Dia on 27/4/2006 at 23:28
I just visited Elena's site and words fail me. I want to go someplace quiet now and just cry until there are no more tears.
Rogue Keeper on 28/4/2006 at 08:16
There are no official statistics from the Commie era on deaths related to cancer and long term effects of radiation on people. First, they didn't want to brag with it, but it would be also quite difficult. Those officially accounted for are few plant workers and the first ones who were dealing with the accident and died few weeks later from radiation sickness (firemen, chopper pilots) - ideally they didn't wear any protective clothing and thus sustained highest doses.
The UN and Greenpeace make just rough estimations, because it's difficult and costly to keep track of all workers and soldiers who were helping out in the area back then, many of them were from different parts of the former USSR and after the operations they returned back home, where they are slowly dying to these days. Their weakened organism may surrender to mere influenza. Counting cases of cancer in the area is relatively easy, but the cancer won't tell you to what measure it was helped to grow by radioactive fallout, we are getting cancer from other sh*t as well.
daniel on 29/4/2006 at 18:40
yeah, i'm actually studying nuclear engineering so i'm somewhat familiar with a ton of different accounts of chernobyl and all the death statistics and cancer statistics. 50 deaths is the result of the the workers at the plant, who were exposed to high levles of radiation, on the order of 13 Gy (for comparison 4 Gy gives you a 50% chance of survival). as for cancer, there were about 40 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children in the 5 years before the accident, in the 5 years after, that number jumped to 550. thyroid cancer is usually easily treated, and it takes a while to recover, but still, there have been a few deaths, which have been included in that 50 number. its actually a bit higher i think, something like 70
really, it's difficult to trust many media coverings of chernobyl, they all seem to flock to greenpeace (or other anti-nuclear groups) to get their info, it makes for juicy stories.
