Another nuclear accident possible, says Roche

Environmentalist Adi Roche said yesterday she was concerned that the next Chernobyl would be Chernobyl itself.

Speaking at an event to mark the 19th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster, Ms Roche said that, far from being history, the 1986 accident continued to affect millions, and especially children, in Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia.

The director of Chernobyl Children's Project said that, with only 3 per cent of the Ukrainian reactor's content having been expelled during the accident, the rest remained in an unstable sarcophagus. A new accident was possible unless €768 million was found to fund the construction of a new shelter.

"Chernobyl is a word which we would like to erase from our memories. It recalls an event which opened a 'Pandora's Box' of enemies which most of us probably now think of as safely relegated to the past," she said.

The Belarussian ambassador to the UK and Ireland, Alyaksei Mazhukhou, said the disaster caused $235 billion in damage and had affected 2.5 million people and 20 per cent of farmland in Belarus. He paid tribute to the efforts of CCP and other Irish organisations in bringing aid to his country.

At 1.23am on April 26th, 1986, the reactor at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl went out of control during a test, leading to an explosion and fire that demolished the reactor building and released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.

Yesterday Ms Roche published a document which, she said, revealed hitherto unknown facts about the disaster. One in four of all infants in Belarus will develop thyroid abnormalities, and a further 15,000 new thyroid cancer cases are expected in the next 50 years, she said.

Other claimed effects of the accident include a 50 per cent increase in leukaemia cases in the Gomel area of Belarus, and 7,000 cases of children with multiple heart defects.

A UN report published on the 15th anniversary of the disaster found "very considerable uncertainty" about the possible long-term health effects of the accident. It also found "no reliable evidence" of an increase in leukaemias, but predicted 8,000-10,000 cases of thyroid cancer.

Dr Mazhukhou agreed that the plant remained a safety hazard, and warned there could be another "huge" accident. Asked why his government didn't move hundreds of thousands of people away from the danger zone, he said the most important challenge was to prevent another accident.