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News :: Agriculture : Children : Civil & Human Rights : Environment : Health : Labor : Nukes : Political-Economy |
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IAEA 'Whitewashing' Impact of Chernobyl Nuclear Accident: Greenpeace |
Current rating: 0 |
by AFP
(No verified email address) |
06 Sep 2005
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"Denying the real implications is not only insulting the thousands of victims -- who are told (they are) sick because of stress and irrational fears -- but it also leads to dangerous recommendations, to relocating people in contaminated areas..." |
The Greenpeace environmental group denounced a UN report that radiation released from Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant nearly two decades ago may cause fewer deaths than expected as "whitewashing" the impact of the world's worst nuclear accident.
The United Nations report, which found that only 56 people have so far died and 4,000 may eventually perish from the effects of the disaster, was being discussed at a two-day conference in Vienna sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA).
"It is appalling that the IAEA is whitewashing the impacts of the most serious industrial accident in human history," said Jan Van de Putte, a Greenpeace nuclear campaigner, in a statement released by the organization's headquarters in Amsterdam.
"Denying the real implications is not only insulting the thousands of victims -- who are told (they are) sick because of stress and irrational fears -- but it also leads to dangerous recommendations, to relocating people in contaminated areas," Van de Putte said.
Greenpeace charged that a more careful reading of the 600-page report and other published research by UN bodies leads to a different conclusion.
The ecological group also cited omissions in the report. For example, it said that the 4,000 deaths only relate to a studied population of 600,000, whereas radiation was spread over most Europe and the report omits the impact on millions of Europeans.
Also the World Health Organization referred to a study of 72,000 Russian workers at the nuclear plant, but Greenpeace said the number of workers in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine was estimated at nearly 10 times that figure.
The report to be discussed by nuclear, health and development experts in Vienna concludes that out of more than 600,000 people who suffered the most exposure from the accident -- reactor staff, emergency and recovery personnel in 1986-87 and residents of the nearby areas -- an estimated 3,940 are expected to die from radiation-induced cancer and leukemia.
© Copyright 2005 AFP
http://www.afp.com |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Statement of Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), on UN Chernobyl Report |
by NIRS
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
06 Sep 2005
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“A press release issued yesterday by the International Atomic Energy Agency about a United Nation’s Chernobyl Forum report on the health consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl accident demonstrates once again how habitually and dramatically the nuclear industry understates the impacts of a reactor accident. Although the report itself remains unavailable to the public, the press release states that 4,000 people are likely to die as a result of the Chernobyl accident. This is in stark contrast to industry propaganda that insists the deaths of only about 32 to 36 emergency responders can be directly attributable to the accident.
However, the press reports to date indicate that, despite these findings, the UN is downplaying the accident’s impacts. To downplay the loss of 4,000 lives, not to mention the non-fatal cancers and other health effects, hundreds of billions of dollars in damages and permanent loss of land-use demonstrates an obscene disregard for human life and wellbeing. Such consequences are entirely unacceptable for an industrial accident of any sort.
And the real consequences, when considering the entire affected population, are likely to be much higher: the 4,000-fatality estimate appears to be based on a population of only 600,000 exposed individuals. Given that tens of millions of people were exposed to Chernobyl radiation, a study using the standard method of accounting for radiation damage (the “linear no-threshold” method) among the entire affected population would be expected to find far greater casualties.
This is especially significant considering that the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in June 2005 (in a report entitled “Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, VII”) reaffirmed the “linear no-threshold” model and concluded that there is no safe exposure level to radiation.
NIRS urges full disclosure of the report to the public. Until this happens, the scant information made available to date clearly is insufficient to provide knowledgeable analysis on the report, nor does it allow for peer review of the report’s findings and conclusions.”
Contact: 202-328-0002; nirsnet (at) nirs.org; www.nirs.org |
