues that something good has come out of something bad. "The sight of wild horses here is moving. I saw a wolf in broad daylight once, and the bird-watching is excellent." She admits, however, that some scientists question what is happening to flora and fauna at a cellular and genetic level. The few studies that have been done have exposed minor genetic changes in small animals and birds such as mice and barn swallows, including depressed fertility. But Ms Mycio argues that animals are adapting to living with radiation and are even building up a resistance to it. She insists there is no serious evidence of animals mutating in the zone. "Nature's law is the survival of the fittest. In the wild, mutants die. And if they do survive, they are like the partly albino swallows that appeared in the early years after the disaster. They were not considered attractive and found it hard to mate, so their mutations didn't pass on to future generations." Serhiy Franchuk, a self-confessed optimist, is among the many who believe that animals sense whether the land they live on is poisoned or not. He sees their return to Chornobyl as evidence that the eco-system is rapidly cleansing itself, a state of affairs he believes could see people moving back to parts of the zone within 15 years. Others think that it will be centuries and warn that if humans do return to the zone in significant numbers, the area's unique flora and fauna will be put at risk. In the aftermath of the accident, many trees and plants were killed outright by radiation and it seemed as if nothing would grow again in their place. But the abandoned settlements of Chornobyl appear to have become the site of an unlikely renaissance. The town of Prypiat, just two miles from reactor number four, is a case in point. Before the accident it was a model Soviet town populated by power-station workers, its shiny concrete tower blocks, crowned by giant steel Soviet emblems, symbolic of a bright atomic future. Its creches, shops, and apartments were regarded as the best the USSR could offer. Now its central Lenin Square is a shadow of its former self. Trees encroach on its public spaces, steps are carpeted in grass and moss. As the winter snow melts, the paving stones become a shallow river bed, as water runs into a drainage system that has long since ceased to be serviced. And as the concrete cracks, nature advances. In one of the eerie children's play areas, the only sound is cheerful birdsong. Branches spread across what used to be an enclosure for bumper cars, a giant Ferris wheel stands idle, and trees and weeds press in on every side. In another 20 years it may be hard to discern the town's features at all. In the village of Illintsi, Maria Shaparenko,82, one of the stubborn resettlers, claims Chornobyl was always a beautiful area and that nothing has really changed. "It's very nice here in summer, everything blooms. In fact nothing is wrong here, it's just that people have been scared off by the radiation." Outside in her yard a cockerel crows, and for a minute, it seems like Chornobyl really is like anywhere else. But a few doors away, Roman Yushchenko, an old man riddled with cancer, is turning black beside a chamber pot of his own blood-red urine. Chornobyl may have turned into a sanctuary for flora and fauna. For human beings it remains less welcoming. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================== COMMENTARY: By Max Wilkinson Nuclear power still inspires nameless terrors and, until recently, few western politicians dared to discuss it. They preferred to tilt at windmills or peddle visions of backyard power stations running on refuse. Useful as alternative energy systems - and conservation - may be at the margin, they cannot replace the need for big new power stations. As Sir David King, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, insists, that must include nuclear. This view reflects a global revival of interest in nuclear power, including in the US, where a nuclear moratorium has lasted almost three decades. Some 24 new reactors are now being built worldwide, mostly in Asia and eastern Europe. A further 41 are planned or on order, and another 113 are under consideration. In total, this would equal 40 per cent of the world's present nuclear capacity. Anxieties about global warming have converted even some prominent environmentalists. Sir James Lovelock, the green prophet, has said: "We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available energy source." But the danger of climate change is only one of four reasons why the nuclear option is looking more attractive. FIRST, existing plants have become more reliable and much cheaper to run than once seemed possible. The 104 reactors in the US can now operate for more than 90 per cent of the time, as compared with only 60 per cent in the mid-1980s. Greater availability and big economies in fuel consumption have brought running costs far below those of fossil plants, even when the costs of decommissioning and nuclear waste disposal are included. The latter represent a much smaller part of the total cost of nuclear