TL: CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
SO: Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)
DT: April 1991
Keywords: greenpeace periodicals gp nuclear power chernobyl
safety problems accidents ukraine ussr /

Part One: The Deadly Experiment


The "sarcophagus" is crumbling. The giant grey concrete shell
designed to enclose the world's worst nuclear accident behind an
impermeable protective shield is itself beginning to fall apart.
Five years after catastrophe hit the Chernobyl power station in
the Soviet Union, a further crisis has cast a shadow over this
gloomy anniversary.

Scientists have discovered that the foundations of the grimly
named sarcophagus were so poorly and hastily built that its
concrete walls are steadily sinking. Numerous cracks have
appeared, encouraged by the intense heat - still over 200oC -
generated inside the reactor. One fear is that rainwater could
penetrate through to the mass of molten fuel and mangled tubes
which are all that remains of Unit No.4, causing further nuclear
reactions. Another is that even a distant earthquake could
fatally shatter the building.

"It's sinking into the ground," says West German radiobiologist
Professor Edmund Lengefelder, who toured the site last October.
"There are simply no proper foundations. They don't know how long
it will last." At the worst, if no action is taken, the whole
structure could collapse, releasing a further radioactive cloud
into the already poisoned countryside.

Although local officials play down the crisis, the Soviet nuclear
authorities charged with monitoring the entombed reactor in fact
face a grim choice. Either they can encase the sarcophagus
underneath a further shell designed to last for decades, or they
can try to slowly neutralise and dismantle the still beating
radioactive heart. The cost of the various options proposed
ranges from 2.5 to 3.9 billion roubles. The cost of doing nothing
is unthinkable.

The sinking sarcophagus is a graphic symbol of the way in which
the Chernobyl accident of April 1986 has stubbornly refused to
lie down. Whilst Soviet authorities have repeatedly tried to
minimise the consequences, the pessimistic predictions of their
critics have proved dismally correct. Far from gradually
improving as the accident's half-lives decay, the prognosis for
people's health, the environement and the economic recovery of
the region has been steadily getting worse. As the awful truth
has gradually unfolded, millions of people have been discovered
to be living in countryside and towns invisibly contaminated by
radioactive fallout.

This is not a tragedy where people are dying in the streets. It
is a disaster where thousands of families are quietly suffering,
their lives disrupted by ill health, personal crises, fear and
the constant possibility that they will have to leave their homes
forever. Just as bad is that even now, it is certain that many
people either do not realise or are not prepared to accept that
their surroundings have been poisoned, their food corrupted by
the nuclear shadow.

At the power station itself, the devastation of five years ago is
still evident. Giant cranes stand frozen in time above the
radioactive foundations of two further reactors then under
construction. Up to 100 people have to work in constant shifts to
monitor and check the state of the sarcophagus itself. Special
probes record any shifts in its stability. Curious visitors are
allowed to stand for a short while in protective clothing and
face masks inside the abandoned control room just metres from the
reactor core. Nearby is an engraved memorial to Valery
Khodumchuk, an operator who was killed instantly in the blast.


There is further evidence within the barbed wired exclusion zone
that stretches to a jagged radius of roughly 30 kilometres around
the power station. A journey through this wilderness reveals
hundreds of mounds of buried radioactive materials, each one
topped with a radiation hazard sign. There are still "hot spots"
within the zone where the radioactivity measures up to 1,200
Curies per square kilometre (Cu/sq.km.) - well above danger
levels. Whilst clumps of fir trees continue to die, whole forests
have already been bulldozed into the ground. Buildings in the
dozens of abandoned farming villages are beginning to collapse,
others are being deliberately demolished. Everywhere there are
piles of concrete and metal and abandoned vehicles. The area has
the appearance of a vast radioactive rubbish tip.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

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[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

At one of several giant waste dumps within the zone, an attempt
has been made to rationalise disposal of the debris. Everything
from cars to clothing is tipped into massive clay-lined trenches,
each one with a capacity of 15,000 cubic metres. Ten trenches
have already been filled. Even so, scores of contaminated trucks,
fire engines and military vehicles stand in ragged lines waiting
for a decision on whether the "Vektor" project - a waste
processing and recycling plant - will go ahead. Purpose-built
decontamination centres, where vehicles used in the zone can be
washed and cleaned, are only just now being constructed.

Ecology campaigner Svatislav Dudko, secretary of the Ecorada
group, says the exclusion zone waste dumps contain over 100,000
Curies of both strontium and caesium as well as smaller
quantities of plutonium. He is concerned that this could
seriously contaminate underground water channels. The Kiev
reservoir, which supplies drinking water to over 30 million
people, is already lined with radioactive silt; a high spring
flood could disperse this into the surrounding countryside.

There are attempts to maintain normality within this bizarre
environment. Outside the deserted town of Pripyat, just two
kilometres from the station, a green electronic sign records the
shifting radiation level as though it was the temperature. About
15,000 people work in two week bursts within the zone, their
radiation dose regularly checked. A third are paid extra wages to
keep the three still working reactors in operation. To avoid
contamination they change their clothes up to eight times during
the journey from the new town of Slavutich, 50 kilometres away.
Supposedly built on "clean" land, this town itself was recently
discovered to contain radioactive hot spots.

Backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Soviet
authorities are now turning the exclusion zone into a giant
experimental park. Academic researchers will pay much-needed
foreign currency to come and live and work in this uniquely
radioactive environment. Scientists are already busy propagating
seeds from irradiated pine trees, breeding calves from cows which
have lived through the accident, and feeding mink with
contaminated fish to check for mutations.

The real experiment has in fact already been conducted. Over
600,000 people have worked inside the zone since 1986 in order to
cope with the aftermath of the disaster. Many of them came from
the army, the police and from the power station workforce itself.
Known as "liquidators", their stories are a catalogue of horrors.

