They support the nuclear lobby’s thesis that the most clearly determined evidence about the consequences of Chernobyl are the deaths of 39 people from high levels of radiation but they say nothing about the data from the Chernobyl Union, an association bringing together those who participated in the liquidation of the consequences of the accident (the liquidators) according to which 70% of the liquidators are ill (endocrine problems ten times more frequent than the average in Russia, psychiatric problems five times more frequent, problems of the circulatory system and the digestive system four times more frequent than the average in Russia). The liquidators become ill four times as often as the rest of the population. In general the fate of the 600,000 liquidators is one of the most important humanitarian aspects of the accident deserving the UN’s attention. We know that the alterations in genetic material to which the liquidators were subjected will be transmitted to the generations that follow.
The authors of the report agree, de facto, with the promoters of nuclear power who have said for many years that one of the most tragic consequences of Chernobyl is that it brought a halt to the development of nuclear power, and that “it is time to forget Chernobyl”. Of course, the governments of the three countries most affected by Chernobyl are interested in reducing the costs of mitigating the consequences of the accident. For all of them, the less they know about radiation induced illness, the better. This refusal to recognise the sad truth is manifested in the cancellation of government research programmes on Chernobyl, the diminished status of those organisations dealing with the social aspects of the problem of Chernobyl and in the exclusion of the most active and honest researchers, (as is the case with Professor Bandazhevsky in Belarus).
As for the analysis of the health consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, we are seeing the same phenomenon that occurred with the study of the health consequences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the beginning of August 1945. The occupation forces prohibited any research at that time into the effects of radiation. It was only authorised in 1950, four and a half years later, by which time the most significant information on the effects of radiation had been lost for ever188. It should be noted that it is precisely this truncated statistical data that formed the basis for all the radiological safety norms currently in force. These norms were developed without taking into account the increased mortality rates among the most vulnerable members of society, children, the old, the ill—and therefore cannot ensure our protection. One of the most renowned Russian specialists in radioprotection, the director of the Radon Complex in Moscow, has recently admitted: “It has been apparent from the start that radioprotection safety standards were developed in deference to the nuclear industry”. This attitude is the primary cause of several million deaths in the twentieth century. These deaths are due to the development of the nuclear industry and, surely, above all, to atmospheric nuclear testing, but also to the use of medical X-rays, nuclear fuel processing and the ordinary functioning of nuclear power stations.
188 See note 15, p. 53.
Data about Chernobyl is suffering the same fate, at the hands of the nuclear lobby, as the data about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are proposing that we discard all the data collected by numerous researchers from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia because it has no scientific value, and that we start again from zero to study the consequences of the disaster, while fifteen years have elapsed and an enormous amount of data is irrecoverable.
What should we do? What strategy should we adopt to take effective action? Let’s outline some of the priorities.
While there is no question of rehabilitating the contaminated territories entirely, we could and should take a raft of measures to reduce the humanitarian consequences of the disaster. Above all, we need a reliable method for measuring. At present, the calculation of radioactive charge in the population is made by measuring levels of contamination in the territories and this has been shown to be very inaccurate. It needs to be replaced by an objective and precise evaluation of the radioactive charge incorporated in each individual. Within the same village, the dose received by inhabitants can vary considerably from one individual to another. There are many reasons for this, including the phenomenon of “leopard spot” contamination and the effect of individual diet. An effective strategy has to be tailored as far as possible to the individual and should focus initially on those people who have suffered the most and who are most at risk. This kind of individual approach is entirely possible, the equipment exists: there are machines that can measure human radiation (Human Radiation Spectrometers or HRS), methods to analyse accumulated levels of radiation over a lifetime through an examination of dental enamel, and modifications occurring in protein molecules (FISH method). Other objective measures of individual dosimetry could almost certainly be developed if the problem was brought to the attention of scientists and they were given the necessary financial means.
Reconstituting the contamination of the first few days and weeks following the accident forms part of the objective study as we understand it. During the first few days, the amount of radioactive material was hundreds or thousands of times larger than now because of the short-lived radionuclides. These included not only iodine-131, but lanthane-140, tellurium-132, neptunium-239, xenon-133, barium-140 and many others. It is possible that the more obscure effects that we are observing today can be explained by the brief powerful impact of these rare radionuclides.
A United Nations aid fund needs to be set up for the victims of nuclear disasters. There are 430 nuclear reactors in operation in the world today; as they age, the risk of an accident increases. There is no doubt about this: we should expect there to be new disasters at nuclear power stations. This fund would be constituted from obligatory payments, representing a percentage of the revenues from the sale of electricity, from countries with nuclear power stations.
Because today the inhabitants of the contaminated territories receive 90% of their radioactive load from local food products contaminated by radionuclides, it will be necessary for several decades to monitor contamination levels in food and levels of radioactive charge incorporated by the inhabitants (using anthropogammametry). Maps need to be drawn up showing the contamination of the population by radionuclides (and first and foremost the children) and marking those regions that need particular surveillance.