electricity than is widely assumed. SECOND, safety has greatly improved since the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania 27 years ago (where nobody was harmed). Several studies have shown that if mining and other accidents are taken into account, nuclear power is much safer than other mainstream sources of electricity. Even the estimated figure of 2,500 deaths caused by the meltdown at Chornobyl in Ukraine in 1986 is small compared with the cumulative total from mines, smoke pollution, gas explosions and dam bursts. THIRD, an era of cheap oil and gas has ended. The oil price is now only 20 per cent below its 1979 peak (in today's money). Gas prices have risen in sympathy. And three-quarters of the world's oil and gas reserves are in Russia and the Middle East. Coal is still plentiful, but the costs of removing emissions of smoke and carbon dioxide are high. FOURTH, new designs for "Generation III" nuclear plants are expected to be inherently safer, simpler, cheaper and quicker to build than their predecessors. They also use less fuel and produce less waste. One is already operating in Japan and another is being built in Finland. Even if uranium fuel and waste disposal turn out to be more expensive than expected, Generation III nuclear electricity is likely to be cheaper than any rival. Last year, the International Energy Agency estimated that nuclear power would cost 20 per cent to 40 per cent less than energy from coal and gas, depending on assumptions - and that was before recent gas price rises. Power from windmills is about twice the price of that from nuclear, when the cost of standby plants is included. If the IEA is right, one new nuclear power reactor in the UK could save the country £40m to £80m a year compared with natural gas plants of equivalent power. That equals the cost of a medium-sized hospital. Ten nuclear reactors could save more than £20bn over their lifetimes. But what is the UK's response? It is building gas plants. By 2020, it has been estimated that 65 per cent of UK power could be dependent on this expensive and increasingly imported fuel. So can windmills save the planet? Some 10,000 would be needed to match the output of 10 reactors. They would spread across 120,000 acres of countryside and the extra cost of electricity might be about £1bn a year. The assumptions behind these figures may be questioned, of course.
But a range of international studies has come to similar conclusions
and it would be gross folly to dismiss them. David Gow, Brussels, The Guardian, London, UK, March 27, 2006 The overwhelming majority of leaders at last week's European Union summit, including Tony Blair, strongly backed a revival of nuclear power as the answer to Europe's growing dependence on overseas supplies and to combat climate change. Only Germany and Austria explicitly rejected the nuclear option in secret summit talks, according to senior German diplomats, who pointed out that Angela Merkel, the chancellor and a trained physicist, favoured it personally but was bound by her Social Democrat coalition partners to reject it. Andris Piebalgs, EU energy commissioner and author of this month's green paper on a common energy policy, made it plain in an interview that a revival of atomic power was not the "silver bullet" for meeting Europe's triple objectives of security of supply, sustainable development and competitiveness. "There are no silver bullets and you cannot believe that, if you build new nuclear power stations, that will solve everything," he told the Guardian. "Countries with expertise are well placed to replace existing plants or build new stations but we should not say that nuclear energy will meet all three objectives cheaply and efficiently. It has huge costs and lots of complications, including the issue of waste and final storage." Mr Piebalgs, a Latvian, said countries pursuing the nuclear option needed to emulate Finland, which is building Europe's first new nuclear plant since the Chornobyl disaster 20 years ago (a French-designed pressurised-water reactor). "Finland's decision was based on a thorough analysis of the nuclear option and a political debate, including about safe final storage, so each citizen knows that he is not condemning his children to a dangerous future," he said, adding: "The only genuine silver bullet is energy efficiency and conservation." Last week's summit endorsed the notion of an EU action plan designed to save 20% of energy consumption by 2020 and plans to raise the 6% of energy provided by renewables to 20% by the same date. But EU leaders rejected Mr Piebalgs' call for a European energy regulator to police the market and provide the framework to invest in common gas and electricity grids that, with new power plants, could cost euros 1,000bn (pounds 700bn) by 2030. By then the EU will import 70% of its energy, mainly gas from Russia, Algeria and Norway, as North Sea reserves run out. Mr Piebalgs, who also favours the use of clean coal, carbon sequestration and biomass, indicated that a critical answer to Europe's long-term supply needs was to increase the market for liquefied natural