[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

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[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

In the first hectic weeks after the blast, young soldiers carried
burning pieces of graphite from the reactor with their bare
hands. Miners working to clear a basement of radioactive water
and build a protective concrete base under the molten reactor
were told that their true doses were never recorded. Although
time limits were set, in the desperate panic to controil the
situation, many were undoubtdely exposed to excessive doses of
rdiation. Now dispersed throughout the Soviet Union, this
conscript workforce is beginning to produce a new wave of
casualties from the accident.

Valentina Rogova lives in a block of flats specially allocated to
the liquidators in Kiev, 120 kilometres from the power station.
An engineer, both she and her husband worked at Chernobyl from
its start-up in 1977 and took part in the clean-up operation for
over a year, moved from one work camp to another. Encouraged by
wages worth three times her normal salary, one of her jobs was to
load sand on to the helicopters trying to smother the radioactive
fire.

Like other liquidators, she now feels the creeping effects of ill
health. "I have had changes in my blood, I have less energy, and
sometimes I have liver problems," she says. Her husband has pains
in his stomach and the bones of his feet. "I went to a hospital
in Moscow, but they tried to tell me that it was an emotional
thing, that I was scared. But I am a firm-minded person. I'm sure
that isn't true."

Rogova still has no idea what radiation dose she received. "But I
don't feel angry," she says. "That was our power station. We had
to work there and we had to save it. Everyone had a patriotic
feeling."

Her neighbour, Sergei Pastushina, another liquidator, describes
how a fragment of radioactive fuel stuck to his trousers when he
was working near the reactor. It was ten days before he realised.
By that time his leg had received a massive dose of 5000 Rems.
"If people had known during the liquidation what they were doing,
and understood the dangers, there would be far fewer
enthusiasts," he says. "The whole organisation of the work was
terrible. There was practically no protection from gamma rays."
Both he and Rogova now watch as friends who worked alongside them
steadily succomb to unexpected, often fatal illnesses. "So many
people I know have come home from work and then just died from a
heart attack sitting in their chairs or lying in the bath," she
says.

For many liquidators, any patriotic feelings about saving the
nation from disaster have long since turned to anger at their
exposure to fatal risks. Miners sent to hospitals in Kharkov and
Kiev have gone on hunger strike in protest at their treatment. In
1988 it was revealed that 57 policemen had suffered from acute
radiation sickness and a further 1,500 from chronic respiratory
and digestive problems.

Although there are no official statistics on deaths among the
liquidators, it is clear that the casualties, whether directly
caused by radiation or indirectly by the trauma of the event,
have now risen well above the original 31 deaths. In 1990 a
figure of 300 was given by Yuri Sherbak, a Ukrainian member of
the Supreme Soviet. Others have suggested several thousand.  The
Chernobyl Union, an organisation established primarily to
represent the liquidators, is now trying to compile its own
statistics on their health and conditions, and to push for
compensation.

Like Valentina Rogova, thousands of the clean-up workers came
from Pripyat, the workers' town built optimistically only a short
drive away from the power station. She herself felt the blast
blow open the window of her bedroom in the middle of the fateful
night. Thinking it was the wind, she left it open to the
unusually warm April breeze. The following day, children went to
school and played in the park, completely unaware of the hidden
danger in the atmosphere. Even the power station workers were not
told to take the primitive protective measures of closing doors
and covering their windows with wet shets they had often had
described. It was 36 hours before the town of 50,000 people was
eventually evacuated.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

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[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

Five years later, the health effects of this extraordinary
blunder are coming through. Parents from Pripyat now living in
Kiev say their children come home weak and debilitated from
school. Frequent nosebleeds and food allergies are common. More
seriously, they are developing heart and digestive illnesses more
commonly associated with older people. Others have problems with
their thyroid glands, the clear effect of inhaling the
radioactive iodine released in large quantities by the burning
reactor. And again there are the unexplained deaths. One teacher
from Pripyat high school told me that out of 80 of her
colleagues, eight had died since the accident. None of them was
very old.

Whilst the plight of the liquidators and those evacuated from the
immediate danger zone has attracted particular attention, there
is equal concern about the deteriorating health of those who have
continued to live in the regions contaminated by the 1986
fallout. Although the radioactive iodine did its damage and
dispersed within weeks, vast areas of agricultural land have
remained affected by the longer-lived isotopes of caesium and
strontium. In Europe, many countries set stringent limits in the
aftermath of the accident to restrict the consumption of
everything from meat to tap water. But throughout thousands of
villages and towns stretching for hundreds of kilometres away
from the reactor, where the food chain was much more seriously
affected, people continued to drink milk, harvest crops, feed
their animals and eat home grown vegetables in blissful ignorance
of the dangers.

"There were no facilities to do proper monitoring, no dosimeters
and no personnel," says Zhores Medvedev, a former Soviet
scientist who has studied the accident in detail."But the main
mistake was that they didn't impose an immediate ban on the
consumption of locally produced milk. They didn't distribute
iodine tablets, they didn't stop milking the cows, so children
who lived in the rural areas were totally unprotected." Genady
Grushevoy, a Bielorussian Deputy and chairman of the Children of
Chernobyl appeal, agrees. "Can you imagine that for four years
people produced bread and milk on this contaminated soil, and
people from the pure areas had to eat it," he says. "It's awful."
Even now, it is possible to buy vegetables in Kiev shops which
contain radioactivity well above European safety margins.

Over 130,000 people were evacuated in the first few months from
the exclusion zone and a number of other villages outside.
However, this has proved to be just the tip of the radioactive
problem. Only in the last two years has the full scale of the
hazard become apparent. But it is now clear just how large an
area of the Soviet Union has been affected. According to the
latest maps prepared from aerial surveys, even at a distance of
160 kilometres from Chernobyl, there are stretches of land where
the caesium in the soil is as concentrated as in the immediate
vicinity of the reactor.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

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[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

Although the power station is sited in the Ukraine, about 70% of
the fallout descended on the adjacent republic of Bielorussia. A
fifth of Bielorussia's agricultural land has been contaminated.
Altogether, in the three bordering republics of the Ukraine,
Russia and Byelorussia, about seven million people are still
living in areas where the contamination by caesium is above 1
Curie per sq.km. In Britain, levels of caesium below this figure
have resulted in bans on the consumption of meat from farm
animals.

