67,000 Died From Chernobyl Disaster
Bangkok Post, Thailand
April 5, 2006
Moscow (dpa) - At least 67,000 people are thought to have died in Russia alone from the after-effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, ecological experts said in Moscow Wednesday, dismissing a UN estimate of 4,000 past and anticipated deaths.
The low figure produced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear wing of the United Nations, reflected a desire to bolster public confidence in nuclear power, Greenpeace Russia's energy campaigner Vladimir Chuprov said before the 20th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident.
"The estimates of the IAEA are greatly understated," Chuprov told reporters, citing independent studies by Russian scientists.
"In Russia there were 67,000 additional deaths from 1990 to 2004 (resulting from radiation), if you add the number in Belarus and Ukraine the total will be several times greater."
The estimate was drawn from mortality studies in contaminated regions north of the now decommissioned Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, where two million people live.
Experts at the Russian Academy of Science's Independent Centre for Ecological Studies in St. Petersburg found the death rate there to almost four per cent higher than the national average, likely stemming from long-term exposure to radiation and contaminated food products.
The fourth reactor at the plant overheated and blew up on April 26, 1986, throwing up huge clouds of radioactive particles that were registered in 17 countries.
The Soviet government only acknowledged the disaster to foreign governments two days later and did not inform the population for almost two weeks.
Ukraine finally shut the plant in 2000, although it and Russia still operate reactors of the same type.
In view of plans to build 40 new reactors by 2030, Russian authorities are interested in downplaying the effects of the disaster, enabling them also to cut social compensation programmes for Chernobyl victims, critics say.
Meanwhile, contaminated land is still being farmed and products sold in numerous Russian cities.
"This radiation is spreading across the country and we cannot close our eyes to it," Chuprov said.
In the Bryansk region, which suffered from severe fallout, 30,000 hectares of irradiated woodland is unprotected from the risk of fire which would emit radioactive smoke, warned Lyudmila Komogortseva, the head of the ecological committee of the regional administration.
"If the forest land catches light then not just Russia but other countries in Europe are in for a real shock," she said.
© Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2006
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