gas (LNG), which could be imported from several countries. He suggested that LNG should provide 20%-25% of European energy within the next 25 years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================== Doctors 'overwhelmed' by cancers and mutations United Nations nuclear and health watchdogs have ignored evidence of deaths, cancers, mutations and other conditions after the Chornobyl accident, leading scientists and doctors have claimed in the run-up to the nuclear disaster's 20th anniversary next month. In a series of reports about to be published, they will suggest that at least 30,000 people are expected to die of cancers linked directly to severe radiation exposure in 1986 and up to 500,000 people may have already died as a result of the world's worst environmental catastrophe. But the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organisation say that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster, and that, at most, 4,000 people may eventually die from the accident on April 26 1986. They say only nine children have died of thyroid cancers in 20 years and that the majority of illnesses among the estimated 5 million people contaminated in the former Soviet Union are attributable to growing poverty and unhealthy lifestyles. An IAEA spokesman said he was confident the UN figures were correct. "We have a wide scientific consensus of 100 leading scientists. When we see or hear of very high mortalities we can only lean back and question the legitimacy of the figures. Do they have qualified people? Are they responsible? If they have data that they think are excluded then they should send it." The new estimates have been collated by researchers commissioned by European parliamentary groups, Greenpeace International and medical foundations in Britain, Germany, Ukraine, Scandinavia and elsewhere. They take into account more than 50 published scientific studies. "At least 500,000 people - perhaps more - have already died out of the 2 million people who were officially classed as victims of Chornobyl in Ukraine," said Nikolai Omelyanets, deputy head of the National Commission for Radiation Protection in Ukraine. "[Studies show] that 34,499 people who took part in the clean-up of Chornobyl have died in the years since the catastrophe. The deaths of these people from cancers was nearly three times as high as in the rest of the population. "We have found that infant mortality increased 20% to 30% because of chronic exposure to radiation after the accident. All this information has been ignored by the IAEA and WHO. We sent it to them in March last year and again in June. They've not said why they haven't accepted it." Yevhenia Stepanova, of the Ukrainian government's Scientific Centre for Radiation Medicine, said: "We're overwhelmed by thyroid cancers, leukaemias and genetic mutations that are not recorded in the WHO data and which were practically unknown 20 years ago." The IAEA and WHO, however, say that apart from an increase in thyroid cancer in children there is no evidence of a large-scale impact on public health. "No increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality that could be associated with radiation exposure have been observed," said the agencies' report in September. In the Rivne region of Ukraine, 310 miles west of Chornobyl, doctors say they are coming across an unusual rate of cancers and mutations. "In the 30 hospitals of our region we find that up to 30% of people who were in highly radiated areas have physical disorders, including heart and blood diseases, cancers and respiratory diseases. Nearly one in three of all the newborn babies have deformities, mostly internal," said Oleksandr Vevremchuk, of the Special Hospital for the Radiological Protection of the Population in Vilne. Figures on the health effects of Chornobyl have always been disputed. Sovietauthorities covered up many of the details at the time. The largestradiation doses were received by the 600,000 people involved in the clean-up, many drawn from army conscripts all over the Soviet Union. BACKSTORY The worst-affected area was Belarus, which took the brunt of the 4% of the190 tonnes of uranium dioxide in the plant that escaped. Ukraine was alsocontaminated. Some 600,000 workers (mainly volunteers) who took part inrecovery and clean-up operations were exposed to high levels of radiation. The Soviet government first suppressed news of the incident, but evacuated local people within a few days. Five million people were exposed toradiation in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, and there was a dramatic increase in thyroid cancer among children living there. -30- ======================================================== KYIV - The Cabinet of Ministers has endorsed the procedure for the use of the funds envisaged in the budget to maintain the safety of reactors and the Shelter facility at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in 2006. Ukrainian News learned this from Cabinet resolution #407 of March 30. The budget funds will be provided in keeping with the work plan endorsed by the Ministry for Emergency