One of the most contaminated districts of the Ukraine is
Poleskya, just outside the official exclusion zone. An area of
smallholdings and dairy farms where horse-drawn carts and
traditional hay ricks are still common, many people both grow and
eat their own garden produce. Some communities have already been
evacuated because the level of radioactivity in the soil was
considered excessive. In the village of Bober, for example, the
houses are boarded up, the area fenced off and patrolled by the
army. Radiation levels in the atmosphere are still 100 times
those in surrounding areas. Around this apparently isolated "hot
spot", however, life continues as normal.

On a collective farm just a few hundred metres from the barbed
wire perimeter fence of the exclusion zone, 800 cows have been
milked continuously since the accident. Their output of 6,000
litres is delivered every day to a local milk processing factory.
Although the officially permitted level of radioactivity has
changed three times over that period, the milk has always been
said to be within acceptable limits. Farm workers still complain
that their children are sick from the radiation. "They eat
contaminated food and they drink contaminated milk," one mother
told me. "Noone cares about our children."

Not far away, at the local school in Taraci, there are only 30
pupils in a building designed for 100. The rest have already left
for safer areas. Although food is now supposed to be brought in
regularly from non-contaminated parts of the Ukraine, the
administrative and practical obstacles to its effectiveness are
obvious. The school tries to compensate by offering the children
three "clean" meals every day. Each summer, the children also
spend two months in an uncontamniated region. Even so, their
teacher says that many are sick with the familiar catalogue of
repeated nosebleeds, fainting and more serious illnesses.

This anecdotal evidence of widespread ill health is confirmed at
the main hospital in the town of Poleskya itself. Out of 6,000
children in the district, the number with thyroid complaints has
increased from 1,700 in 1988 to 2,700 this year. There have also
been high percentages of children with throat and stomach
illnesses, and an increase in pere-natal deaths. Half the
children have anaemia caused by iron deficiency. The capacity of
the staff to cope with this increase in demand - over twice as
many patients as before the accident - has not been helped by a
shortage of doctors. 40% moved away in the two years following
the disaster.

Some of the worst cases from Poleska and other contaminated areas
of the Ukraine are sent to a special children's hospital on the
outskirts of Kiev. "The most terrible thing has been the
increased number of thyroid cases," says Dr.Olga Dekhtia, Deputy
Head of the Endochronology Unit. "We now have 17 cases of thyroid
cancer in children under 12. Before this increase there were only
a handful each year in the whole of the Ukraine. It's clear that
this is connected with Chernobyl." Dekhtia's colleagues have also
seen a significant increase in leukaemia, especially in children
evacuated from Pripyat. She has no doubt that this is also
related to radiation. The survival rate for childhood leukaemia
in the Soviet Union can be as low as 15%.

Officials at the Ukrainian Ministry of Health are reluctant to
confirm these beginnings of the Chernobyl "epidemic". "It's
impossible to say that all these illnesses are caused by
radiation," says Olga Babilova, head of the Department of
Radiological Hygiene. "There is not even a concensus among the
scientists about the effects. But we are expecting an increase in
thyroid cancers, birth defects and leukaemia over the next ten
years. We know it will get worse."
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

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[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

The Ukrainian health pattern is grimly mirrored in some of the
contaminated areas of neighbouring Bielorussia. Statistics for
the town of Mogilev, for example, over 150 kilometres from
Chernobyl, show disturbing increases in a wide range of illnesses
among the area's 92,000 children. The largest increases have been
in chronic respiratory problems and digestive illnesses. The
latter shot up from 109 cases in 1985 to 2,612 in 1990. Dr. Mary
Brennan, a British public health specialist who led a medical
delegation to Bielorussia last year, says they found evidence of
a clear rise in both thyroid diseases and congentital
malformations since the accident. There were also excess cases of
anaemia and even rickets - a bone wasting disease almost unknown
in Britain. Brennan argues that these could well be caused by
children being kept indoors by worried parents or teachers, a
tragic side effect of the radioactive threat.

None of these figures on the current health situation, however,
include the predicted tens of thousands of additional hidden
cancer deaths which are expected to occur over the coming
decades.  Valery Ivasiuk, a radical Deputy in the Ukrainian
parliament and  chairman of its health protection committee,
believes that the  situation is so serious that it can only be
compared to AIDS.  "All the symptoms in the clinical pattern are
similar," he says.  "We have seen a peak of infectious illnesses
which were quite  rare before the accident. We have seen an
increase in birth  deformities. I have come to the conclusion
that we have a sick  nation." He accuses local health officials
of deliberately  falsifying the data on child mortality in order
to minimise the  connection.

For many parents in the area, the only explanation for unexpected
illness in their children is now Chernobyl. Marina Zhadorozhnaya
blames the accident for the partial paralysis which suddenly hit
her then 21-year-old son Sacha in 1987 after a bout of pneumonia.
Four years later, after extensive treatment, he still cannot walk
properly and regularly falls over. She is one of dozens of
mothers being helped by the Kiev-based Green Help organisation to
obtain expert medical care overseas.

Such personal tragedies have prompted a rash of humanitarian aid
programmes from around the world. When I visited Kiev last month,
a group of 50 children was about to leave for a six week stay in
Australia. Others have gone to Europe and the United States.
Local organisers say that such breaks away from depressing
reminders of the accident are both physically and psychologically
invaluable. Charitable groups throughout Europe have also raised
thousands of pounds to pay for specialist medical treatment not
obtainable in the Soviet Union. I was told of one liquidator
desperately trying to raise the $21,000 needed for a heart
operation in Germany.

Other aid workers argue that the real need is to help improve
health facilities within the Soviet Union itself. Over 360,000
people in the Ukraine alone have been earmarked for special
medical attention, whilst the entire 1.8 million population of
the contaminated areas is supposed to have an annual medical
check. There is an evident requirement for specialised equipment
and even computers to log the mass of records. The environmental
group Greenpeace, for example, recently established a small
clinic in a Kiev children's hospital in order to provide more
comprehensive blood tests. One "chemistry analyser" alone cost
over $50,000, and is the only one of its type in the country.
Other organisations have plans to build entire new hospitals to
deal with the crisis. The International Red Cross has a medical
aid programnme valued at $4 million. There is equally the
potential for confusion, as foreign groups stumble over each
other to identify the correct prescription.