Radioprotection of the population should be based on the annual body charge of the critical group, in other words, the most contaminated group in the population. HRS measurements should be made in each locality from a reliable sample made up of representatives of diverse social groups (20% of the population is sufficient). Thresholds (1mSv/year for adults) should be established taking into account the critical group of inhabitants in the village (more than 10). A law on social protection for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster was passed in Belarus in 2001, and contains an extremely important stipulation that protection measures need to be maintained even if the annual charge drops from 1 mSv/year to 0.1 mSv/year.
More than 4 million people, including 1 million children, live in areas of the former Soviet Union that were contaminated by fallout from Chernobyl. Establishing strict limits on the concentration of radionuclides in food, and ensuring that they are properly respected, would have a very significant effect on radioprotection. The contamination of milk with radionuclides in a particular locality is a very good indicator of the level of danger posed to children’s health from living there. According to 2001 figures from the Ministry of Health in Belarus, there are 1,100 villages where the levels of caesium-137 in milk exceed 50 Bq/kg and 350 villages where levels exceed 100 Bq/kg.
Even though children in these villages receive two or three meals a day at school and nursery, even though they have regular medical check ups and periods of convalescence, and even though the soil in these areas is treated with a dressing of extra minerals, we have not managed to bring down the levels of incorporated caesium-137 in children’s bodies below 30–50 Bq/kg;
we need, therefore, to make the admissible levels of radionuclides in food products even stricter. European limits currently in force for emergency situations (1 mSv/year radiation threshold, 1,000 Bq/litre, the permissible level of cesium-137 in milk for adults and 400 Bq/litre, for children) were established on the basis of calculated risk coefficients from data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and are completely inadmissible. For the situation at Chernobyl, where people are receiving chronic radiation doses, the limits need to be ten to twenty times stricter (the annual admissible levels for internal radiation should be lowered to 0.1 mSv/year, which corresponds to 30–40 Bq/kg per body weight).
Medical research must include international projects to determine the correlation between illness and the concentration of radionuclides in the organism. This is the only way to establish the cause and effect relationship between illness and the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Before his arrest, Professor Bandazhevsky had established a cause and effect relationship between internal levels of radiation and alterations to the ECG, and diseases of the eye (cataracts). Physicists and doctors need to pursue joint studies in this area: examination using a HRS (Human Radiation Spectrometer) of children to determine the concentrations of radionuclides in the organism and complete medical examination.
It is equally urgent to undertake an information campaign to give people simple radioprotection training to reduce the amount of radionuclides incorporated into the organism through the food they eat. Soaking meat, mushrooms and fish in salt water (2 dessert spoons of salt in a litre of water), reduces the levels of caesium 137 by a factor of 3 or 4. Given that 60% of the annual charge comes from contaminated milk, people need to learn to separate it. The addition of chemical adsorbents (Prussian blue) in fodder can reduce by 35% to 75% the level of caesium-137 in milk and meat.
In every district and locality, programmes need to be set up to put mineral dressing once every three years on cultivable soil (above all on people’s vegetable gardens), the fields and the forests (where people collect berries and mushrooms, in other words in a radius of 10 km around localities). 3 tons of calcium and 100 kg of phosphate per hectare can reduce the transfer of radionuclides into the plants by 80% to 90%. Adding calcium or lignin to a forest ecosystem can reduce levels of caesium 137 in berries and mushrooms.
Taking natural adsorbents in the form of pectin-based food additives has proved very effective in eliminating radionuclides from the organism: pectin-based food additives should be taken for a month at least four times a year. The raw materials for producing pectin-based food additives (the waste material from making jam and fruit juice) is not lacking in either Russia, Belarus, or in Ukraine.
The catastrophic deterioration in health (particularly in children) sixteen years after the Chernobyl disaster is not due to stress or radiophobia, nor to mass evacuation (only 140,000 inhabitants out of 2 million people living in badly contaminated areas were evacuated from Belarus and the same applies to Ukraine and Russia) but to the chronic effect of low dose radiation.
Lack of money is not the only reason why the necessary protective measures have not been taken: ambiguous and contradictory government policy has had an equally serious effect (in order to spend less, governments have a tendency to hide the true scale of the tragedy).
Nevertheless, a small team of a few dozen people was able over a few years to undertake HRS examination of 140,000 children, distribute 45,000 pectin treatments to them and implement, in some contaminated areas, all the necessary radioprotection measures. It is therefore not an impossible task but it should be carried out on a different scale. All that is required is to use existing funds sensibly to substantially reduce the negative effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the countries concerned.
