We list here a set of files pertaining to Chernobyl, a town's name that, like Bhopal, has come to represent the epidome of man's inappropriate behavior based only on the intellect's capacity to ask , "Is it possible?" If we are to survive as a species, and be the true conservators of this place as our response abilities endow us with, we MUST temper the intellect's youthful inexperience with the age-old instinctual and intuitive wisdom that always asks "Is it appropriate?" when considering any activity. Chernobyl is the clearest single message to humanity that Nuclear Technology is not an appropriate exercise of human intelligence. It is omnicidal.

• Belarus brought to its knees by `invisible enemy', April 26, 2001

  Fifteen years after Chernobyl, the world has moved on. But for Belarus the problems are only beginning. Thyroid cancer rates have risen by 2,400 per cent since the explosion . . . It is the country of Belarus which has suffered, and continues to suffer, most from the disaster: 70 per cent of the radiation has fallen on its land and people. . . . Medical research has shown that radioactive elements (primarily caesium 137 and iodine 131) cross the placental barrier from mother to foetus, contaminating each new generation. Faced with soaring levels of infertility and genetic changes, the gene pool of the Belarussian people is now under threat.
  
  
  

• Chernobyl & Thyroid Cancer
  • Cancer: Radiation hits very young the hardest, 3/15/00 (ascii)
    
  • Nature: Thyroid Cancer 7.5 yrs after Chernobyl soaring, 9/3/92 (ascii)
  
  
  
• 14 years after and beyond . . .
  • Chernobyl Kills And Cripples 14 Years After Blast, 4/21/00
  • Deadly toll of Chernobyl, 4/22/00
  • Ukraine Chernobyl Survivors Mark 14th Anniversary, 4/23/00
  • Worst Effects of Chernobyl To Come, 4/25/00
  • 50,000 extra Chernobyl cancers predicted, 4/26/00
  • Chernobyl: For 14 years, the industry has downplayed the damage to humans and the planet, 5/7/00
  • Chernobyl's risk to sheep may persist for 15 years, 5/11/00
  • Ukraine: Chornobyl Contamination Lingers Longer Than Thought, 5/15/00
  • Chernobyl Radiation Will Affect UK 100 Times Longer than Forecast, 6/7/00
  • Chernobyl Newborns at Risk From 1986 Reactor Blast, 9/19/00
  
  
  
• Benevolent Doctor Uses Skills to Help Chernobyl Victims, 3/27/00
  
  
  
• Chernobyl at Ten: Half-lives and Half Truth by John M. LaForge
  • Part I
  • Part II
  
  
  

• Chernobyl and the Collapse of Soviet Society
  written by Dr. Jay M. Gould, this is the original complete essay before being edited and then published in The Nation, March 15, 1993.

  Dr. Gould presents the evidence concerning the devastating health effects suffered by the majority of the Russian people from their exposure to the radioactivity released at Chernobyl as being the single most important factor hastening the collapse of the Soviet Empire.
  
  
  

• excerpts from Chernobyl, Insight From the Inside, Springer-Verlag, 1991
  by Dr. Vladimir M. Chernousenko, Scientific Director of the attempted "clean up".

  The book's Forward, written From the Publisher, describes Chernousenko (born in 1941) as having,

  started his scientific career at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics in Kiev. Since 1971, he has worked at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev, where he earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1973. Since then, up to 1991, he has been the head of the Laboratory for Nonlinear Physics and Ecology. His scientific acumen is exceptionally diverse, as can be seen from his numerous publications (120 scientific papers and four monographs).

  When the Chernobyl Reactor went critical and exploded on April 26, 1986, Dr. Chernousenko was invited by the Academy to act as "Scientific Director of the Task Force for the Rectification of the Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident" (i.e. to help direct the cleanup of this catastrophe). In this capacity, he served for five years as one of three key participants in the attempts to "clean up" the disaster. In the Preface, "The Myths of Chernobyl, and why I Wrote This Book," Chernousenko articulates an "(incomplete) catalogue of [21] myths" about this tragedy.
  
  
  

• Chernobyl: A Crossroad in the Radiation Health Sciences
  Chapter 24, from Radiation-Induced Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure: AN  INDEPENDENT  ANALYSIS, by Dr. John Gofman, 1990.

  Introduction
            This chapter will compare our independent analysis of Chernobyl's cancer consequences, with three estimates from influential segments of the radiation community. We will account for the huge disparity in such estimates. In addition, we shall provide some new estimates which use the Cancer-Yields developed in this book, as well as the Cancer-Yields published in 1987 and 1988 by RERF analysts.
            In the process, we will suggest how the response by segments of the radiation community to the Chernobyl accident could have serious implications -- extending to nuclear issues far beyond this single accident, and beyond ionizing radiation to other health issues and to the practice of science itself. This chapter documents the following:

  1. Chernobyl's Cancer Consequences -- Integrity of the Data
  2. The Two Keys to Estimating Cancer-Consequences from This Accident
  3. Bottom Line from Our 1986 Estimate of Chernobyl's Cancer Consequences
  4. Bottom Line from the 1987 Estimate Issued by NRC
  5. Bottom Line from the 1987 Estimate Issued by DOE
  6. Bottom Line from the 1988 Up-Date of DOE's 1987 Estimate
  7. Reason for the Great Disparity
  8. Some Important Comments from the NRC and DOE Reports
  9. The Threshold and Dose-Exclusion: Ultra-Low Cancer Estimates
  10. Beyond Chernobyl: A Much Bigger Agenda in Parts of the Radiation Community
      Then tables.
  