As the health crisis deepens, the Ministry of Atomic Power has
meanwhile announced a decision on the sarcophagus. It will build
a new improved shelter over the top of the existing tomb. Nine
volumes of technical analysis have already been completed to
assess the feasability. When completed, it will keep the sleeping
dragon safe for a further 25 years. There is no longer any cause
for concern, they say. It is a promise which the millions of
people still living through the lingering consequences of an
accident they were told would quickly fade from memory may find
it hard to believe.  Part Two: The Cover-Up

The first serious accident at the Chernobyl power station
occurred in 1982. One of the hundreds of fuel channels inside the
giant RBMK reactor No.1 suddenly fell apart. Its collapse, and
the intense pressure of the constant flow of cooling water
through the reactor core, forced the closure of other surrounding
channels. Eyewitnesses report that a cloud of radioactive vapour
was released into the atmoshpere. No public announcement was made
about the event.

"When we walked out of the power station we felt something like
rain on our heads," says Valentina Rogova, then a reactor repairs
engineer at the plant. "It was said to be a minor accident. They
did some cleaning of the streets around the power station, but
since it was at night noone paid much attention. Nobody was
informed outside. We were always told that this type of reactor
was the safest. I never thought that I was working in a dangerous
place." Four years later, those illusions were cruelly shattered.

[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

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[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

If the Chernobyl disaster has shown just how dangerous the
production of nuclear energy can really be, then its aftermath
has revealed the power of a centralised bureaucracy to gloss over
and conceal the truth. Whilst its origins lie in the secrecy with
which the nuclear industry throughout the world has always
shrouded its unforgiving technology, a further twist has been
added by the Soviet system's own special brand of obfuscation. It
has taken a mixture of glasnost towards the West and perestroika
within the Soviet Union for the covers to be gradually drawn back
from a catalogue of mistakes and deception.

The original experiment which led to the disaster was itself born
of a cover-up. According to former Soviet scientist Zhores
Medvedev, the operators were trying to complete a safety test
which should have been conducted well before the fourth RBMK unit
came into operation in 1983. This helps to explain why it was
carried out at the most dangerous part of the reactor's cycle,
when its inventory of radioactive by-products was at a peak. Once
the operators had also disabled vital safety systems, it was
almost inevitable that the reactor's power would surge fast
enough to cause an explosion so powerful that it lifted the vast
concrete lid and eventually exposed a radioactive inferno.

Even when the Soviet authorities apparently gave a frank and full
description of the accident at a memorable international forum in
Vienna in August 1986, Medvedev believes they didn't reveal
everything. Many studies have remained classified. Although it
was clear by then that there were fatal flaws in the uniquely
Soviet RBMK design, it was still hoped to continue to build them
with adaptations. Only in 1988 was the whole future RBMK
construction programme finally cancelled.

Faith in the technology meant that the authorities were badly
prepared for such an event. The immediate aftermath of the
accident was a mixture of the inevitable panic and confusion and
frightened attempts by the authorities to hide their tracks.
Moscow officials despatched to deal with the emergency had no
idea how serious it was. Firemen and police officers were allowed
to battle to control the burning reactor without breathing
apparatus, protective clothing or radiation monitors. The
adjacent town of Pripyat was not evacuated for 36 hours as
officials argued about the medical affects.

At the time, these mistakes were masked by bland assurances that
there was no danger to the public and praise for the heroic
rescue workers. "The Chernobyl disaster has shed light on such
wonderful qualities of the Soviet people as responsibility,
courage, honesty, selflessness, nobility, cordiality, friendship
and a readiness to carry out one's civic duty," the Prime
Minister of the Ukraine announced soon after the accident. It is
now accepted that some of the most hazardous measures, from
dousing the graphite fire with water to dropping sand from
helicopters, were ineffective, and needlessly risked the lives of
the emergency "liquidators". 
 

Although photos of the exposed reactor core were flashed around
the world, there was a virtual news blackout within the Soviet
Union for ten days after the event. A brief statement in
Izvestiya on May 1 reported that "the radiation situation in the
power station and the surrounding area is stabilised." In fact,
two million Curies of radioactivity were still being released
every day, and the wind was blowing towards Kiev. Although rumour
had already spread panic through the Ukrainian capital, it wasn't
until almost three weeks after the accident that all children
under 15 among a population of over two million were sent away to
summer camps.

Continuing attempts to conceal or play down the wider
environmental and health effects of Chernobyl have been just as
damaging. A tight control has been kept on all medical data.
Although 1,000 doctors work at the special Centre for Radiation
Medicine established in Kiev after the accident, they have not
been allowed to publish independent research. All material has
had to be submitted for approval by the Soviet Ministry of
Nuclear Power or the Ministry of Health. One senior researcher
from the Centre told me that only recently had she been able to
obtain clear data showing the increase in leukaemia cases in the
contaminated areas.

"There is no single epidemiological study which explains what
kind of complaints people have, and what kinds of treatment they
have received," says Zhores Medvedev. "No reliable statistical
work has been done. It's typically Russian. They don't want the
figures published." With widely differing views on the effects of
the accident filtering out, the secrecy has only encouraged
rumour and speculation.

A similar cloud has obscured the picture of radiological
contamination. In 1988, possession of an unauthorised radiation
monitor was officially a criminal offence. A black market
flourished. Even though some villages now have a resident
radiobiologist, the sight of a geiger counter sends people in the
contaminated regions hurrying to discover the reading.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

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[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

The first publically available maps of the disaster area were not
published until 1989. Those printed in newspapers mainly showed
areas where mushrooms and wild berries should not be gathered -
both favourite activities in the region. Only in the last year or
so have detailed radiological survey maps become generally
available which clearly show the contours of ground
contamination. One recently produced map of Kiev shows that the
most contaminated area is the city's riverside beach. An
ecological pressure group has even done its own survey of the
forest round the city, eventually forcing the local council to
identify hot spots which weekend walkers should avoid. Bizarrely,
it is possible to buy a road map of the Kiev region on which the
names of evacuated towns and villages round Chernobyl are printed
in a ghostly grey. No explanation is given for this special
treatment.

