Re: [cdn-nucl-l] Chornobyl closure

[Jim Muckerheide <jmuckerheide@delphi.com>]

"Brown, Morgan" wrote:
> 
> Hurrah for the Globe and Mail!   There is no excuse for what happened at
> Chornobyl-4, from the unforgiving reactor design, to the lack of safety
> culture, to the inadequate management, to the inadequate staff training,
> etc.
> 
> BUT
> 
> Chornobyl has been blamed for a great number of deaths, figures which are
> not supported by the UN's investigations.  Undoubtedly there have been
> deaths caused by the reactor accident, including 28 firemen and about 10

Where does 10 come from?  Haven't heard before.  Have heard 3, latest from
Ilyin in Russia, maybe 1.  

> thyroid cancer victims (there have been in the order of 1800 thyroid
> cancers, treatable by removing the thyroid but then the patient must have
> drugs for the rest of his or her life).  And there will probably be some

("some drugs" would be better said as "thyroid hormone")

> more deaths due to latent cancers.  But we often see unsubstantiated and

Source of "more..due to latent"?  In high-dose workers?  (More thyroid
cancers, but should not expect deaths. The death(s) are associated with
medical interventions failures.)

Thanks.

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
========================

> unchallenged quotes, that tens of thousands have died due to Chornobyl,
> reported in the media.
> 
> For the first time I can recall, the media reported that there are
> differences in opinion as to the number of fatalities.  In the following
> article, it says:
> "Experts disagree, however, on the death toll from the accident. Estimates
> range anywhere from a few dozen (the number of clean-up workers killed in
> the immediate aftermath) to as many as 30,000 (an estimate sometimes cited
> by Ukrainian officials)."
> 
> Amazing!
> 
> Little to celebrate for Chernobyl staff
> The world may cheer the plant's closing,
> GEOFFREY YORK writes, but for angry, fearful
> workers it means hundreds of jobs lost
> GEOFFREY YORK
> 
> Saturday, December 16, 2000
> MOSCOW -- While the world celebrated the final shutdown of the notorious
> Chernobyl nuclear plant yesterday, thousands of workers fear the gala
> ceremony will prove to be a funeral for their dreams.
> Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma gave the historic order to close Chernobyl
> in a lavish televised event in a Kiev concert hall with 2,000 guests and
> dignitaries from a dozen countries.
> The order was relayed to the control room of Chernobyl's third reactor, the
> only one of the four original reactors still operating, and a technician
> flicked an emergency stop switch.
> Chernobyl was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, a 1986
> explosion that spewed radiation across Europe, triggering fear and panic
> among millions of people. The accident has caused thousands of cancer cases
> and an unknown number of deaths in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus.
> The West lobbied fiercely for the shutdown of the Chernobyl plant, which is
> still regarded as one of the most dangerous in the world. But until this
> year, Mr. Kuchma had delayed any final decision while he negotiated for
> better guarantees of compensation.
> Messages of congratulations poured into Kiev yesterday from foreign leaders
> and international agencies. Among the workers, however, there were tears and
> anger. Many have been wearing black arm bands this week in protest against
> the closing.
> "This will be a painful process," deputy plant director Sergei Sharshoum
> predicted in an interview earlier this year. "A lot of people are feeling
> discouraged and dismayed. We're afraid that as soon as Chernobyl is
> completely closed, the world's interest in us will be lost."
> Even the technician who flicked the stop switch yesterday, Sergiy Bashdovy,
> criticized the shutdown.
> "I feel ashamed and will not be able to look Chernobyl workers in the eye
> after I do what I have to do," he told Agence France-Presse shortly before
> obeying the President's order.
> Western governments have pledged the equivalent of $3.5-billion in aid to
> Ukraine to compensate for the shutdown of Chernobyl, which has been
> supplying 5 per cent of the country's energy needs.
> As many as 2,700 workers, about half of the plant's labour force, are
> expected to lose their jobs as a result of the shutdown of the last reactor.
> Hundreds of workers are hoping to find jobs in the decommissioning process,
> and others could secure work at other half-built nuclear plants, elsewhere
> in Ukraine, that will be completed with Western aid money.
> At yesterday's ceremony, Mr. Kuchma painted a grim picture of the toll of
> the Chernobyl disaster. Almost 3.5 million people have been affected by the
> accident, including 160,000 who were forced to abandon their homes, and
> almost 10 per cent of Ukraine's territory has been contaminated, he said.
> The Chernobyl accident has "entered the list of world catastrophes such as
> Pompeii or Hiroshima."
> In fact, the amount of radiation spewed into the atmosphere from Chernobyl
> in 1986 was the equivalent of 500 times the amount released by the atomic
> bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.
> Experts disagree, however, on the death toll from the accident. Estimates
> range anywhere from a few dozen (the number of clean-up workers killed in
> the immediate aftermath) to as many as 30,000 (an estimate sometimes cited
> by Ukrainian officials).
> Ukraine's nuclear industry has been reluctant to close Chernobyl, insisting
> it could operate safely for another seven years because of recent
> modernization work.
> But Mr. Kuchma said his country was "forsaking a part of our national
> interests for the sake of global safety."
> 
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