Our countries (and particularly Belarus) will never be able, at any rate in the next few decades, to overcome the consequences of the Chernobyl tragedy unless they receive extensive international aid. We need to find the financial means to set up all these international projects in all the contaminated territories. These programmes will need to be maintained for several decades until there are no longer any radionuclides in the topsoil and “clean” food can be produced for the entire population.
PART SEVEN
THE BANDAZHEVSKY AFFAIR.
AN INNOCENT MAN UNJUSTLY TREATED
Chapter I
A STALINIST TRIAL
The trial of Yury Bandazhevsky and Wladimir Ravkov started in Gomel on 19th February 2001 before the Military Chamber of the Belarusian Supreme Court. The trial ended on 18th June when the scientist Bandazhevsky was sentenced to eight years in a maximum security prison. No proof was ever presented. The main prosecution witness, Vladimir Ravkov, also sentenced to eight years in a maximum security prison, declined to testify. The Advisory and Monitoring Group of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Belarus, noted eight different violations of the Belarusian Criminal Code and concluded that, from a legal point of view, the entire trial “testifies to the higher standing of ‘expediency’ rather than the rule of law”. Amnesty International, that considered Yury Bandazhevsky a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression, launched an appeal for his immediate and unconditional release.
In his appeal for judicial review to the President of the Supreme Court, Bandazhevsky declared: “I have every reason to claim that these legal proceedings have been brought against me with the aim of getting rid of me, as rector of the institute, and as a scientist, who is known in our country and abroad, in the field of medical radiology, whose scientific research, discoveries, conclusions and recommendations conflict with the interests of a number of government officials who have a different point of view about the consequences of the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster on the territory of Belarus, and about the effects these could have on the health of the population, the flora and fauna of the country, and therefore conflict with the policies being pursued by those in charge in this domain.”
Apart from the main prosecution witness, Vladimir Ravkov, a lieutenant-colonel in the medical service and vice-rector of the institute, who, under heavy pressure (classified as torture), made an accusation against Bandazhevsky of accepting bribes to help young applicants in their admission to the institute, the six other people accused of corruption were all freed after having delivered the testimony required of them. The conditions under which their statements against Bandazhevsky were made can be judged by their declarations in court, which were recorded by the OSCE observer. We were able to obtain the stenographer’s notes from the observer and the essential parts are reproduced below.
1. THE UNDERWORLD OF THE BELARUSIAN JUDICIARY
SHAMYCHEK, ONE OF THE ACCUSED AND A WITNESS:
MINUTES OF THE HEARING ON 27TH FEBRUARY 2001
IN THE BANDAZHEVSKY-RAVKOV CASE
RECORDED BY THE OBSERVER FROM OSCE
The court considers the evidence in the case against the accused Shamychek.189
189 The accused and “witness” N.I. Shamychek, was a teacher who gave revision classes to prepare candidates for the examinations. She was supposedly the intermediary who accepted the bribes and then handed the money over to Bandazhevsky.
At 13:00 hrs, the court adjourns. In the morning the room was half empty.
During the break representatives from Amnesty International, Natalie Losekoot and Matthew Pringle arrive. They talk to Bandazhevsky about his research in radiological medicine and his attitude towards the trial.
After the adjournment, at 14:05 hrs, the clerk of the court warns the public that bringing cameras into the courtroom is prohibited. He will confiscate any cameras if he sees them. I ask him to introduce himself but he refuses.
Today, Ravkov has been given neither breakfast nor lunch.
During the cross-examination that follows, Shamychek states that the investigating authorities demanded that she make a statement say
ing that she had transferred a total of 11,000 dollars to Bandazhevsky.
The judge reads extracts from the testimony taken from the minutes of the investigation that contradict her statements in the witness box. Shamychek repudiates some of the testimony explaining that when she made them, on 17th July 1999, she was under particular stress. She then claims that she was threatened, that the sums mentioned were those that the examining magistrates demanded that she indicate, that she had been shown lists of people that she did not know and who had supposedly testified against her.
Then Shamychek wants to name the people who had threatened her, but her attempts are interrupted by the presiding judge.
When Bandazhevsky’s lawyer demands that the contradictions be resolved after they have been examined in detail, the judge tells him he has no lessons to teach the court.
At 17:45 hrs the hearing is adjourned until 28th February 2001 at 10:00 hrs.
MINUTES OF THE HEARING ON 28TH FEBRUARY 2001.
The hearing begins at 10:00 hrs. Following cross-examination, 15 charges remain against the accused Shamychek, a 60 year old woman.
According to the minutes of the cross-examination in the preliminary investigation of 17th July 1999, Shamychek asked Bandazhevsky to give her the questions for the chemistry examination.
The candidates would pay her for them.
She did not give him any money. Today Shamychek repudiates these statements: Bandazhevsky never gave her the exam questions.
10:30 hrs. She is being questioned by the defence. There are six people in the room (not participating in the trial), including myself.
The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag Page 64
