Fukushima: Five years onThe lasting legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima
It is thirty years since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It is also five years since the Fukushima disaster. Greenpeace says that to mark these anniversaries, it has commissioned reviews of scientific studies examining the continued radioactive contamination in the affected areas, and the health and social effects on the impacted populations.
It is thirty years since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It is also five years since the Fukushima disaster. Greenpeace says that to mark these anniversaries, the organization has commissioned reviews of scientific studies examining the continued radioactive contamination in the affected areas, and the health and social effects on the impacted populations. Greenpeace has also carried out radiation field work to study the affected areas in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Japan where thousands of people still live with the effects of radiation.
Greenpeace says that there is no simple or easy way to clean up an aftermath of a nuclear accident. Indeed, this report shows that there is no such thing as a complete decontamination of radioactively contaminated areas. The disasters at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in 1986 and at Fukushima NPP in 2011 have demonstrated not only the initial consequences of major nuclear accidents, but they also left long-term consequences for human health and the environment. “These scars are still with us today and will be with us long after tomorrow,” Greenpeace say.
The organization also challenges the way the nuclear industry frame these accidents by downplaying the numbers of deaths. Greenpeace says that reality is more complex. “Following a nuclear disaster, people are put under overwhelming pressures. They must evacuate their communities to avoid radiation risks. They are displaced from their friends, families, and communities for years,” Greenpeace notes.
“The real risk of nuclear power, however, is inescapable for hundreds of thousands of Chernobyl and Fukushima survivors. Despite the immense suffering that accompanies losing your home or living in a contaminated environment, the scale and seriousness of these effects continue to be played down or misrepresented,” Greenpeace asserts.
This report seeks to clarify how governments, reactor operators, and nuclear regulators were unprepared to deal with not only emergency evacuations immediately after the accidents, but with the long-term management of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, as well as with the contaminated communities and agricultural lands.
— Read more in Nuclear scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima (Greenpeace, 2016)
