Scientist Warns of After Effects of Nuclear Testing

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Scientist Warns of After Effects of Nuclear Testing 

Moscow, Aug 5 (Interfax) -- The seriousness of the consequences of
nuclear tests carried out by the former Soviet Union "will possibly 
surpass the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb attack," prominent Russian
environmentalist and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences 
Aleksey Yablokov told Interfax Wednesday [5 August].
  Speaking on the eve of the 53rd anniversary of the Hiroshima tragedy,
he said that in the 1960s the Soviet Union tested the world's largest 
50-megaton atomic bomb in the air above the Novaya Zemlya island.  "In 
the estimate of Academician Sakharov, a one- kiloton nuclear charge 
exploded in the atmosphere causes the death of  50,000 people in a chain 
of generations, which means that ultimately this bomb will take the lives 
of 3 million people," he said.
  He also said that the fundamental concept on which the International
Atomic Energy Agency is based is erroneous.  "Until now this organization
has performed two functions, spreading nuclear technology in the world on
the one hand, and controlling the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, on
the other.  These two tasks are mutually contradictory," Yablokov said.
He said, speaking about the "peaceful" uses of atomic energy that any
nuclear power plant, even one operating without flaws, "causes serious
radiation pollution of the bio-sphere, where the content of Krypton-85 and
Plutonium is millions of times greater than it was in the pre-nuclear era,"
Yablokov said.
  Regarding the radio-nuclides Tritium, Iodine-131, Cobalt-60, Fe- 59,
and Caesium-137 and -134, he said that they can be found in soils and in
living beings at a distance of tens of kilometers from any nuclear power
plant.
  Regarding this, he said that in the period from 1925, when
international monitoring was initiated, to 1990 the radiation dose
considered safe was lowered 78 times.  Moreover, these "safe doses" are
only applicable to healthy 20 year-old men, he said. 
  Speaking about the Chernobyl accident "the latest of the most tragic
signs of the nuclear era," he said that in the first months following the
accident, several dozen thousand children were born dead in Ukraine,
Belarus, and Russia, and also in Germany, Greece, Austria, Sweden, 
Norway, and Turkey.
  Yablokov said that over 9 million people still live on the
Chernobyl-contaminated areas where half of the children are born with
mental disorders.
  Belarus still spends 25% of its budget, Ukraine 10% and Russia 1% on
dealing with the consequences of the Chernobyl accident.
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