The first major indications that the consequences of the disaster
were more serious than expected came in 1988, over two years
after the accident. Film-maker Georgy Shklyarevsky took his
cameras to the Narodici region, 80 miles west of Chernobyl. The
resulting 20 minute black-and-white documentary, "Microfon",
revealed a horror story of blind piglets, deformed calves and a
sickening rural population. Radiation readings taken by the
camera crew recorded levels of 2,000 Microrems per hour, well
above an acceptable level for human habitation. The film also
showed bitterly angry confrontations between peasants and local
officials.

In the aftermath of these revelations, the world's press began to
publish pictures of the horse with six legs and the jawless cows.
Throughout 1989, there were further newspaper reports that fresh
areas of serious radioactive contamination had been discovered
well beyond the 30 kilometre danger zone, especially in
Bielorussia. In 1990 the publicity reached a peak, with stories
that millions more people would need to be moved away from
polluted countryside and towns.

Clear evidence of the blanket of silence which had descended on
the region can be seen in the Russian republic. "At the beginning
it wasn't officially recognised that there was a problem," says
Andrey Kostryukov, spokesman for the Russian Federation's special
Chernobyl committee. "The Soviet mass media informed the people
that everything was alright. They had no right to get anxious."
In fact it was only in 1990 that Russian deputies decided that
action had to be taken, and an evacuation programme was launched.
Kostryukov's committee only started work three months ago.

But whilst the world's media have continued to publicise the
human tragedies which have followed in the wake of Chernobyl,
international authorities concerned with health and radiation
have maintained a cautious scepticism. After a visit to the
Soviet Union in 1987, officials from the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) judged the initial assessments ofm the
heakth effects to be "too pessimistic", and suggested they could
be "decreased by a factor of five to seven". Even last year, a
British Red Cross team reported that the main side effects of the
disaster were "psychological distress, and anxiety about the
consequences of radiation", not fundamental ill health.

Ironically, one of the central Soviet authorities' responses to
the crisis of confidence prompted by the international press
revelations has been to invite a team from the IAEA to make its
own assessment. In early 1990 a massive research project was
launched involving 100 international experts and a five part
programme to assess the extent of the contiuing radiological
hazard, the health effects and the effectiveness of
countermeasures. A special centre was established at Gomel in
Bielorussia, one of the most contaminated districts. Teams of
scientists have toured the region. About 4,000 personal
dosimeters have been distributed as part of the study. The
initial findings are due to be published this May.

When I visited the area last month I found little confidence
among health experts about the value of this work. "They came and
did their tests and came up with exactly the same results as us,"
said one senior official from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.
"They haven't offered any practical help. They say it's safe to
live here, but it's morally easy for them to make such
judgements. We have to deal with the day to day reality." One
local hospital administrator clearly considered he had received
more useful assistance from a team of doctors from a Swiss
disaster charity than the IAEA researchers. There was also
natural caution about an organisation one of whose main purposes
is to promote the expansion of nuclear power. Yet the IAEA is the
main international body working with the Soviet government, and
is now involved in setting up a further large research centre
near the 30 kilometre exclusion zone.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======
[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

Scepticism at such Moscow-promoted attempts to handle the
aftermath has been encouraged by the wave of nationalism which
has swept the Soviet Union, not least in the republics affected
by the fallout. The first free republican elections in 1990 threw
up a new batch of democratic and green MPs, many demanding
independence. At the same time, numerous environmental and
humanitarian groups have emerged to expose the truth about the
environmental damage and the Chernobyl victims. In February of
this year, the Ukrainian parliament adopted new laws which would
give special status to victims of Chernobyl and set much stricter
health and environmental limits.

One of the most immediate aims of the new, more radical
parliaments has been to provide finacial compensation. In the
Russian republic, for example, a scale of extra payments has been
set, ranging from 20% to 100% of a person's salary depending on
the contaimnation pf the area in which they live. Those who took
part in the liquidation are given special cards entitling them to
such privilegss as free transport and medical services as well as
easier access to housing. There are also demands for more
substantial compensation to those who have suffered irreperable
health damage.

A battle continues with the Moscow authorities about who will pay
for such measures. Although the central government paid less than
ten billion roubles to the three affected republic for their own
emergency measures up until 1990, it has now agreed to pay a
similar amount for this year alone.

In fact, these moves in the republics have coincided with an
eventual admittance by the central authorities that mistakes were
made. In April 1990, on the fourth anniversary of the accident, a
parliamentary commisison of the Supreme Soviet reported on the
slow and haphazard way in which the authorities had reacted to
the continuing effects of the disaster. A 16 billion rouble
emergency programme was announced, including the further
evacuation of up to 200,000 people, better protection against
contaminted foodstuffs, improved medical aid and clearer public
information.

In the republics, radical politicians want heads to roll. So far,
only six of those immediately responsible for conducting the
fateful 1986 experiment have been put on trial. Four senior
officials with responsibility for nuclear power design and
operation were also dismissed from their posts. The Soviet
Prosecutor General Nikolai Trubin is also reported to have
started an investigation into the mishandling of the disaster.
Many people believe that those ultimately responsible still hold
important political posts. To mark the fifth anniversary, the
Kiev-based Zelenyi Svit (Green World) organisation and the
Chernobyl Union are holding a special hearing to review the
initial findings of an independent panel of lawyers.
"Questions of the environment can only be resolved by adopting
new laws and putting new people in government," says Green World
secretray Sergei Fedorynchyk. "Our main interest is in democratic
changes to our structures of power. Chernobyl is not just about
scientific decisions, it's about the violation of human rights in
the Soviet Union."
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======
[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

Part Three: The Evacuation Dilemma

Outside the entrance to a long, grey milking shed, the women seem
to congregate from nowhere. Trudging through the half-frozen mud,
they begin to shout angrily. "We want to be evacuated," they
scream. "We've been waiting five years. Why did they leave this
village, why didn't they fence it off? A lot of people come here
to measure the radiation, but noone helps us. They're laughing at
working people. Isn't there any space in the Ukraine? Maybe the
cows can live here, but why should we suffer."