Situations and Protection of Population from Chornobyl Accident Consequences. According to the resolution, the ministry will channel funds for the maintenance in a safe condition of the operated reactors (servicing and repair of some parts and elements), the first storage of spent nuclear fuel and other technological facilities; withdrawal of potentially dangerous highly inflammable and chemical materials from systems, equipment and pipelines of power units; final de-energizing of separate systems and elements of power units, as well as reconstruction of operating units in order to cut operational costs. Apart from this, funds will be channeled for examination of premises, equipment and pipelines of power units; settlements in the creation of a list and determination of volumes of the radioactive wastes forming in the course of closure of the reactors; the drafting of documents required to get a permit for holding work at the first stage of closure of reactors and scientific technology support for the effort. The 2006 budget envisages UAH 283.400 million for maintenance in a safe condition of the reactors and the Shelter. As Ukrainian News reported, explosion at reactor 4 of the Chornobyl NPP in April 1986 caused the world's biggest man-made accident. -30- KYIV - Ukraine's Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov Wednesday pledged 20 million hryvnias ($4 million, EUR3.3 million) to mark the 20th anniversary of the deadly explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, the world's worst ever nuclear accident. The money would be spent on awards for those involved in combatting the consequences of the explosion, buying 1,000 cars for Chornobyl invalids, to build two health centers and to increase pensions for those who helped respond to the disaster, government spokesman Valery Olefir said. The money will also be used to fund requiems on the anniversary of the explosion, print commemorative coins, publish books, organize exhibitions and upgrade the Chornobyl museum in the capital, Kyiv. On April 26, Ukraine will mark 20 years after the deadly explosion in Reactor No. 4, which released a radioactive cloud. About 600,000 people were mobilized to fight the effects of the explosion, and more than 116,000 evacuated from their homes. The ex-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are stilling
coping with the aftermath of the accident today, from skyrocketing
rates of thyroid cancer to a marked increase in health concerns
among the 5 million people whose land was dusted with radioactive
particles. 11. CHORNOBYL 20th ANNIVERSARY MEDICAL & HUMANITARIAN AID CONVOY
HEADED FOR BELARUS THIS MONTH NEW YORK - Chornobyl Children's Project International to deliver $3.5 million in aid to hospitals and orphanages in Belarus, and a mobile thyroid cancer monitoring unit to the to the International Red Cross. Convoy arrival coincides with life saving pediatric cardiac surgery mission. Chornobyl Children's Project International will mark the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear accident this month with a humanitarian and medical aid convoy worth $3.5 million dollars. The convoy will leave Ireland on April 9, and travel overland 3,000 miles through 9 countries en route to Belarus, a country severely impacted by the Chornobyl disaster. The convoy will arrive in Belarus on April 15. The aid convoy - the 27th for Chornobyl Children's Project International (CCPI) - will consist of fifteen artic trucks carrying food, clothing, and medical supplies, and 27 ambulances. Chornobyl Children's Project International will donate the ambulances to hospitals, clinics, and orphanages in the most needy communities of Belarus, and volunteers will distribute the aid throughout the country. A mobile thyroid monitoring unit will be donated to the International Red Cross in Belarus on April 19. Long time CCPI patron and volunteer Ali Hewson, who is co-creator of the EDUN socially conscious clothing line and wife of U2's Bono, will perform the hand-over. The arrival of the aid convoy will coincide with CCPI's life saving children's cardiac surgery program, which is organized in partnership with the International Children's Heart Foundation. CCPI provides funding for the International Children's Heart Foundation to go to Belarus three times per year to operate on children at Minsk's children's cardiovascular surgery center. CHORNOBYL CHILDREN'S PROJECT INTERNATIONAL (http://www.Chornobyl-international.org) is an international development, medical and humanitarian organization that works with children, families and communities who continue to be affected by the Chornobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. They have delivered over $72 million in aid to Chornobyl affected regions of Belarus via overland convoy. The organization was founded in Ireland 15 years ago, and expanded into the United States in 2001. CCPI's work was featured in the Academy Award winning documentary "Chornobyl Heart." Chornobyl Children's Project International Kathy Ryan, 202-342-7667 kathyr@aol.com. -30- By Richard Stone, National Geographic, Washington, D.C., April, 2006 WASHINGTON - Twenty years after a nuclear reactor exploded, blanketing thousands of square miles with radiation, the catastrophe isn't over. Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt from the April edition of the National Geographic. Twenty years ago this month, life in Pripyat came to a shuddering end. Before dawn on April 26, 1986, less than two miles (three kilometers) south of what was then a city of 50,000, the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant's number four reactor exploded. Thirty people died in the blast and fire or were exposed to lethal radiation. The destroyed hulk burned for ten days, contaminating tens of thousands of square miles in northern Ukraine, southern Belarus, and Russia's Bryansk region. It was the worst nuclear accident the world has ever seen. The fallout, 400 times more radioactivity than was released at Hiroshima, drove a third of a million people from their homes and triggered an epidemic of thyroid cancer in children. Over the years, the economic losses-health and cleanup costs, compensation, lost productivity-have mounted into the hundreds of billions of dollars. As evidence of government bungling and secrecy emerged in its wake, Chornobyl (as it is now known in independent Ukraine) even sped the breakup of the Soviet Union. Today the fiercely radioactive remnants of reactor four continue to smolder beneath the so-called sarcophagus, a decaying concrete-and-steel crypt, hastily built after the accident, that now threatens to collapse. Work is about to get under way on a replacement: an arched structure, the size of a stadium, that will slide over the sarcophagus and seal it off. With its completion the destroyed reactor will be out of sight. But for the region's people it will never be out of mind, as a slow-motion catastrophe continues to unfold. -30- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Long Shadow of Chornobyl LINK: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0604/feature1/index.html ======================================================== By Oksana PACHLOWSKA, Rome - Kyiv You enter the park of an Italian Renaissance villa, and your heart suddenly stops beating: you see Chornobyl's Way of the Cross along the alley - two rows of fourteen crosses with black and white mourning ribbons tied to them. The crosses bear the names of Chornobyl's extinct villages: Poliske, Chystohalivka, Kruta Hora, Zymovyshche, Opachychi, and Krasne. Candles are lit here at night. Bowing to Ukraine's Stations of the Cross are Renaissance-style stone angels, their wings cropped by time. There is an old magnolia tree, also tied with a white ribbon. It is a wounded tree, with photos of adults and children blown off the earth by the winds of Chornobyl scattered over the grass. The Ukrainian tragedy is concentrated in the space of Absolute Esthetics, concrete topoi of the disaster and timeless tranquility of Renaissance frescoes. Every detail explodes, wounds, and cries out. At the same time, the tragedy's immersion into this centuries-old solidified space of beauty discloses the eschatological dimension of Chornobyl. On March 10-12 Vicenza (Italy) hosted perhaps the world's first international forum dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the disaster. The forum was organized to reflect three mutually complementary aspects. The first is an exhibit called "1986-2006: Remembering Chornobyl;" the second is the Italian-Ukrainian scholarly conference "Wounded Humanity: 20 Years after Chornobyl;" and the third is "An Overture to Apocalypse," a series of evenings devoted to the poetry of Lina Kostenko. Chornobyl was thus discussed in the language of art, scholarship, and poetry. The forum was organized by the Vicenza-based Institute of Social and Religious History Research - the coordinator of an international Holodomor congress held in Italy a few years ago - the Il Ponte-Mist Association, which works with Chornobyl children, the Kyiv Museum of Chornobyl, and the municipalities of Caldogno and Marostica. It was held under the patronage of the Ukrainian Embassy in Italy, the Foreign Ministry of Italy, the Region of Veneto, and the Province of Vicenza. The Vicenza institute has been studying Central-Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, for the past several years. This field of interest was launched by Gabriele De Rosa, the institute's president and senator for life of the Italian Republic, who is regarded as the patriarch of Italy's history studies. Today it is spearheaded by the institute's secretary-general Giorgio Cracco, a medieval specialist. But the organizational and scholarly engine of this institute is the scholarly secretary Francesca Lomastro, a historian and the "mother" of Chornobyl children. This slender woman seems to burn with love for Ukraine. Do we really need to ask why? Two years ago, in the fall of 2004, Francesca organized "Toward a Space of Light," an exhibit of works by such late 19th and early 20th-century Ukrainian painters as Murashko, Bohomazov and Exter, at the same villa. Today, it is Chornobyl, a space of darkness. Ukraine