Nuclear Energy

Till 2005, there were at least 10,000 cases of thyroid cancer in Belarus alone, of which nearly a
1000 were in children – thyroid cancer in children is a very rare form of cancer. Many of the
genetic abnormalities and diseases caused by this accident are generations away and will not be
seen by anyone alive today.
� Heavy radioactive fallout occurred over Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France,
East and West Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland,
Turkey, Britain, the Baltic States, and Yugoslavia. Evidence has already started surfacing of its
health effects. There have been at least 10,000 additional cases of serious malformation in
Europe due to Chernobyl. A recent study from Sweden showed an increase of 849 cancers up to
the year 1996 as a result of Chernobyl. There are now claims surfacing in France that people are
suffering from thyroid cancer that may be related to the Chernobyl fallout.
� Because cesium-137 and other isotopes such as strontium-90 and plutonium-239 have such long
half-lives, food in contaminated parts of Europe will be radioactive for hundreds of years. In
Britain, 1,500 miles from the crippled reactor, 382 farms containing 226,500 sheep are severely
restricted because the levels of cesium-137 in the meat are too high. In the south of Germany,
very high levels of cesium in the soil persist; hunters are compensated for catching
contaminated animals, and many mushrooms and wild berries are still too radioactive to eat.
Cesium-137 in some parts of France is as high as some extremely contaminated areas in
Belarus, the Ukraine, and Russia.
� Even though, as the data above shows, food in many parts of Europe is still relatively
radioactive, this terrible problem is rarely mentioned in the media or in daily conversation. In a
form of psychic numbing, people continue to live their lives as if all were well, and the nuclear
power industry continues to broadcast the myth that its product is clean and green.
A new study on Chernobyl
Just as we were finishing this book, we came across a new book from the New York
Academy of Sciences published in 2010, on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet
facility. The book, "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,"
was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in
Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in
Minsk, Belarus. The authors examined more than 5,000 published articles and studies, most written
in Slavic languages and never before available in English. Among their important findings are: cl
Radioactive emissions from Chernobyl accident, once believed to be 50 million curies, may have
been as great as 10 billion curies, or 200 times greater than the initial estimate, and hundreds of
times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covered the entire Northern
Hemisphere. Apart from the Soviet Union, nations which received high doses of radioactive
fallout include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Austria, Romania, Greece, and
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