The farm manager, who takes the brunt of this assault, attempts
to calm his rebellious workforce. "The whole village has voted to
move, and they've prepared all the plans for our new place," he
explains. "They've even put it on the map. But they haven't found
a building company to do the work." The women remain
dissatisfied. They will get together to complain to the
authorities, they say. The shouting continues until they
reluctantly walk into the shed to start their mid-day milking.

This small collective farm on the outskirts of Dubrov, less than
30 kilometres from Chernobyl, is a sad example of the continuing
crisis of a poisoned countryside and shattered communities. Only
a few hundred metres from the fence surrounding the official
exclusion zone, 50 families still live in the village. A 1989 map
records its level of contamination by caesium 137 at roughly 15
Curies per sq.km. The authorities now agree that this is
unacceptably high.

Unlike the liquidators, these people have had no special
treatment and claim to have received a paltry compensation
payment of just 100 roubles. They continue to eat locally grown
produce and their children are inevitably sick. They bitterly
complain that humanitarian aid from Germany has been distributed
among local "bosses". "My little boy got two little tangerines
and some sweets," one mother complains. How much longer they will
have to wait to move is anyone's guess.

The village of Dubrov is not unusual. It can be repeated hundreds
of times in the republics of the Ukraine, Russia and Bielorussia.
Five years on from the Chernobyl disaster, the most appalling
decision is how to effectively relocate such large swathes of
population.

The evacuation crisis has been exacerbated by both the patchy way
in which the radioactivity from the accident was deposited, often
swept into the ground by rain showers, and the way in which it
has persisted in the soil and food chain. "Hot spots" of
dangerously high radioactivity are still scattered over massive
tracts of land in the three republics. Because no immediate
action was taken to decontaminate these areas, some are now more
polluted than the exclusion zone round the reactor.

At first it was thought that the problems could be solved by
literally "cleaning up" the affected areas. The streets and
buildings of whole towns were washed down with high pressure
hoses. Top soil was removed from gardens and parks, new asphalt
laid on roads, pavements and in school playgrounds. In some towns
every roof has been replaced with new corrugated metal. During
1986 and 1987 about 600 communities were "decontaminated".

The Soviet authorities also divided the contaminated land into
three bands. In areas where the level of caesium was above 40
Curies/sq.km, no farming was supposed to take place, and people
should leave. On land with 15-40 Curies/sq.km (about 10,000
square kilometres in 1988), clean food was supposed to be brought
in from outside. Farmers were encouraged to experiment with
arable crops which would take up less radioactivity than grazing
livestock.

But in an even larger area that registered less than 15
Curies/sq.km, agriculture was allowed to continue with some
restrictions on consumption of milk and meat. By comparison, in
Britain, bans have been introduced on selling lamb from land
contaminated above 10,000 Becqerels per square metre. Translated
into the Soviet units, this is the equivalent of .25
Curies/sq.km, well below a level that even registers on Chernobyl
contamination charts.

A parallel concept was introduced of the "lifetime dose" which it
was considered acceptable for people living in the contaminated
areas to receive. This was set at 25 Rem. By contrast, the
lifetime limit for members of the public set by the International
Commission on Radiological Protection is 7 Rem, whilst the
average dose in the international nuclear industry is 10 Rem. The
result of these generously high limits was that after the initial
evacuation of about 135,000 people (mostly from the 30km
exclusion zone) during 1986, no further major relocation of the
population was planned.

This proved absurdly optimistic. Some argue that the limits were
dliberately planned in order to avoid a massive relocation
operation and the total abandonment of agricultural production.
But in 1988 a new lifetime limit of 35 Rem had to be set, and in
1989 it was clear that many settlements were pushing up towards
even this new level. More evacuations became essential in both
the Ukraine and Bielorussia. In some cases people who had already
been moved from the most radioactive areas have had to be
evacuated again. Even in 1990, according to figures produced by
the Ministry of Construction, there were still over 9,000 people
living in Bielorussian villages with contamination above the 40
Curies/sq.km level.

The effects of these shifts can be seen in the area round Dubrov.
All the roofs in the nearest large town of Poleska have been
replaced. Construction of new public buildings and housing, even
a gasification scheme, have continued as normal. At the same
time, special supplies of food and basic essentials are
constantly trucked in. Many families have moved of their own
accord, some villages have already been evacuated. Those
remaining are uncertain about their future. "It's necessary to
evacuate them all," said one local doctor. "People are just tired
of living with this problem. Everybody is talking about radiation
all the time." The entire town and 12 surrounding villages are
now being gradually relocated.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======
[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

The size of the new evacuation problem is vast. Ukrainian
government officials have started on a target of moving a further
50,000 people, including 11,000 children, who live in areas above
15 Curies/sq.km. The Russian government hopes to resettle over
110,000 people from similarly contaminated areas this year. About
100,000 people live in the same conditions in Bielorussia. But in
February this year the Ukrainian parliament decided on a new
lifetime dose of 7 Rems, a fifth of the Soviet government's
figure. If this was implemented, up to 2 million people would
have to move.

Even for the existing plans, the practicalities are hard enough.
The social stability achieved by keeping small communities
together means duplicating an entire village on another site.
There is a shortage of wood and other building materials in some
areas. Not only housing has to be provided, but jobs and social
facilities. 300 families from Pripyat, for example, were taken to
the construction site of another nuclear station in Bielorussia.
But when anti-nuclear protests stopped this project in the
Chernobyl aftermath, they were effectively abandoned. Charity
workers have been left to pick up the pieces. The evacuees are
also not always welcomed with open arms in their new environment.
In Kiev, there is anger that families waiting years to be
rehoused have been pushed aside by the newcomers.

