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Is Fukushima Worse Than Chernobyl?

Radiation from Fukushima, Food Consumer, 5 Sept 12, 
Radiation from Fukushima ukushima nuclear disaster is not the only thing Americans need to be worried about. As many as 14 states have been polluted by the nuclear tests conducted in the U.S. in 50’s, according to some reports. The clean states are only those in the West like Oregon, California, and maybe Washington as well. By Dr. Mercola

“……When the Chernobyl reactor melted down in 1986, approximately 134 plant workers and firefighters were exposed to high doses of radiation – 800 to 16,000 mSv – and developed acute radiation sickness. Of those 134 workers, 28 died within 3 months of exposure.

In total, more than 160,000 children and 146,000 cleanup workers became victims of radiation poisoning as a result of living and working in that radiotoxic environment, raising the incidence of birth defects, leukemia, anemia, cancers, thyroid disease, liver and bonemarrow degeneration, and overall severely compromised immune systems.

These, however, are only estimates, and according to some data, Chernobyl deaths may actually top 1 million.6  Fukushima is the largest nuclear disaster since, but there are many similarities popping up. For one, as the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) points out:7 

“From the beginning, the official nuclear safety experts were at pains to minimize the projected health impacts, as they are doing now for the Fukushima accident.”

According to ISIS, with Chernobyl, they underestimated related deaths by:

  • Underestimating the level of radiation by averaging exposure over a large region, such as an entire country, so high exposure doses and health statistics of the most contaminated areas are lumped together with the less and least exposed
  • Ignoring internal sources of radiation due to inhalation and ingestion of radioactive material from fallout
  • Using an obsolete and erroneous model of linear energy transfer due to external sources of ionizing radiation
  • Not counting diseases and conditions other than cancers

September 5, 2012 Posted by | spinbuster, Ukraine | Leave a comment

VIMEO video TRANSCRIPT on international conference on Chernobyl radiation

NUCLEAR CONTROVERSIES  Vivre Tchernobyl , W. Tchertkoff:  Script english version    
Dr. Michel Fernex, retired, Medical Faculty University of Basle, is part of a campaign denouncing the conflict of interests between two organizations of the UN: the IAEA -International Agency for Atomic Energy- promoter of nuclear industry, and the WHO -World Health Organization-.

An agreement was signed in 1959 between those organizations: the WHO is prevented from undertaking independent medical research on the health effects of radiation, or for informing populations on the consequences of accidents like Chernobyl, when the atomic lobby does not agree.

Here a letter is being delivered for Kofi Annan and Dr. Brundtland, Director General of the WHO, asking for an amendment of this agreement and freedom for the WHO to work freely on the health effects of radiation. ….

In 1995, the Director General of WHO Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, tried to inform on Chernobyl by organizing in Geneva an international conference with 700 experts and physicians. This tentative was blocked. The International Agency for Atomic Energy blocked the proceedings, which were never published. The truth on the consequences of Chernobyl would have been a disaster for the promotion of the atomic industry.

Fernex The interdiction to publish which fell on the WHO conference will maybe be lifted for the next WHO congress. But the IAEA will also be there, don’t worry : UNSCEAR, IAEA, with fantastic money. To buy scientists in poor countries doesn’t cost a lot. With 10.000 dollars you can buy many persons.

…… Never before, had such an authority admitted, that health institutions are subordinate to the promoters of the atom. The WHO and the IAEA, two UN agencies, when working together, should be free to fulfil their institutional tasks, for peace and the world’s well being.
Contradictions, tensions and conflicts which exist in the UN system, were expressed during this conference, by the protagonists of the 1995 WHO Conference and the physicians and scientists of the civil society.

Zupka english The consequences of Chernobyl do not fade away, but actually grow increasingly uncertain, and in many ways more intense. The United Nations Secretary General, Mister Kofi Annan, put it very clear when he said that: “The legacy of Chernobyl will be with us and with our descendents for generations to come”.

title: D. Zupka – OCHA UN Comment The representative of the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs shares the view of Kofi Annan, who estimates at 9 million the number of victims, and says that tragedy of Chernobyl is only beginning.
…..  tle: A. Gonzales – IAEA UN

CommentThe representative of the International Agency for Atomic Energy, maintains that the Chernobyl catastrophe caused 31 deaths, a few hundred highly irradiated individuals and 2000 thyroid cancers in children. This UN agency recognizes only validated data, validated by the laboratories of Los Alamos and the French Atomic Energy Commissariat -CEA-, two atomic bomb makers. …….  http://vivretchernobyl.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/w-tchertkof-nuclear-controversies.html

September 4, 2012 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Continuing danger and ever escalating costs at the Chernobyl and Fukushima cleanups

 It will be especially dangerous to remove the remaining nuclear fuel because of the high levels of radiation that such substances emit.

conditions [at the Chernobyl plant] are still dangerous for the 3,500 workers now cleaning up the site. And some 200 tons of nuclear fuel still remain at the bottom of the reactor.

