In Forbes, that bastion of conventional wisdom on Wall Street, Jeff McMahon posed the following question in a bold headline:

“Did Tesla Just Kill Nuclear Power?”

The gist of the story is that, at a divestiture debate held at Northwestern University in Chicago on Thursday, “famed nuclear critic” (McMahon’s characterization, not mine) Arnie Gundersen (aka: a member of the Board of Directors of Fairewinds Energy Education), stopped Argonne Laboratories director Dr. Jordi Roglans-Ribas dead in his tracks when he based his case for nuclear energy on that tired old saw with which we are all so familiar:

“Roglans-Ribas had just finished arguing that any future free of fossil fuels would need nuclear power, which provides carbon-free energy 24 hours a day, supplying the reliability lacking in renewables like solar and wind.”

Gundersen called that claim a ‘marketing ploy.’

“We all know that the wind doesn’t blow consistently and the sun doesn’t shine every day,” he said, “but the nuclear industry would have you believe that humankind is smart enough to develop techniques to store nuclear waste for a quarter of a million years, but at the same time human kind is so dumb we can’t figure out a way to store solar electricity overnight. To me that doesn’t make sense.”

I love it.

…And Arnie Gundersen had the inside story to back-up his position. He broke the news to the assembly of earnest young minds that at 10:00 p.m. they could expect an historic announcement from entrepreneur, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, that an industrial scale storage battery was about to enter the market, ushering in an era in which the cost of energy storage (and therefore truly clean alternatives) would ultimately be driven down to rock bottom.

And so it was.

The details are laid out on Tesla’s own site, but Arnie summed up its implications for nuclear:

 “So the nuclear argument that they’re the only 24-7 source is off the table now because Elon Musk has convinced me that industrial scale storage is in fact possible, and it’s here.”

It’s just a matter of time before the cost of energy storage drops as precipitously as has the cost of computer memory over recent years.

That’s the top line news, but here’s where we dive into a little speculation…something with which investors are not unfamiliar.

Overnight, nuclear has been transformed for the ‘smart money” from a prince to a toad.

This could well be one of those infamous “tipping points” which Malcolm Gladwell wrote about years ago; the signature moment when Wall Street finally gets off the nuclear merry-go-round and on with the move to clean renewables.

Maintaining that nuclear energy is a clean, sustainable option is like having closets and an attic filled to the rafters with trash while you keep the front room clean for guests and simply pray that the whole place doesn’t collapse on your head.

It’s a losing bet.

At last, Wall Street, that Supreme High Roller of Loaded Dice, seems to be coming around to recognizing that it isn’t even worthy of the gamble.

The post Forbes Flips appeared first on Fairewinds Energy Education.

In April of 2015, Fairewinds’ Chief Engineer, Arnie Gundersen and the Fairewinds crew headed to Quebec City for the World Uranium Symposium. Attended by more than 300 delegates from 20 countries that produce uranium for nuclear power and weapons, the symposium brought together experts who are calling on governments throughout the world to end all uranium mining. In this speech about the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster, Fairewinds Arnie Gundersen introduces new scientific evidence to prove high radiation exposures in Japan. Enjoy the World Uranium Symposium 2015 Fukushima Workshop here!

Transcript:

FAIREWINDS ENERGY EDUCATION – World Uranium Symposium 2015 : Fukushima Workshop Audio