An additional problem is that some people don't want to move.
About 1,000 (mostly elderly) people have actually moved back into
the danger zone round the Chernobyl reactor. An old woman I found
sitting in her traditional Ukrainian farmhouse could see nothing
changed when she returned. "They keep saying they will throw us
out," she said. "But we want to live the rest of our lives here."
One attraction is that people living on contaminated land get
extra wages and other supports. These are bleakly nicknamed
"coffin supplements". The Ukrainian authorities have tried to
force the issue by withdrawing privileges from those who refuse
to move.

Privately, complex judgements are also being made about the
relative costs of evacuation plans. The confidential minutes of a
special seminar organised by the International Atomic Energy
Agency in Kiev last autumn for Ukrainian politicians and
officials reveal a grim trade-off between relocation and roubles.
The numbers of people to be relocated were crudely balanced
against various criteria, including figures for cancers avoided,
the psychological effect of moving - and the cost. In the end,
lack of resources are likely to be the determining factor. The
Moscow authorities have already indicated that they will only
financially support evacuations from areas above their still
current 35 Rem limit.

According to the IAEA document, the proposed Ukrainian programme
of evacuating everyone above the 7 Rem limit would cost 41.5
billion roubles. "The Ukraine cannot find this money alone," says
Deputy Valery Ivasiuk, a member of the Rukh democratic alliance.
"The only way to ensure this evacuation is to make the centre pay
us for the disaster they created. If Moscow doesn't provide the
money we will have to subtract it from their taxes."
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======
[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

Meanwhile, attempts are being made to gain assistance from
sympathetic European companies. The Russian government has
planned a deal to construct new villages with one of the French
companies involved in building the Channel tunnel. The Minsk-
based Children of Chernobyl project has linked up with German
organisations to build concrete and brick factories which will
turn out the materials for hundreds of new, nearby houses. Jobs
will come from a factory processing fruit and vegetables from
uncontaminated regions. "We will give people the chance to take
part in building their own housing," says Genady Grushevoy, the
Bielorussian Deputy who is chairman of Children of Chernobyl.
"It's an important principle." In the absence of an adequate
response from the authorities, the people who have suffered
enough already are learning to do it for themselves.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======
[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

Part Four: A Future Without Nuclear Power?

Last November, an historic agreement was signed between the
Ukrainian Ministry of Power and the Danish Folkecenter for
Renewable Energy. It commits the environmentally conscious Danes
to installing three medium-sized wind turbines in the republic
this summer. Three larger turbines will follow next year. If all
goes well, 100 such generators could eventually be built,
spinning round harmlessly and with a total installed capacity of
up to 50 Megawatts.

It is unlikely that such a venture would even have been
considered by the Ukrainians if the Chernobyl disaster had not
happened. But this small example of renewable energy in action is
a symbol of the way in which the accident has forced a total
reappraisal of energy options in the Soviet Union. In a country
which, like many others, had placed considerable faith in the
peaceful generation of power from the magical fuel uranium, this
has created a painful dilemma.

Quite apart from the health and environmental effects, the sheer
monetary cost of Chernobyl has provided a powerful argument
against further nuclear development. The most detailed analysis
so far has produced a total bill of between 170 and 215 billion
roubles (289 - 366 billion dollars at the official exchange
rate). This is well above the cost of such previous Soviet
disasters as the 1988 Armenian earthquake.

Economist Yuri Koryakin, who carried out the study at the Soviet
government's Research and Development Institute of Power
Engineeing, also broke his figure down into clear categories of
direct and indirect costs. These included not only the clean-up
and evacuation measures but the value of abandoned agricultural
land, the bill for lost electricity production and the economic
effect on the country's planned nuclear energy programme. By
contrast, Koryakin set the net economic contribution of nuclear
power (in terms of cheaper costs) since it was inaugurated in
1954 at 10-50 billion roubles.

In fact, Chernobyl has created an unprecedented crisis for
nuclear power around the world. Public fears about the safety of
reactors have been followed by demands for shutdowns and delays
in future programmes. In Western Europe, which was most directly
affected by the 1986 fallout, several countries have either
stopped or halted further nuclear stations. A 1987 Italian
referendum voted to close all the country's nuclear capacity, the
Austrians finally abandoned their sole, mothballed plant, whilst
the Swiss voted last year for a ten year moratorium on nuclear
construction.

Faced with rising costs for handling nuclear waste, the British
government has shelved further reactors until at least 1994. In
Germany, which generated 34% of its electricity from nuclear
power (pre-unification) it is unlikely that any fresh nuclear
station could be started against public opposition. Even in
countries not directly affected by the fallout, like Japan,
nuclear enthusiasm has been badly dented by massive protests.
During the twelve months up to May 1990, according to an annual
survey by the trade magazine Nuclear Engineering International,
no new orders were placed for nuclear stations anywhere in the
world. The international nuclear construction business has
virtually stagnated.

In the Soviet Union the effect has been even more dramatic. Plans
to expand the capacity of nuclear stations to approaching 200
Gigawatts (about 20% of the country's electricity generation) by
the early years of the next century have had to be totally
scrapped. Even an output half that size looks unlikely. Whilst
immediate resources have had to be thrown into fitting new safety
systems to the remainder of the still functioning RBMK stations
(the same design as Chernobyl), the Ministry of Nuclear Energy
has also had trouble promoting its newer generation of
pressurised water (VVER) reactors.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======
[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

Wherever new nuclear power plants are now proposed, there is
heated opposition, spurred on by the new democratic freedoms.
Dozens of new reactors have been cancelled or postponed after
local protests. Plans to build a third 1,500 Megawatt nuclear
station at Ignalina in Lithuania were effectively quashed by the
rising tide of Baltic nationalism coupled with environmental
concern. Even operational stations have been closed, for example
in the seismically volatile area of Armenia. The Russian
federation's parliament has called for a ban on further
construction until a national waste disposal programme has been
agreed. It seems unlikely that the Soviet power ministry could
now push through a new nuclear station in any region against
local obstruction.

