The spew from this one explosion was 200 times greater than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Sixty-five million people were contaminated and nearly half a million were forced to leave their homes, possessions, jobs and family ties. The hidden costs are still unknown except to say that it will be 100,000 years before an area the size of Italy returns to habitable radioactive levels.
Information about the extent of the catastrophe and the long term consequences were covered up by authorities. Workers engaged to “contain” the crisis toiled in an environment thousands of times above safe levels. Countless died as a result of radiation poisoning.
The 9 million people in the general area (Belarus, Ukraine, Western Russia) live in an area of chaos, ingesting contaminated water and radioactive food, and suffering various pathologies and genetic mutations. One can only imagine the chaos in the event of an accident in a more densely populated centre.
Christian Parenti, writing in the Nation, says “that nuclear power is too expensive and risky to attract the necessary commercial investors”. Even with large government subsidies, it is almost impossible to get proper financing and insurance. Inputs are greater than outputs, without even taking into consideration the cost disposing of spent rods and liquids with a radioactive life of thousands of years, the decommissioning of outdated reactors and liability in event of malfunction.
Storage of waste in barrels, ponds or underground caverns presents looming accidents. Ontario with 22 reactors already has 30,000 tonnes of such waste.
To build a better world we need to understand the full cost of nuclear technology and exercise vigilance so as not be lulled into a false sense of security by partisan propaganda. The dangers are real, not just to human beings, but to all beings and to the earth itself. There are, however, opportunities to alter levels of energy consumption and to engage our own latent energy and consciousness in exploring different and more potentially viable modes of living.