AG:     Before we put the official Power Point up, I wanted to talk about the role of luck at Fukushima. And it’s something the nuclear industry really doesn’t want to admit. When the earthquake hit, the plant shut down, but the problem with nuclear power is that only 93 percent of the power comes from when a uranium atom splits. And this radioactive rubble that’s left behind – we call it fission products – still continue to give off 7 or 8 percent of the heat. So stopping the nuclear reactor – the reaction – doesn’t stop the heat. There’s still 8 percent left. So when the tsunami hit about 45 minutes later, there still was an enormous amount of heat, not from the chain reaction but from this radioactive rubble. The tsunami wiped out the cooling – well, you’ll hear the tsunami wiped out the diesels and without electricity, they couldn’t cool the plant. That’s really not what happened and that is what the nuclear industry wants you to know, but it’s not true. The tsunami wiped out the cooling pumps along the ocean. And just like your car has a water pump, those pumps are needed to keep your car engine cool. So even if the diesels hadn’t failed, they wouldn’t have been able to be cooled because the cooling pumps at the ocean were destroyed. And it didn’t just happen at Fukushima Daiichi. It happened at Fukushima Daini – a little further to the south. There’s four units there. It happened at Onagawa, which is a little further north, and it happened at Tokai, which is a little further south. In fact, 14 nuclear plants had their cooling pumps destroyed. And of the diesels that relied on those cooling pumps, there were 37 – 24 of them failed. We almost were at a point where we didn’t have three meltdowns at Fukushima but the world could have easily faced 14 meltdowns. And it was because the earthquake occurred at 2 o’clock in the afternoon – here’s where luck comes in – 2 o’clock in the afternoon, that there was enough people on site to save the day. There were 1,000 people at Fukushima Daiichi site, 1000 down at Daini, hundreds at Onagawa and at Tokai. And the net effect was there were people who could bravely try to mitigate the accident. If that tsunami had hit at 2 in the morning, there would have been 100 people there and we would have had the Daini site with four nuclear reactors in meltdown and we would have had faster meltdowns at Fukushima. So role of luck is critical. The other piece of luck is that the nuclear – imagine my hand is a nuclear reactor and over here is a spent fuel pool and over here is an equipment pool. At Fukushima Daiichi unit 4, the fuel pool started to boil and was very rapidly getting to the point where there wasn’t enough water. Well, in this pool on this side, there was water. It had been scheduled to be drained on March 10^th, and Tokyo Electric was behind schedule, so this pool had water and this pool needed water. There is a gate between them. The gate failed. And the water from the one flowed into the other side and saved the day. It’s divine intervention, if you will, that saved the day on Daiichi unit 4 because Tokyo Electric was behind schedule and hadn’t drained the equipment pool. Luck, not high technology, saved the day. Okay. I wanted to talk about cost, time, leaks and exposure at Fukushima Daiichi four years out. Point number one is the cost. The costs to clean up Fukushima Daiichi are astronomical and are still being underestimated by Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government. I said when I was at Japanese Press Club 11 months after the accident that this was a half a trillion-dollar problem. And Tokyo Electric is finally admitting that it might be $100 billion. So we now have the same number of zeroes at least in our estimates. But they are not coming out and making an estimate of the total cost. And I think it’s because they want to start up all the other reactors. And if people really thought that there was a half a trillion-dollar liability that would cause the average Japanese to say why are we trying to do this again. So costs are skyrocketing. And related to that is, nobody really knows how long it’s going to take to clean this up. I did decommissioning as a business when I was in the nuclear industry and the problems at Fukushima Daiichi are – not even worse, they’re unimaginably worse than at Three Mile Island. At Three Mile Island, we had pictures of what the nuclear core looked like in less than two years after the accident. But at Daiichi, we can’t even get near the nuclear core. And water is continuing to enter the building and this is a problem that no one has any idea how to stop yet. So until you come up with a theory on how to stop the accident, the time is unknown. And I’ll use Chernobyl as an example. Chernobyl is out there at about a half a trillion dollars and that core never hit groundwater. That core stayed in the building and remained dry. So we have three nuclear cores in contact with groundwater. So neither the time nor the costs are known. And the Japanese and TEPCO, hand in glove, want to assure the world that the situation is under control. It is not. We have a half a trillion-dollar problem that may take 200 years to solve. And if the Japanese knew that, they would not want to start up the remaining reactors. The next point is that Fukushima continues to bleed into the Pacific. And this was known – I was saying it in April 2011; some key Japanese were also saying it in April 2011. This should not be a surprise to anyone. Until the bleeding stops, the healing can’t begin. Now just last week, Woods Hole announced a study that showed that about as much as 7 Becquerel – and a Becquerel is disintegration in a cubic meter. So think of a cubic meter – about that – and there would be 7 atoms disintegrating every second. Think of 7 flashes of light every second for hundreds of years to come – are in the Pacific Ocean right now. Now this was the press release. They called it trace amounts. I don’t call 7 Becquerel in a cubic meter a trace amount. It could be a lot worse but that’s significant and measurable, and it’s just the beginning of the onslaught. This is the most fascinating slide. This comes from Ian Goddard. There was a study in 2012 that predicted how much radiation was going to get to the west coast of British Columbia. And at this point in time, the study in 2012 was 29 times lower than what they actually measured. So scientists have no clue how to measure what’s transporting through the ocean. And that studies two years ago area already wrong by essentially a factor of 30. So if we believe the scientists in 2012, whose real goal was to downplay the significance of the damage to the Pacific Ocean, it’s in fact 29 times worse than predicted. So the last piece of this is a critical study that just came out, and Dr. Kaltofen (?8:53) has agreed that I can be the person to announce it to the world. I believe that the exposures in Japan are grossly underestimated. You see everybody walking around with their radiation detector and measuring atmospheric gamma rays. But that’s not where the problem lies. Dr. Kaltofen wrote this peer-reviewed report and down at the bottom – you can get it on line – it’s 170 pages long, on the Worcester Polytechnic website. And what Dr. Kaltofen did was he analyzed dust – common house dust – at 85 locations in Japan. And here’s what he found. He found that 27 percent of the house dust in Japan was not contaminated. That means that 73 percent of the house dusts that he measured in the 85 samples was contaminated. So this is Becquerel per gram – a gram is a phenomenally small piece – if you multiply that by 1,000, you’ll end up with Becquerel’s per kilogram. So somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 Becquerel per kilogram are in the house dust in 41 percent of the samples Kaltofen tested. And I have no reason to believe that it’s not worse than that. Actually, we were able to get 85 samples but in fact if we had a larger base, I think these numbers would go up. The Kaltofen data shows 41 percent of the houses have house dust at less than 10 Becquerel per gram. And it is Fukushima related because it’s not just cesium 137. Cesium 134. And Kaltofen got there early enough that he also captured iodine. And moving down, 25 percent have significant –

