[Peace-discuss] Nuclear Disasters

[C. G. Estabrook]

Published on Tuesday, April 26, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Nuclear Disasters Should Be Met with Scientific Inquiry, Not Silence

Remarks on the 25th anniversary of the Nuclear Meltdown at Chernobyl, Ukraine.
by Ralph Nader

The disaster at Chernobyl’s reactor on April 26, 1986 continues to expose 
humans, flora and fauna to radioactive lethality especially in, but not 
restricted to, Ukraine and Belarus. Western countries continue to reflect an 
under-estimation of casualties by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

IAEA’s figures top off at 4000 fatalities since 1986 that is highly questionable 
given IAEA’s conflict of interest between its role of promoting nuclear power 
and monitoring its safety. An agreement between the IAEA and the World Health 
Organization (WHO) provides for WHO’s deference to IAEA’s casualty figures which 
has compromised WHO’s priority of advancing health in the world. The United 
Nations naturally adopts the IAEA figures and the West’s nuclear regulatory 
agencies, similarly committed to promotional functions, ditto these 
under-estimations.

The position that the level of mortality and morbidity from Chernobyl over the 
past quarter century is much larger comes from a compendious of 5000 scientific 
studies, mostly in the Slavic languages edited by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily 
Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the 
Catastrophe for People and the Environment. (Read it online here) Dr. Yablokov, 
a biologist, is a member of the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. The 
translated edition was published under the auspices of the New York Academy of 
Sciences.

At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on March 
25, 2011, attended by C-SPAN, CNN and independent media, but not the mainstream 
media, Dr. Yablokov summarized these studies and estimated the death toll over 
nearly twenty five years at about one million and mounting.

Because of the mainstream media, including the major newspapers, blackout on the 
Yablokov report since its translated edition came out in 2009, I asked Dr. 
Yablokov this question at the news conference:

“Dr. Yablokov, you are a distinguished scientist in your country, as reflected 
in your membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences, what has been the 
response to your report by corporate scientists, regulatory agency scientists 
and academic scientists in the West? Did they openly agree in whole or in part 
or did they disagree in whole or in part or were they just silent?”

Academician Yablokov replied that the compilation of these many reports has been 
met with silence. He added that science means critical engagement with the data 
and implied that silence was not an appropriate response from the scientific 
community.

Silence, of course, is not without its purpose. For to engage, whether to rebut, 
doubt or affirm, would give visibility to this compendium of scientific studies 
that upsets the fantasy modeling by the nuclear industry and its apologists 
regarding the worse case scenario damage of a level 7 or worse meltdown. It 
would require, for example, more epidemiological studies ranging into Western 
Europe, such as the current review of 330 hill farms in Wales. It would 
insistently invite more studies of the current health and casualty data 
involving the 800,000 liquidators—workers passing through since 1986 who have 
been exposed in and around the continuing emergency efforts at the very hot 
disabled Chernobyl reactor. And much more.

Public silence has not excluded a sub silentio oral campaign to delegitimize the 
Yablokov compendium. A quiet grapevine of general dismissals—unavailable for 
public comment or rebuttal—has cooled members of the press and other potential 
disseminators of its contents, including the National Academy of Sciences, the 
science advisers to the President and any other thinking scientists who decide 
that there isn’t enough time or invulnerability to justify getting into a 
contentious interaction over the Yablokov report.

The ability of corporate science and its regulatory apologists to inflict 
sanctions on dissenters is legion. There is a long history of censorship leading 
to self-censorship by those who otherwise might have applied Alfred North 
Whitehead’s characterization of science as “keeping open options for revision” 
to the ideology of atomic power.

I call for an open rigorous public scientific-medical debate on the findings and 
casualty estimates of the Yablokov report, to determine its usefulness for 
necessary programs of compensation, quarantine, accelerated protective 
entombment of the still dangerous reactor, and expanded studies of the past and 
continuing ravages issuing from this catastrophe and its recycling of 
radioactivity through the soil, air, water and food of the exposed regions. Such 
a public review is what the science adviser to the President and the National 
Academy of Sciences should have done already and should do now. The continuing 
expansion of the Fukishima disaster in Japan provides additional urgency for 
this open scientific review.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - 
and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of 
non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.