When reactors die, costs keep climbing. Fukushima Diiachi costs to go through the roof.http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/when-reactors-die-costs-keep-climbing-fukushima-diiachi-costs-to-go-through-the-roof/  4 Sept 12

http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20120815D15HH187.htm Decommissioning Of Fukushima To Be Long, Costly Process FUKUSHIMA (Nikkei)–-The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) have made the first revisions to a plan to decommission the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, but the details remain uncertain.

At the Chernobyl plant, efforts are now in full swing to build a massive shelter to stop the site from releasing radiation into the environment.
Among other matters, the revisions involve adding measures to prevent radioactive water from leaking into the environment. But it is still unclear how much time and money this will actually entail. Continue reading →

September 4, 2012 Posted by | Fukushima 2012, Japan, safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

The true scale of Chernobyl’s radioactive disaster

Chernobyl, Insight from the Inside by Vladimir M. Chernousenko,  Scientific Director of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences  Institute of Physics in Kiev’s Task Force for the Rectification of the Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident

Foreward, pp. XVI-XVII, From the Publisher:

 The author’s chief motivation for writing this book is that he considers it vitally important that the world should be told the unvarnished truth about the scale and consequences of the disaster, the legacy of which will remain with us for many generations. He presents realistic estimates and new unpublished hard data from various reliable sources about the radiation pollution caused by the accident. The figures prove to be much higher than anyone dared assume up to now. We are confronted with horrendous numbers regarding the radiation pollution of the soil and aquifers in the Soviet Union. On the basis of these data, it is estimated that a territory of a least 100,000 km^2 is so polluted as to be uninhabitable. There are even estimates of an amount three times as high.

The author’s greatest concern is the well-being of the people still living in this huge territory. Many of those who are still living in the polluted areas want to leave, but the problems posed by local administration and bureaucracy do not allow them to do so. For lack of precedence, the effects on their health in the long-term can only be guessed at, at the present time. But those effects are already beginning to become evident. The health statistics included in this book are a matter of serious concern and urgently call for further investigations. Continue reading →

September 4, 2012 Posted by | environment, health, resources - print, Resources -audiovicual, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Brutal murder of Ukrainian anti nuclear leader

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2012/8/15/ukrainian-environmentalist-brutally-beaten-to-death.html  18 Aug 12 Volodymyr Goncharenko EJOLT (Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade) reports the horrific news that, four days after conducting a press conference to warn that 180 tons of dangerous chemical and radioactive industrial waste had arrived at the city of Kryvyi Rih (in the Dnipropetrovsk area of Ukraine), which was likely to be “recycled” into the consumer product stream, 57 year old Volodymyr Goncharenko (photo, left) was brutally beaten to death.
He was the Chairman of Social Movement of Ukraine: For the Rights of Citizens to Environmental Security. As reported by EJOLT, “According to Goncharenko, during the past several years, scavengers have removed from the Chernobyl exclusion zone 6 million metric tons of scrap metal that was subsequently smelted at metallurgical combines and reprocessed into new metal. While in theory each metallurgical combine should be equipped with radiation-monitoring equipment to check all incoming scrap, financial shortfalls have meant this was rarely the case. In 2007 Ukraine ranked eighth in global steel production and steel is Ukraine’s leading export. One can only guess how much radioactive scrap metal has ended up in exported steel.”

Pavlo Khazan of the Ukrainian Green Party stated: “We collaborated with Volodymyr for 15 years in professional and public areas. The Ukrainian Green Party has no doubt that the murder was linked to his professional activities.” Although the Ukrainian police have opened an investigation into Goncharenko’s murder, Khazan feels that to deliver justice in this case, international attention and pressure will be needed.

Please contact the Embassy of Ukraine, urging a thorough investigation of Goncharenko’s murder, as well as for an end to the “recycling” of radioactive metals and other materials into the consumer product stream. In the U.S., the Embassy of Ukraine can be written at 3350 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007, faxed at (202) 333-0817, or phoned at (202) 349-2920.Embassies and Consulates of Ukraine elsewhere in the U.S., or in other countries, can also be contacted.