F:         Are these samples in Japan or in Fukushima itself?

AG:     This is in Japan. I’ll show you the locations of where those samples are in the next slide. But the last number – way down at the bottom there, the 1 percent – is essentially nuclear fuel. Kaltofen found nuclear fuel in a dust sample 300 miles away from Fukushima at Nagoya. So this is the top 11 dust samples that Kaltofen found, of the 85 that he analyzed. Now look where they’re from. Start at the bottom. Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo. Skip one. Tokyo. Tatae – and at the top is Nagoya. So these samples are from far away from Fukushima. The only one that’s reasonably close is Fukushima City, which is a taxicab air filter. That was about 20 miles away. So what that tells me is that the Japanese are breathing in contaminated house dust in their own homes 24/7, 365. We also analyzed kids’ shoes. And these are American shoes on the right and the samples from the Fukushima Prefecture on the left. What do kids do? They tie their shoelaces; they put their hands in their mouth. And one can expect incredible internal contamination from what they’re breathing and what they’re touching. And yet the IAEA walks around with radiation detectors and says everything’s fine, don’t worry, be happy. Last slide. This is the Nagoya dust sample. There’s one other piece of the Nagoya dust sample and it’s a perfect sphere. Now what does that mean? That means it was so hot when it left the nuclear reactor that it condensed, some say like a drop of rain. And that shows that it was essentially hot nuclear fuel that we captured in Nagoya. So my bottom line is that I have said for the last four years that I think somewhere between 100,000 and a million Japanese are eventually going to get cancer from this accident, and this data confirms that to me. And frankly, I think the IAEA and the Japanese government is in a massive cover-up so that they can start those nukes up without looking at this data. Thank you.

