Dr Ian Fairlie: Thirty years since the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl the impacts are still being felt, writes Ian Fairlie, and they will persist long into the future. Some 40,000 cancer deaths can be expected across Europe over the next 50 years, and 5 million people still living in areas highly contaminated with radiation. Yet the nuclear madness continues, with even Belarus building new nuclear reactors.
Ecologist 26th April 2016 read more »
Thirty years after Chernobyl former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev remains haunted by the world’s greatest ever industrial catastrophe, writes Linda Pentz Gunter. Now 85 and a committed environmentalist, he’s still campaigning to bring the failed nuclear experiment to an end before further disasters follow, and encouraging a clean, efficient and renewable global energy economy.
Ecologist 26th April 2016 read more »
The Chernobyl sarcophagus which has long contained the fissured reactor core is at risk of collapse, writes Claire Corkhill. The solution: build a pair of tracked arches 260m wide and 100m high, and slide them over the site to enclose it for a century to come: so creating a sealed space for robots and remotely operated machinery to deconstruct the reactor and sarcophagus piece by radioactive piece.
Ecologist 26th April 2016 read more »
Thirty years ago today, along with my then Open University Energy Research Group colleague Dr Mark Barrett, I gave oral evidence on the future of nuclear power to the House of Lords European Affairs energy sub-committee. We expressed joint skepticism over the merits of nuclear power to Europe’s energy future. We did not know it at the time, but a serious nuclear accident had occurred that morning at Chernobyl in the Ukrainian republic of the Soviet Union. A decade later, the world’s nuclear safety watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that Chernobyl was “the foremost nuclear catastrophe in human history.”
David Lowry 26th April 2016 read more »
Not a year went by without a Chernobyl funeral.
Guardian 26th April 2016 read more »
Series of events held to commemorate the tragedy, which remains the worst nuclear accident in history
Guardian 26th April 2016 read more »
A new report on the costs of Chernobyl – $700 billion – a review of the literature.
Green Cross 21st April 2016 read more »
Paul Brown: Bitter arguments rage on about the nuclear industry after the catastrophic loss of trust when the Chernobyl and Fukushima reactors met their spectacular and lethal ends.
Climate News Network 26th April 2016 read more »
If envy is a deadly sin then many of us were guilty of it last month when we congregated in Manchester, England. We were there for the Beyond Nuclear conference on the terrible legacies of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters. (The fifth anniversary of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident was March 11. The 30th anniversary of Chernobyl is April 26.) It began with a hefty dose of Mancunian envy. Manchester, it turned out, was and is “The Radical City.” On day one we visited the historic Manchester Town Hall, where presentations were made to some of the 95 city council members, every last one of whom is a member of the Labour party. Even the wonders of Germany’s wonderful Energiewende, ably articulated by Angelika Claussen of IPPNW Germany, were eclipsed once the Austrians got started. As we learned from David Reinberger, from the Vienna Ombuds-Office and Cities for a Nuclear Free Europe Network, and from Reinhard Uhrig, who is German but lives and works in Vienna with Global 2000 and Friends of the Earth, Austria is a kind of nuclear-free Utopia.
Counterpunch 22nd April 2016 read more »
One of the first indications of increased radioactivity in the atmosphere came at Wylfa when alarms were triggered by workers going into the plant. The alarm was triggered by three people who brought the radiation onto the site from outside. Staff went outside with specialist equipment and found that there were increased levels of radiation. The radiation was identified as coming from Russia, and was more than likely being dropped by the rainfall. The Holyhead & Anglesey Mail, the Daily Post’s sister newspaper, reported in 1986 despite the lessons of Chernobyl, no plans exist for the evacuation of Anglesey in the event of a major nuclear accident. Dylan Morgan of PAWB (People against Wylfa B) added: “It’s important to remember there is still a large exclusion zone around the Chernobyl station where nobody lives, and the large town of Pripyat is totally empty since the day of the disaster in April 1986.”
Daily Post 26th April 2016 read more »
The nuclear accident at Fukushima in Japan occurred almost exactly 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. Analysis of each provides valuable late and early lessons that could prove helpful to decision-makers and the public as plans are made to meet the energy demands of the coming decades while responding to the growing environmental costs of climate change and the need to ensure energy security in a politically unstable world.
European Environment Agency 19th April 2016 read more »
University of South Carolina professor of biological sciences Tim Mousseau and collaborator Anders Møller of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have spent 16 years studying the wildlife that now inhabits the exclusion zone. “As a starting point for our studies of animal populations, we took our cue from the medical literature – one of the first effects observed was the presence of cataracts in the eyes of people exposed to energy from atomic bombs,” Mousseau said. “And we found that both birds and rodents show elevated frequencies and degree of cataracts in their eyes in the more radioactive areas.” The duo’s research also showed that most animals in the zone showed diminished brain size as a result of radioactive exposure, increased incidence of tumor formation, reduced fertility and an increase in the prevalence of developmental abnormalities in birds.
The Register 27th April 2016 read more »
Motherboard 26th April 2016 read more »
In April 1986 one of the nuclear reactors at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the USSR exploded. The accident released at least 100 times the radiation of the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In Moscow, the Soviet government was slow to admit to the accident and only confirmed that there had been a leak two days after one of the reactors exploded. Tens of thousands of people in the area surrounding the power plant were exposed to the radiation and evacuated to other towns. Most never returned to their homes. Sergii Mirnyi was sent into the 30km exclusion zone two and a half months after the initial explosion. He spoke to Witness about his experience.
BBC 27th April 2016 read more »
Morning Star 27th April 2016 read more »