was represented at this conference by the historian Yuriy Shapoval, Chornobyl zone researcher Natalia Baranovska, and the writer and former Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Yuriy Shcherbak. Shapoval spoke about the criminal informational policy of the Soviet leadership and the KGB during the disaster. Shcherbak delivered a paper entitled "The Legacy of the Chornobyl Disaster for the 21st Century." Baranovska analyzed the government and society of Ukraine after the disaster, raising ideological and cultural issues: Chornobyl as the ashes of an anti-utopia. The Italian side featured papers presented by anthropologist Elisa Geremia (Venice Ca' Foscari University), Silvia Bertazzo, a specialist on the legal aspects of technological disasters (University of Trento), energy expert Andrea Gasparella (Vicenza Energy Center), and other speakers. Also taking part in the conference was Mario Petrucci, a British physicist, poet, and film director of Italian origin, who showed a clip from the film Heavy Water, a laconic but dramatically and visually lavish screen version of Svetlana Aleksiyevych's book on Chornobyl. The "nerve" of the scholarly forum was an exhibit created by Anatoliy Haidamaka. I am certain nothing of the kind could have been organized in any other cultural space. Serving as the stage was the villa of Renaissance genius Andrea Palladio whose work had the greatest impact on the development of modern architecture. Palladio is the quintessence of High Renaissance, a symbol of its unattainable harmony. The steps to Villa Palladio are covered with black-embroidered towels that bear the meanders of ashen patterns that used to be colored. A medieval wall is bedecked with photographs of deserted Ukrainian houses from whose windows you can see a doll looking out, a plush rabbit with a bent ear, or a teddy bear leaning against the weather-stripped window frame. At the foot of the stairs is a homemade little boat festooned with children's drawings. It stands motionless on the stone steps, for there is no place to sail to. There is a crossed-out Chornobyl road sign at the entrance to the villa. In the middle is an Orthodox iconostasis. An almost phosphorescent statue of a member of a Chornobyl clean-up brigade stands beside the altar. Here and there the spaces between the frescoes are filled with embroidered Ukrainian shirts. This is not an attribute of folklore: the nation's body was blown out of these shirts. Spreading wide their empty sleeves, the shirts are flying through time. A girl's silvery voice is heard singing an enchanted note. The note breaks up from time to time, and the reedy voice keeps trying to catch up with it, fluttering in time broken asunder, in split space. The frescoes show the warm marble of columns kissed by the setting sun. Smiling people are relaxing, and ladies are talking to gentlemen. A woman's figure is frozen in dance. Children run about, dressed in satin clothing. Wine-filled glasses and grapes stand on the table, the sunny peace of art that does not fade. But you see all this through gigantic transparent photos of the Chornobyl disaster. The sarcophagus has caved in over the realm of tranquility and beauty. A gas mask is lying amid Renaissance-era silver vessels. A clean-up worker's outfit shines through a knight's armor. The inscription "Contaminated" covers the ancient world. The Christ Pantocrator is plunging headlong into a nuclear conflagration. Roman columns surround the Chornobyl cemetery. The mad ravings of communism about conquering nature turned the clock back to primeval times. High above the painted capitals soars a spiritualistic black bird whose transparent body shows entangled pictures of Lenin, Stalin, and the people they turned into phantoms. There are two dates: 1933 and 1986, the first and the second genocides of Ukraine. In the last hall the wall on the right shows frescoes depicting slaves being beaten by Roman soldiers, and the one on the left shows the same soldiers brutalizing women. The one in the center features a square full of people and the flags of the Orange Revolution raised high in the Maidan's night sky. In the adjacent hall, 16th-century girls are donning flower wreaths in a blooming meadow: they seem to be talking with mannequins of Ukrainian girls, who are wearing embroidered blouses and flower garlands, like their Italian sisters in the frescoes: different blouses, different traditions of Ukraine, dance movements, the voices of springtime. An old woman smiled at you at the exit. She must have come from the other world, the world of antiquity. A little girl also smiles, adjusting on her head a big ruffled wreath of grass, flowers, and everything that grows and blooms. Then you leave Villa Palladio to enter a World War II bunker filled with photographs by Ihor Kostin, sparsely scattered throughout its compartments, where there is water on the floor and the rusted doors do not open even into Nowhere; humanity's last refuge after a nuclear war. The lopsided, washed-down walls show scenes of death. A skeleton-like youth, until very recently an athlete, is lying on