The post World Uranium Symposium 2015 Fukushima Workshop appeared first on Fairewinds Energy Education.

Small Modular Renewables Will Power Our Future

By the Fairewinds Crew

Technology may be on the verge of solving two of the world’s biggest issues related to solar energy: storage and space.

The remaining challenges, bringing infrastructure upgrades online to efficiently handle solar contributions, is primarily a matter of marshaling the political will to make solar power a priority over other energy sources that have received years of public indulgences and subsidies.

If the question asked is simply: “Can solar replace nuclear energy in the marketplace right now?” The answer is: “Almost.”

But if the question is rephrased slightly: “Can solar be part of a renewables system replacing nuclear in our energy portfolio?” The answer is “Absolutely!”

It can and it must.

For all its other environmental baggage, even according to FORBES Magazine, nuclear has failed to fulfill its promise as an economically viable energy source.

While the nuclear industry continues to complain of “unfair” treatment by the marketplace, these complaints carry less and less credibility as people awaken to the enormous taxpayer supported advantages radioactive energy has received for decades vis-à-vis any support for truly clean energy options.

The significant subsidy advantages created for nuclear power were intended to smooth the way to commercial acceptance, so that the public might be preempted from drawing a conscious connection between nuclear energy and weapons of mass destruction.

The “clean and reliable” conceit has been used throughout the years to mask a truly sinister truth: since its inception, nuclear power generation has served as an essential adjunct to Defense Department. interests.

It was worth a try, I suppose, during the Eisenhower era; but the charade is nearing its end, as we have come no closer to solving the long-term waste abandonment problem or rendering the system “fool-proof.”

Despite every effort to prevent other alternatives to fossil fuels from advancing in viability, nuclear energy providers have found themselves unable to deliver on the promises of “cheap, clean and reliable” energy, even as the first generation of reactors approaches the end of their design life.

When that first tier of defense fails, nuclear power advocates claim that solar only works when the sun is shining, so the energy provided is only intermittently available.

Let’s put nuclear power in perspective by looking dispassionately at the data: 20% of the electricity in the US and 10% of the worldwide electricity are currently generated by nuclear power, and those percentages are declining rapidly. Worldwide the shift is very evident, as wind and solar are now growing much faster than nuclear power and equal nuclear power’s contribution, up from nearly zero % only fifteen years ago.

Setting aside the enormous burden of nuclear waste abandonment, and decommissioning nuclear reactors when they ultimately must be pensioned-off, replacing them is cost-prohibitive for our energy economy, leading to elaborate schemes that have shifted the cost to consumers through direct billing, even before a new nuke is built.

Some solar opponents claim that cloudy days remain and therefore make solar worthless, but new industrial battery storage created by Elon Musk, the Founder of PayPal, SpaceX, Solar City, and the Tesla car company, will produce industrial scale storage batteries that cost about two cents per kilowatt-hr.

Including storage, wind and solar are still almost half the price a new nuclear plant is estimated to cost.

But even before we create the ideal storage and transport system for solar energy, the short-term solution is almost too obvious. When the sun doesn’t shine, the wind usually blows, thus enabling wind power to take up the slack.

Some thought has even been given to making those rooftop solar installations productive through variations in available sunlight. A Dutch company has recently developed a small wind energy generator, “Liam 1,” whose compact blade configuration draws from the natural design of a nautilus shell, and has a noise- dampening effect to address one of wind powers chief drawbacks. It is intended to be roof-mounted in conjunction with solar arrays, and its developers expect it to produce up to 50% of a household’s energy needs.

Changing the way we consume energy is the second area that can be implemented immediately. Conserving one kilowatt-hour costs less than 4 cents.

