You'd have thought that after Chernobyl the world would have figured out that Einstein was right when he warned that nuclear power was a hell of a way to boil coffee. Well they didn't. You'd think they'd learn from Fukushima, but the only thing they seem to have learned is that it is a lot more profitable to lie and cover up a disaster than to tackle it head on. Chernobyl killed tens of thousands of people, but heroic people prevented an even worse disaster, many at the expense of their lives. The disaster, nevertheless, brought down the Soviet Union and poisoned vast swaths of the Ukraine and Belarus. Japan seems to have only learned from Chernobyl some pointers on cover ups. Countries like China, Iran, and others have learned nothing from Fukushima or Chernbyl and seem hell bent on killing more people. Even the USA seems hell bent on resurrecting the nuclear nightmare. But the consequences as bad as they are are under-reported, not exaggerated.
Anybody who thinks that atom bombs, or nuclear reactors, are a smart investment is insane.
Scientists in Chernobyl have been studying children of that disaster. Years later they are still sick, and governments, instead of dealing with the effects of these disasters are punishing those who speak out on them.
(see: http://www.llrc.org/rat/subrat/rat429.htm)
Israel evacuated Jewish children who lived near the Chernobyl disaster, and is able to study what happened to them. But Doctors living near the area still face censorship and repression. The above article writes:
"The study showed that children aged less than 1 year when the accident happened (April 1986) were the worst affected, but children born after the disaster have suffered more than those who were aged over 1 year at the time. Children born in the year before the disaster had about a 2.2 times higher risk of thyroid disease than older children. But the high risk (about 1.4 times higher) persisted for the children born after 1986. For lymphadenopathy the increased risk was about 1.5 times higher for children born after the disaster than for those aged 1 year or more at the time. The study shows that the longer the children had remained in the contaminated areas, the sicker they became, and the higher was their risk of developing goitre, thyroid cancer, gastrointestinal and lymph disorders, and autoimmune diseases. Over 13% of the children had signs and symptoms of liver and gallbladder disease, and 11% suffered from glandular and lymph disease; chronic tonsillitis was diagnosed in almost 19%. Goitre (commonly a precursor of thyroid cancer and autoimmune thyroid diseases) was diagnosed in 17.6% of the children, with the highest rate (29.4%) in children from the highly contaminated Gomel region. The finding of a strong association between morbidity and not only the levels of contamination in the areas where children lived but also how long they had lived there supports results published by the Gomel State Medical Institute in Belarus."
To make it simple, radioisotopes such as cesium, strontium, iodine, and the others have biological effects from ingestion and a combination of radioactive poisoning and chemical poisoning as they damage the bones, nervous system, musculature, and endocrine children of people poisoned by these substances.
And The government retaliates against researchers:
Last year Bandazhevsky lost his job at the Medical Institute, was imprisoned, and had his computers and research papers confiscated. His offence was to condemn state- funded research into the health effects of Chernobyl. In a report which LLRC has seen he wrote that the Institute of Radiation Medicine (part of the Belarus Ministry of Health) had wasted billions of roubles on projects which are finding nothing new and which will contribute nothing to the overall aim of reducing radiation exposures and their impact on health.
Following his adoption by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience he was released in December, but he is under surveillance and still faces trial.
This sort of thing is not confined to Belarus, all over the world there is evidence of illness and disease (especially cancers) associated with radiation exposure and fallout. These are crimes, but it seems that the one thing our plutocratic governments can agree on world wide -- is that they'd rather be able to kill each other at a touch of a button than provide public goods for their people or protect them from harm. We all face the same enemy, the notion that we are subjects to be ruled instead of people whose governments need our consent to govern well.
Further reading:http://www.llrc.org/rat/subrat/rat429.htm
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