Fortunately, Chernobyl health records are now available to the public. They show that people living in the radioactive traces fell ill from cancers, respiratory illness, anaemia, auto-immune disorders, birth defects, and fertility problems two to three times more frequently in the years after the accident than before. In a highly contaminated Belarusian town of Veprin, just six of 70 children in 1990 were characterised as “healthy”. The rest had one chronic disease or another. On average, the Veprin children had in their bodies 8,498 bq/kg of radioactive caesium (20 bq/kg is considered safe).
For decades, researchers have puzzled over strange clusters of thyroid cancer, leukaemia and birth defects among people living in Cumbria, which, like southern Belarus, is an overlooked hotspot of radioactivity from cold war decades of nuclear bomb production and nuclear power accidents.
Currently, policymakers are advocating a massive expansion of nuclear power as a way to combat climate change. Before we enter a new nuclear age, the declassified Chernobyl health records raise questions that have been left unanswered about the impact of chronic low doses of radioactivity on human health.
Apparently one major thing at issue here that they are trying to evade by moving it to Japan is punitive damages. The TEPCO attorney states that even if Price-Anderson were to kick in in the US there are no punitive damages. I’m not sure if this is true but this evasion of punitive damages was being pushed for by the US NRC (lackey to the nuclear industry) after the Karen Silkwood case, where her family got large punitive damages. And, they must be forced to pay punitive damages for punishment, along with pain and misery. The attorney claims that no punitive damages are awarded in Japan which is criminal. True or false he says it’s because a Price-Anderson-like system has kicked in, but that is retro-active, if I recall correctly.