Public hostility to nuclear power has also seriously affected the
morale of the Soviet industry. In July 1990, Minister of Nuclear
Energy, Vitaly Konovalov, warned of the "deterioration and
destabilisation of the moral and psychological atmosphere" among
staff at nuclear power stations as a result of repeated
picketing, rallies and threats. This would not only affect the
potential safety of the plants, he said, but had already resulted
in a sharp fall-off in the recruitment of engineers. "If the
situation does not change soon, the need may arise to shut down
nuclear plants, leaving entire regions without power supplies",
he warned.

There was little doubt among environmentalists I spoke to about a
nuclear future. "Immediately after Chernobyl we came to
understand that atomic power was the most dangerous means of
obtaining energy," said Sergei Kurikyn of Green World. Among
those who have worked at the Chernobyl site itself, there are
conflicting views. "I don't think nuclear power should be stopped
in the Soviet Union," one former engineer told me. "Nuclear
energy is progress." A designer who had worked at the power
station for 14 years was adamant, however, that all Soviet
reactors should be shut down. "I want to work there and see it
close," he said. "Before the accident we were assured that
nuclear energy was the safest and the most effective. Now my view
has changed. I know how these places are designed. I am expecting
a new Chernobyl every day." 
 

The Ukraine offers a litmus test for the future of Soviet energy
production. It still has the largest number of operating nuclear
stations of any republic - 15 reactors on five sites. At one time
it was planned to increase the complement to 60 units by 2010.
This was later reduced to 30. But in the wake of the disaster the
Ukrainian government eventually won an agreement from the
national authorities to a moratorium on further construction. The
Ukraine has also demanded the closure of the remaining three
units at Chernobyl in 1995.

"Before the accident everybody was banking on nuclear energy
because it was considered ecologically clean, the stations could
be built anywhere, and they didn't produce the pollution of
fossil fuels," says Valery Popovkin, an economic geographer at
the Centre for Studies of Productive Forces in Kiev. "Now it's
necessary to work out a new energy plan."

Chernobyl has exacerbated a situation in which the growth of
indigenous fuel supplies has failed to keep pace with growing
energy consumption, especially in heavy industries. The Ukraine
also exports large amounts of electricity to Eastern Europe. But
the coal mines which provide the fuel for most of this power have
been allowed to run down in favour of new developments in Siberia
and Kazakhstan. The best rivers for hydro-electric schemes have
also been largely exhausted.

Valery Popovkin believes it is now vital to invest in Ukrainian
coal mines again, including an improvement in the appalling
living and working conditions of miners which have encouraged
recent strikes. "The preparation work has already been done," he
says. "They are ready to open mines with a capacity of 100
million tonnes. The Donbass region contains 250 years of
economically viable coal."
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======
[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

There is also a more radical solution to the present crisis -
energy efficiency. Popovkin cites a study by the Japanese
Kawasaki Steel Corporation which showed that if international
energy consumption levels were applied throughout all stages of
the Soviet Union's metal industry - from coking plants to final
forging - it would save 12.5% of all electricity generation, the
same as the country's nuclear poportion in 1985. "This is only an
analysis of one branch of industry," he enthuses. "You can
imagine the scale of saving if we made researches in other energy
consuming industries. We wouldn't need nuclear power plants."

There is not much evidence of energy saving in public buildings
or private houses. Although automatic heating controls are said
to have been introduced in some large hotels, most seem to pump
it out day and night. There is no encouragement to save energy in
the low electricity prices deliberately maintained for domestic
consumers. Greenpeace is planning to build an energy efficient
show house in Kiev as an example of what could be done.

In the Soviet Union as a whole, the short term energy future is
likely to involve a mixture of coal and natural gas. There is
little discussion about the contribution of fossil fuels to the
greenhouse effect or acid rain. Pollution is so extreme across
the board in the country that other problems seem more urgemt.
Ten per cent of the Ukraine's territory is said to be critically
polluted by industrial procesees, quite apart from Chernobyl.
There is also little financial or legislative pressure to
introduce environmental controls. Valery Popovkin argues that
only a "healthy market system" could produce the impetus for
change.
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======
[]  =start=
CHERNOBYL - NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
by Chrisbin Aubrey  (GP)  April 1991
Part One: The Deadly Experiment

A revival of the nuclear industry is not out of the question: its
expansion is still part of the national energy plan. In a recent
issue of Pravda, a long article explaining the French nuclear
industry's paramount concern for safety included the memorable
quote from one engineer: "We could build a nuclear power plant in
Red Square and it wouldn't do anybody any harm." When the
Ukrainian parliament passed on its Chernobyl closure demand to a
special commission, Green activists were appalled to discover
that it started to consider allowing the reactors to continue
operating into the next century. "I don't think anyone is going
to build new nuclear power stations until the year 2000," says
economist Popovkin. "But if the public is given indisputable
proof about safety, and it's shown to be economic, a new
generation without the Chernobyl burden could well accept it."

Ukrainian environmental groups argue that nuclear power is still
given preferential treatment in Moscow. As in other countries it
has close links with the military and dominates research funding.
At the same time, little research effort has been put into
renewable energy ideas. In the Ukraine, there is a large
experimental solar power station in the Crimea, as well as
smaller scale investigations of wind energy and solar water
heating. An alternative energy conference is being held in Kiev
during the week of the fifth Chernobyl anniversary.

"Unfortunately, we don't yet have the technology or the materials
to build things like solar panels or wind turbines," says Green
World's Sergei Kurikyn. "Public opinion isn't prepared for it
either. If people supported alternative energy like they stood
against nuclear power, the government would do something about
it." Hopefully, the Danish invasion of wind turbines could be the
trigger to get this process going.

Crispin Aubrey

Crispin Aubrey is the author of "Meltdown: The Collapse of the
Nuclear Dream" (to be) published by Collins and Brown on April
[Greenbase Inventory July 30, 1991 ]

=======##=======