• Most experts acknowledge that between 20 to 40% of overall energy needs would be eliminated by conservation and efficiency improvements costing 4 cents per KWH, compared to 16 cents per KWH for nuclear power that will take at least 15 years to produce.
• For example, recent retrofits of the Empire State building reduced overall energy consumption by 40% and yielded a payback time of less than three years.

Thus, conservation can be implemented immediately at a significant savings compared to nuclear power that would cost 4 times more and 15+ years to produce.

There are thousands of other ways to reduce our energy consumption. Fairewinds simply refers you to two books: Reinventing Fire by energy economist Amory Lovins and Carbon Free Nuclear Free by 2050 by nuclear physicist Dr. Arjun Makajani.

Which would you choose?

• Build thousands of new nukes that won’t make a dent in climate change for at least 10 years or more, or
• Spend less money to cut our consumption of energy by at least 20% in 10 years,
• And increase production of renewable wind and solar by 20 % in ten years?

These solutions would make a 40% dent in CO2 gases before that first nuke ever goes on line!

The 21^st-century energy production will be created by thousands of distributed small power sources throughout the towns and cities that make up our country. Dozens of cities, including our office location of Burlington Vermont, are already completely powered by renewable electricity from distributed sources.

The 20^th Century paradigm for the large power station is like a tree with several very large leaves generating all its power. The 21^st century is a much more natural and holistic paradigm resembling a tree with thousands of small leaves generating the same amount of power more in harmony with nature.

Americans are less than 4% of the world’s population yet they create more than 20% of world’s CO2. The solution to global climate change begins with changes by each of us. Federal subsidies should not be invested in coal, or oil, or gas or in small modular nuclear reactors, but instead those funds should be invested in energy efficiency and small modular renewables!

The post Small Modular Renewables appeared first on Fairewinds Energy Education.

Starting with the financial issues that are present in the SAFSTOR model, Arnie pointed out how Entergy has already been allowed to raid Vermont Yankee’s decommissioning fund before decommissioning even has begun. Entergy has made it clear that it will not begin decommissioning Vermont Yankee until the decommissioning fund has grown enough to fully cover all decommissioning costs plus funding spent fuel storage costs, a growth process extended by Entergy’s premature extraction of funds. Furthermore, Entergy has announced that as a LLC, the federal government may not be able to hold Entergy financially responsible should the decommissioning process take longer than 60-years, leaving the VY carcass and financial burden to Vermonters.

Arnie walked the panel through data that shows that the money exists for Entergy to protect workers and to completely clean up its toxic mess by 2032. By allowing nuclear energy corporations to raid nuclear plant decommissioning funds, the NRC is granting an un-reviewed and unregulated subsidy to the nuclear industry Gundersen said. Johnson State College geology professor Dr. Leslie Kanat worked with Fairewinds to create the spreadsheet analysis.

Fairewinds analysis also addresses serious safety concerns that Gundersen outlined for the Senate Committee, one of the most pressing being that Entergy wants to take as many short cuts as the NRC will allow including ending the emergency planning process at Vermont Yankee (see report, pg. 29). Entergy has asked for a special exemption simply to avoid spending money on the current evacuation plan even though the equivalent of radiation from 700 atomic bombs sits in the spent fuel pool. The NRC has approved of Entergy’s exemption, which means that when it comes time to remove the highly radioactive spent fuel from the fuel pool into dry cask storage, an Emergency Planning Zone will no longer be in existence. In fact, during the next 8-9 months, Entergy will be allowed to greatly reduce all emergency planning and full removal of the Emergency Planning Zone will take place April 2016.

Due to the cost of safety modifications as well as deteriorating equipment conditions that negatively impact safe plant operation, between 8 and 10 additional nuclear plants are also under consideration for decommissioning, making nuclear power decommissioning one of the most serious issues facing all areas of the country. State Senate listens, will NRC hear? In his presentation to the Vermont Senate Committee for Natural Resources and Energy, Gundersen noted that the NRC is more likely to listen if states facing pull out by LLCs ban together in order to change nuclear law. The state of Vermont has the opportunity to press the NRC to be accountable for the safety of the people, not the protection of industry profits.