his death bed. The only thing that remains of him is his eyes. Homeless women are crying, abandoned on a rain-slurred road, with bundles in hand and loneliness in their heart. A dosimetrist is monitoring the radiation level of dead fish on a river bank. There is a picture of an eight-legged horse. Kostin sent photos of these mutants to Mikhail Gorbachev but received no answer. A man wearing a gas mask is pushing a baby carriage, but there are no gas masks for babies. There is a picture of the August 1989 protest march. National flags are flying. A placard reads, "We demand a Chornobyl Nuremberg trial!" A few months later both the communist system and the Sarcophagus of Death collapsed. But radiation will continue to seep through - yesterday, today - for centuries and millennia to come. You are pursued by the buzzing of a Geiger counter that echoes in the bunker's corridors. As you leave the bunker, you see the words of Lina Kostenko on a rugged concrete wall: "Oh, buried Chornobyl woods! Do not forget our voices." Is this Ukraine's lesson to the world? To whom is the testament of human-kind addressed? You are back at the Renaissance villa's ancient garden. Tiny violets have sprouted beneath an enormous plane-tree. If ever there was in-depth contact between two cultures, it happened in this place. Here you can read Italy through Ukraine and Ukraine through Italy. You read the future through the past. The Chornobyl exhibit is a metaphor of modern times. Renaissance man has brought the laws of harmony down to earth from outer space. Modern man is producing chaos and is transporting it from earth to outer space. It is also a warning: those who did not succeed in staging a Nuremberg trial for 1933 are doomed to that of 1986. It is a catharsis: a fresco shows a mother's hand on her child's head, shining through the past and future ruins of the world. -30- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LINK to photograph and article: http://www.day.Kyiv.ua/160364/.
RESPONSE: By LINDA WALKER Supporters of the nuclear industry will be apoplectic about the report on the Chornobyl legacy by John Vidal (UN accused of ignoring 500,000 deaths, March 25). And even those of us who believe the effects of the nuclear disaster to be widespread, serious and long term, will be disappointed to read of what must surely be a gross over-estimate of the real casualty figures. It is notoriously difficult to gather real statistics - there has been little serious research, and many of those involved have an axe to grind. The charity I represent has been working in Belarus for 11 years, delivering humanitarian aid, training orphanage staff and foster families, and bringing children to the UK for recuperative holidays. Regular visitors to Belarus cannot fail to be aware of the many health problems which, even today, seem to be more acute in the contaminated parts of the country. Twenty years on, young parents are giving birth to babies with disabilities or genetic disorders, or who develop serious diseases in their early months. But as far as we know, no research is being conducted into these issues. Haematologists speak of blood disorders in children which are normally only seen in the elderly; heart disease and respiratory problems in children are widespread; osteoporosis is seen in small children; in the orphanages there are many children who do not grow, still looking like toddlers into their teens; babies are born with missing or twisted limbs; and breast cancer among young women is a major problem. Thyroid cancer is the only illness which is indisputably linked to Chornobyl. There was a great deal of early scepticism, especially from US scientists, but eventually it could not be denied that the exponential rise in this normally rare disease could have only one cause. Last September a report by the International Atomic Energy Authority's Chornobyl Forum claimed that, apart from thyroid cancer, there were very few serious health effects in Belarus and Ukraine. Most of the problems were caused by psychological distress or radiophobia, it said. As the IAEA's primary role is the promotion of nuclear power, playing down the effects of the world's worst nuclear disaster is part of its agenda. On the other hand, if the figures reported by John Vidal were to be believed, 500,000 deaths in Ukraine would mean that at least as many would have died in Belarus, which received a greater proportion of the radiation, with perhaps a further 100,000 in Russia. This would amount to well over a million deaths in the immediate region, not to mention the fatalities across Europe in the path of the fallout. These figures seem almost as unlikely as the derisory "only 51 deaths so far" of the IAEA-led report. Many charities in Britain have come together to form a coalition - Remember Chornobyl - which seeks to raise maximum awareness about the long-term effects of the fallout, and to appeal for unbiased, independently funded research. Twenty years on, it is time a determined effort was made to learn the truth about the real effects of the disaster. Linda Walker is the national co-ordinator of the Chornobyl Children's Project (UK) www.rememberChornobyl.org. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DUBLIN - THE CHILDREN have no hair. They are thin, pasty-faced and nervous when they arrive here on holidays. They are the cancer victims of Chornobyl, and a constant reminder that a serious mistake at a nuclear power plant can prove brutally unforgiving. One slip, and a legacy of horror lasting generations is created. Many of these tragic child victims were not born when the Chornobyl nuclear plant exploded on the morning of April 26, 1986, triggering the worst environmental catastrophe in history. Their families were not even living in the Ukraine. More than 70pc of the deadly radiation fell on neighbouring Belarus. Twenty years later, the cancers are continuing in their thousands. Thyroid cancer has gone up by 2,400pc, almost 99pc of Belarus is still contaminated and its population continues to absorb the radiation through their food, water and air. The Sellafield nuclear plant is our very, very close neighbour. It is just over 160km from the Irish coastline to Cumbria, in the north west of England. To put this in perspective, Sellafield is roughly the same distance as Dublin is to Waterford. Now that's a terrifying thought. Scientists are agreed that Sellafield poses a clear and ever present threat to our population for at least another 150 years, or longer if the plant is not decommissioned. The reality is truly frightening. An accident or terrorist attack would contaminate our food chain. That's not the biased opinion of an anti-nuke lobby group or green activists. It is the stark conclusion of the State's Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII). A security report involving UK authorities on Sellafield, warns that an accident or suicide terrorist attack on the facility, targetting its controversial high-level liquid waste storage tanks known as HAST, could cause "hundreds of thousands of cancers" in Ireland. This worst-case scenario involves just 10pc of the material being released. There are "chronically inadequate national resources"
to deal with a major "On the basis of the information supplied to the RPII, the potential contamination levels in Ireland from a serious accident or incident at Sellafield could be such that the Irish authorities could have to intervene to reduce contamination in the food chain," the State agency states. The main health threat comes from radioactive caesium 137 and iodine 131. These are transmitted from mother to foetus. As in Belarus, the health effects are passed from generation to generation and this would undoubtedly happen here if the radioactive cloud quickly passed over here from Cumbria. Scientists at the Clonskeagh-based RPII are very concerned over Sellafield for three main reasons; a potential terrorist attack, significant extra radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea during reprocessing contracts and the potential for a catastrophic accident, the biggest threat of them all. There have been a succession of high-profile campaigns against Sellafield. Postcards were sent to Prince Charles, Tony Blair and the head of British Nuclear Fuels. Flotillas of boats sailed on the high seas to try and intercept deadly cargoes of nuclear fuel being shipped to the Cumbrian plant. The Government mounted legal challenges to no avail. It now seems that Mr Blair's government is planning to increase the reliance on nuclear power to meet their energy needs. The EU is not going to act on Sellafield. After all, nuclear plants are part and parcel of many member states. Environment Minister Dick Roche branded Sellafield management "Homer Simpsons". Safety records were even falsified. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has called Sellafield the biggest single environmental threat facing this country. And the emergency plan, according to junior minister Joe Jacob, is to close the windows and hope for the best. That advice doesn't seem to have changed and the iodine tablets are probably lost or out of date. We should be very worried. -30- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINK: http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ With major support from The Bleyzer Foundation Additional readers are welcome. UKRAINE INFORMATION WEBSITE: http://www.ArtUkraine.com ACTION UKRAINE PROGRAM - SPONSORS Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Holodomor Art and Graphics Collection & Exhibitions
10. UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH OF THE USA, South Brown Brook, New Jersey, http://www.uocofusa.org 11. UKRAINIAN AMERICAN COORDINATING COUNCIL (UACC), Financial Officer, Chicago, IL; http://www.wjgrain.com/en/links/index.html 14. EUGENIA SAKEVYCH DALLAS, Author, "One Woman, Five Lives, Five Countries," 'Her life's journey begins with the 1932-1933 genocidal famine in Ukraine.' Hollywood, CA, www.eugeniadallas.com. 15. ALEX AND HELEN WOSKOB, College Station, Pennsylvania 16. SWIFT FOUNDATION, San Luis Obispo, California ======================================================== Emerging Markets Private Equity Investment Group |