UN report
2006 is the 20th anniversary year of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Powerful pro-nuclear forces are committed to spinning positive "news releases" and "reports" to lessen the negative impact.
Below is a quote from a news release on one such official report from the Chernobyl Forum that was released in Vienna in Septemer 2005:
"The number of people killed by radiation as a result of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident, is so far 56... the U.N. said on Monday."
Not long ago, officials were about to admit to 4,000 Chernobyl dead, but with record-high oil prices the demands for more "cheap atomic energy" is so huge they had to state a much smaller figure.
Now, we see the desperation and cunning of pro-nuclear officials. They raised the death toll from 31 to 56 souls. They can now brag to critics that the new report almost doubles the previous official Chernobyl death toll, but such trickery is insulting to all of us.
Every attempt to set a death toll for the Chernobyl accident is pure speculation, no one knows what it was, or will be in the end - not even approximately.
My neighbour who worked in Chernobyl died of cancer at age 56, how in the hell do we know if he got this cancer in Chernie and if we should include him in this list of victims... However, there are people who absolutely should be included such as cleanup workers, firemen, helicopter pilots, soldiers... what about them? Why does no official death toll recognize them as casualties of the Chernobyl disaster?
Here are two additional official quotes which are as far from the truth as the official death toll:
"Many evacuated areas were now safe, and the area of zones classified as contaminated was too large. Apart from the still closed, highly contaminated 30 km (19 mile) area surrounding the reactor and some closed lakes and restricted forests, radiation levels had mostly returned to acceptable levels"
It's impossible for us to count victims, but we can travel and count the hundreds of miles of nuclear wasteland that rolls past. They only talk about an area that is 30 km (19 mile) around the reactor, but this is only 1/8 of the total area that was poisoned with radiation.