Fairewinds’ Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Report: 

Transcript:

Fairewinds Energy Education – Arnie Gundersen presents at Montpelier Statehouse 

AG:     Hi. I’m Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds. And Fairewinds Energy Education is a 501(c)(3) based in Burlington. The founder and the creative talent for Fairewinds Energy Education is my wife, Maggie, who’s sitting behind me. And also with us is Caroline Phillips, our administrative person and the guy walking around here with the camera is our video guy, Dave Link. Thank you for having me. The Lintilhac Foundation paid Fairewinds to do an analysis of Vermont Yankee. And we found that we couldn’t just look at Vermont Yankee; that there was so much that was tied to nuclear regulation that Vermont Yankee is in fact just an example of nuclear regulation. Vermont Yankee is the bow wave of decommissioning. There’s a couple out in front or right around the same time. Five nuclear plants shut down last year – two at San Onofre in California; one Crystal River in Florida. But those are utility owned. Two, though, shut down that are limited liability corporations. One is Kewanee in Wisconsin and the other is Vermont Yankee. So the experiences on Vermont Yankee and Kewanee are the bow wave. There’s about 40 other limited liability corporations that are going to shut down sometime, whether it’s sooner or in the next 25 years; and the remaining 60 roughly are utility owned. And there is a difference there. So our thanks to the Lintilhac Foundation. The report the Lintilhac Foundation allowed us to write is the bound thing. And it’s available on line, too. But we provided you with a bound copy.

MG:    We posted it on the committee page.

AG:     So the full report is roughly a 40-page report. That’s available on line. And then the other one is the cliff notes. So we’ll work off the cliff notes today. We found there were 7 financial areas that we wanted to talk about and 4 safety areas that are Vermont Yankee specific. The financial issues involve Vermont Yankee but are not really Vermont Yankee specific. And at the end – there is an ask here – and the ask is that – I don’t think there’s something as a legislative bill that can be produced, but I know that the auditors’ offices around the nation have a group, the same with the public service commissioners, the same with the attorneys general. And I guess the ask is that as a group of states, if you believe these problems that we’re identifying are significant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does listen to states. And even just Vermont showing up at the door means a lot. But if it were 10 states, it means a real lot. The states that are involved with especially the limitation liability corporations we believe should band together and begin to change nuclear law. So there are 7 financial issues and then I’ll talk about the 4 safety issues briefly. The first one is –

M:       So is there some effort already underway to organize – I don’t know if it’s auditors or public utility commissions or AG’s – is there something already underway?

AG:     I don’t believe there is. I talked to Chris Recchia and he’s on board. He sees this pretty clearly. But I don’t really think he’s trying to involve his peers right now. Hopefully, that can happen because Vermont’s not the only one; it’s just the first. So the first concept is this concept – the nuclear industry will call it safe store – but it’s spelled S-a-f-s-t-o-r. And your 3^rd grade teacher will be rolling over in her grave because that’s pronounced SAFSTOR – rhymes with sap, not safe. Safe store, as the nuclear industry would say, but SAFSTOR is a 60-year delay until the nuclear plant can be dismantled. There is no reason in physics why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission chose 60 years. It’s a financial mechanism that allows the decommissioning funds to grow, but there is no reason in physics why you should wait 60 years to shut a nuclear plant down. Now the nuclear industry’s position is well, we have to save the poor workers from the radiation exposure. And the problem there is that when a nuclear plant, once they do a repair and start back up very quickly, that’ll give enormous exposures to their employees. And you really can’t have it both ways. An example is for Vermont Yankee over 60 years – radiation is measured in REM – it’s just a number – and the workforce will get around 300 REM over the 60 years to decommission the plan. But Entergy at Palisades did a repair last year in 2014, where in 3 weeks, they dished out 115 REM to their employees to get the plant back up and running again. So when a plant needs to start back up, it’s dose be damned, but when it comes to decommissioning, they’ll hide behind that saying we need to save our poor workers. Our recommendation, and I think Recchia sees eye to eye with this, that there is no reason for SAFSTOR in the law. And I’ll get into that a little bit later. But this concept of waiting 30, 40, 50, 60 years for this carcass to be removed has no bases in physics. So the next thing is there’s this thing in law – 10 CFR 50 – and 10 is Nuclear Code of Federal Regulations. 50 is Power Reactors. So 10 CFR 50.75. And this point 75 paragraph is how nuclear plants are – how we calculate how much it costs to decommission the plant. And so 10 CFR 50.75 – I’ll just 50.75 now instead – but 50.75 just says that you’ve got a formula. And the formula is literally a paragraph. There’s no construction experience in the formula, like you plug in the power level of the plant and the type of plant, VWR, PWR – and the age of the plant – and it pops out a number that tells you this is how much it’s going to cost, this is how much money you have to have in your decommissioning fund. The formula has never been right and it’s frequently wrong by a factor of 2 or 3. But it’s embedded in the law right now 10 CFR 50.75.