Thanks to Nuclear Energy Information Service in Illinois for alerting us to this story.

Click here to learn more about anti-nuclear resistance to attempts at “radioactive recycling” in North America.

August 18, 2012 Posted by | safety, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Urgent nuclear waste problem in Ukraine

Ukraine badly needs waste nuclear fuel storage facility, says Emergencies Ministry Interfax, 17 Aug 12, Ukraine needs to give a serious thought to building a centralized storage facility for waste nuclear fuel since waste fuel from Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs), which is temporary stored in the Russian Federation will start to come back from 2013, the Emergencies Ministry said. Continue reading →

August 18, 2012 Posted by | Ukraine, wastes | Leave a comment

Radioactive danger of Chernobyl forest fires

Chernobyl’s radioactive trees and the forest fire risk BBC News 7 July.  (this article also describes the heroism of Ukraine’s firefighters.) By Patrick Evans Chernobyl, Ukraine   Much of the 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant is pine forest, and some of it so badly contaminated that a forest fire could create a devastating radioactive smoke cloud.

Heading north from Kiev in Ukraine, Continue reading →

July 21, 2012 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

3.000 of Chernobyl’s most vulnerable children helped to safety and care

Children of Chernobyl Airlifts 97th Group in Advance of 26th Anniversary http://www.chabad.org/blogs/blog_cdo/aid/1838545/jewish/Children-of-Chernobyl-Airlifts-97th-Group-in-Advance-of-26th-Anniversary.htm, April 25, 2012 By Joshua Runyan  One week before the 26th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear explosion that rained down fallout across an entire swath of Eastern Europe, Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl brought 26 more children to safety and medical care in Israel, its 97th rescue mission.

“On this significant anniversary, thousands of children every day are still feeling the tragic consequences of the Chernobyl disaster,” said Nancy Spielberg, founding board member of CCOC, in a statement. “They are facing devastating illnesses from radiation contamination –radiation that will be with us for thousands of years. As we’ve seen from the recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, the impact from this kind of radioactivity is as devastating today as it was 26 years ago.”

To date, the Chabad-Lubavitch run organization, which was designed to rescue those most vulnerable from the April 26, 1986 meltdown that left thousands of square kilometers uninhabitable, has helped 2,822 children escape the contaminated living conditions surrounding that portion of Ukraine. Most are brought to a sprawling educational and residential complex in the central Israeli village of Kfar Chabad, where they’re provided with medical care and social services.

The organization also provides medicine, equipment and other needed items for those who
cannot leave Europe. Spielberg pointed to World Health Organization statistics, which show the rate of thyroid cancer in the contaminated areas surrounding Chernobyl as more than 200 times the world norm.

April 30, 2012 Posted by | Israel, Reference, social effects, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Nuclear terrorism risk for European soccer championships

UN agency tackles potential nuclear threat at European soccer championships UN News Centre 13 Dec 11, 13 December 2011 – When the 2012 European soccer championships kick off in Poland and Ukraine next June, the United Nations atomic energy will be centrefield offering its expertise to guarantee the safety of the tournament’s spectators and participants.
With over one million fans expected to descend on the two countries during the tournament, the Vienna-based UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA ) will provide first-hand experience in training authorities in Poland and Ukraine to quickly detect, identify, and
deal with a potential atomic threat…..
“We have around 200 events per year in our illicit trafficking database showing that nuclear material can be used for malicious acts,” said Khammar Mrabit, Director of the IAEA’s Office of Nuclear Security, “Therefore we’re trying everything together with the Member
States to prevent and reduce these threats and these
risks.”…http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40712&Cr=nuclear&Cr1=

December 14, 2011 Posted by | EUROPE, safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

The lingering nuclear disaster of Chernobyl

 the global death toll by 2004 was closer to 1 million and said health effects included birth defects, pregnancy losses, accelerated aging, brain damage, heart, endocrine, kidney, gastrointestinal and lung diseases.
“It is clear that tens of millions of people, not only in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, but worldwide, will live under measurable chronic radioactive contamination for many decades,” 
Special Report: In Chernobyl, A Disaster Persists, Planet Ark, : 28-Nov-11, UKRAINE, Olzhas Auyezov and Richard Balmforth   Any Ukrainian over 35 can tell you where they were when they heard about the accident at the Chernobyl plant As Japan battles to prevent a meltdown at its earthquake-hit Fukushima Daini nuclear plant, the people of Ukraine are preparing to mark the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident.

