I want to ask you about the push by some,
saying nuclear power is the answer, in the
climate crisis, to the reliance on oil and
gas.
Yes.
You know, if we’re going to fully replace
fossil fuels, we will have to build 12,000
new reactors around the globe.
There are about 400 now.
So that’s a big upscale in nuclear power.
There will have to be nuclear power stations
outside of every major population point.
Now, there’s all kinds of problems with
cost, versus renewables.
But the thing that most keeps me up at night
is the health effects.
We really don’t know what the health effects
are for sure.
This is heavily disputed.
There has been no big study.
The Chernobyl records show that health effects
at low doses of radioactivity are severe and
that they run through a population, causing
people to feel — before they die, before
they get cancers, before they’re reported
as acute effects, the subacute effects cause
people have a sort of a full bouquet of health
problems, that make life just miserable on
a daily level.
International scientists, as soon as Chernobyl
happened, said, you know, “This has been
a tragedy, but it’s also a living experiment.
And perhaps we should find out, finally, what
happens to humans exposed chronically to low
doses of radioactivity.”
1990, the Soviet Union was falling apart.
Lots of people were upset about Chernobyl.
And Moscow officials asked U.N. agencies to
come in and do an independent assessment by
foreign experts: you know, “Tell us what
happened.”
First, the World Health Organization went
in.
They spent — three scientists spent 10 days
visiting contaminated and populated areas.
They came away, said, “There’s no problem.
You could double or triple the dose.
There’s no problem.”
They were thinking they were looking at Hiroshima,
extrapolating to Chernobyl, and said, “You
know, according to our computation and analysis,
we don’t see any problem.”
Nobody believed the World Health Organization’s
10-day assessment.
And so Moscow asked the International Atomic
Energy Agency to go in: “You tell us.
You know, give us an assessment of how high
the doses are and whether people should be
— are in harm of further damage.”
International Atomic Energy Agency got 200
scientists to go in over 18 months, mostly
just short trips, two weeks, 10 days.
And they were approached by doctors, Ukrainians
and Belarusians mostly, who were on the ground,
who had been working for the previous four
years with these contaminated populations.
And they said, “Look, we have a serious
problem with childhood thyroid cancer.”
The Western experts didn’t believe it.
They didn’t expect this kind of bump, you
know, epidemic in childhood cancer.
And so the Ukrainian scientists gave them
biopsies of children from their thyroids.
They brought them home, the Western scientists.
The thyroid cancers checked out.
But in their big report they wrote in 1991,
they omitted that information from the report.
They said there were rumors of childhood thyroid
cancer, but they were anecdotal in nature.
And this is unfortunately what I found, working
my way through U.N. archives, is that a few
key U.N. scientists and administrators worked
to diminish the story of a public health crisis
occurring in the Chernobyl-contaminated lands.
They dismissed most of the research that came
in from on the ground from Ukraine and Belarus
by scientists and doctors.
And they, you know, hid these biopsies and
kept repeating over and over again, “There’s
no need for Chernobyl aid.
There’s no need for a big long-term health
study, on the level of the atomic bomb survivor
studies.”
So that’s why, to this day, when people
tell you we have no evidence that low doses
of exposure cause harm to human health — that’s
because that big study was never done.
There is no real evidence.
I want to ask if you feel, I mean, it could
happen here, in the United States.
Yes, I’m afraid that not only could it happen
here, but, in fact, it already has happened
here.
Our biggest nuclear power plant, in Hanford,
power plant in western — eastern Ukraine
— I mean, I’m sorry, in eastern Washington
state, spilled 350 million curies of radioactive
waste into the surrounding environment during
the Cold War production of nuclear arms.
We tested — we’re the only country in
the world that tested nuclear bombs in our
heartland, in Nevada.
Those hundred nuclear weapons that were blown
up on the American continent spread billions
— not millions like in Chernobyl, but billions
— of curies of radioactive waste around
the American country.
And so, we have had spots of radioactivity
in Tennessee and Chicago area that were as
high as near Nevada.
And what we have is a public health crisis
that we have yet not yet fully addressed.
We have rising rates of thyroid cancer, rising
rates of pediatric cancers, which used to
be, in the 1930s, a medical rarity.