M:       And pardon me, the 2 or 3, is it generally low or high or –

AG:     It’s always low. Yes, it’s always low. And now the problem is for you as policymakers. We went through this and Maggie and I wrote a report in 07 that showed there was going to be a decommissioning shortfall, and again in 2012, we wrote a report for the Joint Fiscal Office that showed that there would be a decommissioning shortfall. But it’s not a transparent process. All you do is plug in a couple of numbers into this magic formula and out pops a number. So there can be – this law was written before Excel spreadsheets. And Maggie and I worked with out science advisor, a guy named Les Kennett, who, by the way, is a great professor over at Johnson State. And we developed a spreadsheet that does this for you. And if anybody wants it, the actual working spreadsheet is available on our site. But what we did was we took what’s in the fund – and that’s a number that’s known – and we escalated that at 5 percent. And 5 percent is what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows when you’re doing these assumptions. So the fund is growing at 5 percent and Entergy provided in ’07 and again in 2012, the cost. And so we escalated the cost at 3 percent. And as the costs were incurred, the spreadsheet took the cost and removed it from what was available in the fund. It’s a real simple spreadsheet. It took us less than 10 days to develop this spreadsheet and we’re making it available to anybody who needs it. So our recommendation is that the formula in 10 CFR 50.75 be replaced by an Excel spreadsheet. And it would allow policymakers to make informed decisions about just how much money is in the fund and how that money is going to be spent over time. I know that Attorney General Sorrel and Governor Shumlin faced this problem when they were negotiating with Entergy last year. Exactly when is there going to be enough money to get into the fund.

M:       Can I ask a quick question? So then that 3 percent cost line for the cost of decommissioning the work – is that based on prior industry experience? Is that the rate of growth of those costs to date?

AG:     There’s about 5 different costs in it. Most of them have been growing around 3 or 4 percent. A couple of them, though, like the cost of disposal of the waste, have been growing faster. So the formula may not be accurate but it’s not it’s not a showstopper. So now that brings me to the key point in the financial discussion. The decommissioning fund is for decommissioning. And decommission is defined in this 50.75. It does not include the cost of spent fuel storage. The decommissioning fund is not designed to support the spent fuel storage fund (sic) (11:35) A little bit of background there. They were going to build Yucca Mountain. It didn’t get built in time. So all of this waste wound up sitting at sites around the country. And the process is that utilities or stand-alones sued the Department of Energy for the cost of spent fuel storage and there’s a litigation process and they always get it back. And it may take 2 or 3 or 4 years. But if they take $100 million to build a spent fuel storage pad, they then sue the Department of Energy. There’s a legal process and they get it back. Well, what Entergy did in ’07 and again in 2012 and again in the estimates they provided you is they are taking that money out of the decommissioning fund and not assuming they ever get it paid back. It’s essentially an interest-free loan from the decommissioning fund. Now they’re asking for an exemption from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission so that they can do this. And it’s like the speed limit on 89 is 65 miles an hour. But we can pull into the police barracks and as permission to go 95. And that’s basically what they’re doing. They’re asking for an exemption to tap the fund to take the spent fuel storage costs out. And that’s a real cost to Vermonters. Essentially, they’re asking for about $400 million to be removed from the fund over time and it’s at least an interest-free loan. There’s no assumption that they pay it back; basically assuming that they lose with Department of Energy and they don’t pay the money back. So our spreadsheet takes that into account, though. Our spreadsheet shows that you do get the money paid back.