The physical and financial legacies of that disaster are obvious: a 30-km uninhabited ring around the Chernobyl plant, billions of dollars spent cleaning the region and a major new effort to drum up 600 million euros ($840 million) in fresh funds that Kiev says is needed to build a more durable casement over the stricken reactor. Continue reading →

November 29, 2011 Posted by | health, psychology - mental health, Reference, Ukraine | Leave a comment

The struggle drags on – for justice for UK’s nuclear test veterans

Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled that a group of more than 1,000 veterans’ claims against the Ministry of Defence over illnesses including various cancers and infertility were “statute-barred” because they had been made too late.

“Thousands of people want a court to consider whether their health, and that of their unborn children, was damaged by attending the detonation of nuclear bombs but your government – the latest in a long line of administrations of every political party to do so – is spending millions of taxpayers’ money to deny us this right.

“Your government has enshrined the Military Covenant to honour the sacrifices of all our veterans but we survivors of the nuclear tests are still being denied a fair hearing.”

Christmas Island veterans’ court struggle carries on, Nov 24 2011 by Lynn Jolly, Paisley Daily Express A DETERMINED nuclear testing campaigner has written to the Prime Minister in a bid to highlight the plight of 22,000 men who were forced to watch atomic bomb blasts. Thousands of soldiers claim they were used as guinea pigs on Christmas Island, in the Pacific Ocean, half a century ago as Britain and America carried out a series of nuclear tests.

These include Johnstone man Ken McGinley, 72, who went to Christmas Island as a young sapper with the Royal Engineers and remembers – at the age of just 19 – seeing the bones through his skin as he raised his hands to protect his eyes from the dazzling glare of the test blast. Continue reading →

November 25, 2011 Posted by | Legal, Ukraine | 1 Comment

Chernobyls’ veteran “liquidators” storm Ukraine’s parliament

Chernobyl veterans seek to storm Ukraine’s parliament Times of Oman Nov 01 2011  Ukraine: About 1,000 Ukrainian veterans of theclean-up from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster tried Tuesday to storm parliament in Kiev in outrage at planned benefit cuts, an AFP correspondent reported.

The demonstrators broke down a metal fence which was built up around the parliament several weeks ago after the first attempt of the Chernobyl “liquidators” and veterans of the Soviet Afghan war to break into the building.

About 100 riot policemen gathered near the parliament entrances to prevent the veterans coming into the chamber itself.  The protesters stayed on the square between the parliament and the broken fence and shouted “Shame!”.

In September, lawmakers gave initial approval to a bill cutting back benefits paid to those who helped clean up the April 1986 nuclear disaster and those who still live on the affected lands.
However the protests have meant the parliament has not taken further action.  http://www.timesofoman.com/innercat.asp?detail=51553

November 2, 2011 Posted by | politics, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s new nuclear waste storage facility

Ukraine begins construction of new nuclear waste storage, Google News, 6 Oct 11 KIEV — Ukraine launched construction of a new facility Wednesday to stockpile industrial nuclear waste in the contaminated zone around its Chernobyl plant, site of the worst nuclear accident of the last 25 years. Continue reading →

October 6, 2011 Posted by | Ukraine, wastes | Leave a comment

USA – Ukraine deal on enriched uranium

 US and Ukraine sign deal to remove Soviet-era stockpile of bomb-grade uranium, Washington Post, By Associated Press,  September 26, NEW YORK — The United States and Ukraine signed a deal Monday to remove the former Soviet country’s stockpile of weapons-grade uranium by early next year.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko represented their nations in signing the agreement to remove the stockpile, which could provide enough material to build several nuclear weapons.

The deal was announced last year at an international nuclear security conference hosted by President Barack Obama but was not formalized until Monday….

September 27, 2011 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, Uranium | Leave a comment

Chernobyl’s “liquidators” not compensated for radiation caused cancers

neither governments nor nuclear industries have provided any significant funding for researching more controversial health effects of radiation such as breast cancer and heart disease. Whenever you hear that “there are no studies proving any connection between radiation and [insert medical condition]”, you can be pretty sure it’s because no studies have actually been done……

Nuclear Family Bonds, Open Salon 25 Aug 11, “…..Japan has supported Chernobyl studies and projects in Ukraine for years.  Though one people suffered from the Bomb, and the other, a civilian nuclear plant explosion, both were bound by scars of the atomic age. That both, after Fukushima, are now also victims of the “peaceful atom” is almost getting weird. Continue reading →

September 1, 2011 Posted by | health, Ukraine | 1 Comment

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