  
  
• Chernobyl's 10th: Cancer and Nuclear-Age Peace -- Don't Be Deceived,
  March 9, 1996, by Dr. John Gofman

  The monolithic nuclear/radiation "community" cannot afford to provide a meaningful analysis of the radiation consequences. Life, for this monolith, requires the lowest possible death consequences of Chernobyl. . . . Those enterprises (military or civilian) which deliver ionizing radiation to people, anywhere in the world, share the common goal of underestimating the health-hazard of ionizing radiation. Thus, the military enterprises, the nuclear power enterprises, and the medical radiation enterprises (x-rays and "nuclear medicine") share a common endeavor.
  
  
  

• Radio-Iodine: From Hanford To Chernobyl . . . And Beyond?,
  Spring 1993, by Dr. John Gofman

  In 1989, a group of radiation experts who were sent to the Chernobyl area by the World Health Organization (WHO) denied that any of the health problems were related to radiation. In May 1991, a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) produced the same denial. Neither report denied health problems. Rather, the reports denied any connection between the problems and radiation. Both sets of experts claimed that the Chernobyl populations which they visited suffered from exaggerated fears about their radiation exposures.
            We think that the explanation for some of the health problems may be radiation-induced hypo-thyroidism from radio-iodine --- rather than "radio-phobia." This essay explains why.
  
  
  

• "HOLOCAUST" versus "NOTHING HAPPENED" :
  Tales from a Distant Place . . . with a Problem Very Close to All of Us,
  Fall 1991, by Dr. John Gofman
  

  Who will control what information becomes the new "textbook wisdom" about Chernobyl's radiation consequences? Obviously it makes a huge difference. . . .
            [O]ver decades and centuries, science has established important barriers against bias -- rules which are widely disregarded today in radiation research. Adherence to these rules will not be demanded by the public, press, and other professions unless they are aware of them. Some of the basic principles will be listed in Part 5 . . .
            If the world allows the truth about Chernobyl to become distorted by bias in the direction of underestimating its radiation consequences, it would be a warning that the truth about every chemical pollutant is also in danger of comparable distortion.
            And if all these hazards are systematically distorted by conflicts of interest in the research, humanity everywhere will face not only a vast harvest of radiation-induced misery from "permissible" nuclear pollution, but additional giant harvests from "permissible" chemical pollution of every type. And "mysteriously rising" rates of illness can occur even while the average length of life is growing.
            Therefore, one of the most vital activities in the field of citizen action and preventive medicine -- today, tomorrow, and forever -- is the fiercest possible defense of objective, untainted databases.
            There can be no activity more important for human health, for if the databases cannot be trusted and relied upon, then medical science can be turned on its head by mis-information, which can persist as textbook wisdom even for centuries.
  
  
  

• Nuclear Technology: The Inappropriate Exercise of Human Intelligence
  by dave ratcliffe, marking the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl Catastrophe
  
  
  
• A partial list of some of the costs of Nuclear Technology:
  Death rates are 30 percent higher for those in contaminated regions in the Ukraine compared to the rest of the country.
  Birth rates in Belarus have fallen 50 percent.
  Thyroid cancer, particularly among children, is up 285 percent in Belarus.
  About 7,000 in Russia alone who helped put out the fire and seal the reactor are believed to have died and 38 percent are recovering from some kind of disease.
  Belarus, the most heavily affected country, spends 20 percent of its budget on dealing with Chernobyl's aftermath; Ukraine devotes four percent and Russia, one percent.
  Contamination of Lake Kojanovskoe -- downriver from Chernobyl and used by more than 30 million people -- with "radiation levels 60 times above European Union safety norms".
  Repair estimates for the disintegrating sarcophagus range from $1.28 to $2.3 billion.
  125,000 people alone have died "from diseases related to the accident" according to Ukraine's Health Ministry.
  Ivan Kenik, Belarus's Chernobyl minister, estimates the cost within the borders of Belarus for "total damages from the Chernobyl catastrophe from 1986 to 2015" to be $235 billion.
  
  
  
  
• Testimony about Chernobyl from the World Uranium Hearing conducted in Salzburg in 1992:
  • Vladimir Chernousenko
    Physicist, scientific co-ordinator of the clean-up in Chernobyl
  • Gernadij Grushevoi
    Co-founder of the Foundation for the Children of Chernobyl
  • Irina Grushevaya
    Medical doctor, co-founder of the Foundation for the Children of Chernobyl
  • Nikolaj Ostrogskij
    Head of an aviary clean-up task-force in Chernobyl
  • Andres Illan
    Member of a clean-up task-force in Chernobyl
  • Vladimir Nechunaev
    Member of the Estonian Chernobyl Committee

Outside

• Chernobyl Charity Online
  Donate free medicines for Chernobyl victims at no cost for you.