Word: chernobyl
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Most of all, it requires international cooperation on an unprecedented scale. No nation can cordon itself off from the effects of its neighbors' pollution. Radioactive fallout from Chernobyl swept across most of the European continent. Canadian lakes are being poisoned by the belchings of U.S. smokestacks. The torching of Brazil's tropical forests each year accounts for some 6% of all the CO2 that is pumped into the atmosphere. Deforestation in Haiti and drought in Africa have prompted large cross-border refugee movements -- just a foretaste, perhaps, of the mass migrations that could result if runaway population growth outstrips world...
Another legislator, Yuri Shcherbak, notes that the decision to evacuate residents of the town of Chernobyl, which is just 14 km (9 miles) from the plant, was not made until May 2, six days after the accident. By April 30, he says, radiation in nearby Kiev (pop. 2.6 million) had risen to 100 times safe levels. The authorities knew that, according to Shcherbak, but "the population was not warned...
...mismanagement, moreover, started long before the Chernobyl accident itself, claims Shcherbak. The reactor's safety system, approved by former Academy of Sciences head Aleksandrov, had design flaws, and, says Shcherbak, a near accident at a similar reactor in 1976 was hushed up. Most disturbing is the contention that safety violations are still going on. Budko and journalist Vladimir Kolinko, for example, say that food grown in contaminated soil is still being distributed to children, among others. And last week Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Moscow daily, published a story by Vladimir Lipsky, president of the Byelorussian branch of the Soviet Children...
...least one accusation -- that the accident released 1 billion or more curies of radiation, rather than the reported figure of 50 million to 80 million -- is denied by the authorities. Says Nikolai Steinberg, former chief engineer of the Chernobyl reactor and now deputy chairman of the State Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Industry: "We're not the only ones who came up with that figure. International scientists were involved as well." U.S. experts support the lower estimate. Nonetheless, Yablokov and other deputies have demanded that the Chernobyl installation, which is still operating, be closed down completely...
ENVIRONMENT: Does the Chernobyl cover-up continue...