nuclear-news

Surviving Chernobyl
HAARETZ.com By Lily Galili 3 August 09
For 1,200 people living in Israel, the concept of a nuclear threat is not an abstract idea. They were there – inside the Chernobyl nuclear reactor – immediately after the April 1986 explosion. They can confirm that while you can’t smell radiation, you can taste it. Even today, after having made a new life in Israel, the metallic taste remains in their mouths, which, in many cases, are toothless.

Their teeth fell out in Chernobyl, while other serious problems began developing during the months they spent trying to “neutralize” the nuclear power plant, although they were unprepared and defenseless. They were called liquidators, a term embracing a variety of professionals – engineers, electricians, physicians and nurses – sent to neutralize the seething nuclear reactor. ……………..
……….what really worries them is not lifespan, but quality of life. They suffer from various ailments – damaged thyroid glands, eaten-away livers, twisted bones – and they are all afraid. Some of them decided not to have children after taking into consideration the genetic implications of what they had undergone.

…………..“I oppose nuclear armament and war with Iran,” Kalantirsky says angrily. “All those who underwent the Chernobyl experience think like me.”

……….Around 19,000 people exposed to radiation in childhood are registered in SPECTR’s database, and another 6,000 have been born to parents from radiation-contaminated areas. “There are problems in this group,” notes Shapiro, “but not exceptional ones.” Today he is mainly worried about the third generation: the children of those exposed to radiation as children. “Although we do not have figures yet, we are still concerned,” he says. “The genetic results appear only in the third generation.”

According to research conducted by SPECTR, the morbidity rate for hereditary diseases will continue to grow. The more disturbing news, Shapiro says, is that radiation-induced cancer will peak 50 years after Chernobyl.

Plan to pay sick nuclear workers unfairly rejects many, Doctor says
THE HUFFINGTON POST by Laura Frnk 3 August 09
Carla McCabe spent a decade building nuclear bombs at the sprawling Rocky Flats complex near Denver. When she developed a brain tumor and asked for help, federal officials told her that none of the toxic substances used at the top-secret bomb factory could have caused her cancer.Now, on the eighth anniversary of the federal program created to help sick nuclear weapons workers, the man who until recently was the program’s top doctor says that McCabe, now 55, and many others like her are being improperly rejected……

…..”I was muzzled,” said Schwartz, a Harvard-trained doctor with a master’s degree in nuclear engineering, whose job was overseeing medical decisions at the federal compensation program……..

………..sick workers, who have banded together in multiple advocacy groups across the nation, point out that the Labor Department has denied nearly three out of four claims — 127,000 filed on behalf of sick nuclear weapons workers or their survivors in the past eight years.

The sick workers and their advocates say they feel vindicated that Schwartz confirms many of the complaints they’ve raised previously about waste, bias and bad science within the program.

Soviet-Era Uranium Waste Sites Now Threaten Central Asia
 mskFerghana.Ru  2 August 09 translated by Paul Goble

Storage sites for uranium tailings that were built in Soviet times in Tajikistan are now leaking radiation into the surrounding atmosphere and ground water supplies, undermining the health and well-being of the people of a republic and a broader region that lack the resources to clean up a problem that it did nothing to create.

At three formerly “closed” locations in Tajikistan – Taboshar, Chkalovsk and Adrasman – Soviet state enterprises mined uranium and left enormous piles of radioactive tailings……………

They are located near major bodies of water: the Kayrakkum reservoir and the Syrdarya River which flows through the territory not only of Tajikistan but of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan as well. As a result, what many might dismiss as Tajikistan’s problem is a much larger one.

Scholars have determined that the radiation from these tailings in some places is more than 30 times levels that threaten human health. But the problems these tailings pose is not limited to radiation directly. They also are the source of poisonous chemicals which have leached into the ground and now appear in plants, animals, and drinking water.

The impact of the release of radioactive materials on the health of the population is already clear. Not only are the numbers of people suffering from cancer increasing, but the age of onset of cancers is falling, with many local people showing signs of cancer when they are only 15 or 16 years old, something almost unheard of earlier……………………

the amount of radioactive leavings is enormous, more than 450 million tons.

As a result the prospects are not good. “The elites have left the area forever because they know that the supplies of uranium are practically exhausted and that sooner or later all the factories and combines involved with the production of nuclear fuel will stop.”

In the end, the news service suggests, the local population will stand alone, facing “only the ruins of nuclear processing and mountains of ecological problems.”