M:       Is there any history of such exemptions being granted?

AG:     Yes. Unfortunately. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected some and accepted some. In the Maine Report, we have quite a few NRC emails with Sarah Hoffman when she was over in the department. And of course, I was on the oversight panel. So Sarah was sharing emails that she was getting from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which were quite clear that exemptions are not necessarily approved; but yet Entergy is counting on it.

M:       Have any states or any jurisdictions where such exemptions have been granted countersued to have the money restored to the fund in a suit against the Department of Energy or the NRC for allowing the exemption?

AG:     No. No. And one of the things that we’ve recommended is that Commissioner Recchia petition the NRC not to grant that exemption. And we’re an interested party here because half of any residual in the fund is ours. At the end of the process, the deal we cut with Entergy is that half of those funds are ours. So we have a seat at the table is Fairewinds’ position.

F:         And you mean Vermont.

AG:     Yes. Not the State of Vermont but it actually is the rate payers that pay the electric bills.

M:       Not you and Maggie.

AG:     No. Yes, we Vermonters as rate payers to the utilities that own Vermont Yankee at the end state a chance to have potentially a $100 million reduction in our rates at some point in time. So what we did was we – Fairewinds – took the cost that Vermont Yankee provided and we stripped out the spent fuel storage cost. And we ran the calculation through our spreadsheet and it said – the first slide on this handout – we show that Vermont Yankee can be completely reduced to a farmer’s field again by 2032. And that’s dramatically different from what you’re hearing from Entergy. They’re out at 2059 and things like that. And the difference is that Entergy is tapping the fund for something that NRC has specified is not what the fund is for. Now why would Entergy do that? It’s – Mark’s smiling here – and the reason is that if they were take the funds from their balance sheet, it’s essentially nonproductive. They wind up having more capital on their balance sheet and not any new revenues to support it. So industry-wide, the nuclear industry has discovered this loophole where they can tap the fund to pay for the independent spent fuel storage and it’s not in the law. My experience with the NRC is that if you persist long enough, you’ll get the exemption, which allows you to tap the fund. So that’s the very first line shows initial cost – the Y axis, the up-and-down axis is the money that’s available. And it initially drops. And that’s to be expected because you have a period where you’re cleaning up the wet systems and things like that. You’re buttoning down the plant. So costs are going to drop because you’re pulling from the decommissioning fund faster than it’s being replenished by the stock market. Then there’s a period where it’s level. And when I went through the actual spreadsheet – there’s a second page. What it shows is that the first 5 years you’re sucking from the fund faster than it’s growing. But then if you just wait 5 years, if you put the plant in mothballs for 5 years, which means you have a couple of maintenance people making sure the roof doesn’t leak, making sure pigeons don’t get in and health physics people to monitor the radiation – just wait 5 years, the fund will have recovered enough at 5 percent growth, to allow enough funds to completely decommission the plant if spent fuel storage is not included in the revenue stream. And again, the spreadsheet’s available. And we can tinker. If you don’t like 5 percent, we can run it up to 6 or down to 4. It’s a very flexible spreadsheet that Doctor Kennett at Johnson State developed with me. So if as planners you have this Excel spreadsheet, a lot of the issues we faced in ’07 and 2012 would be off the table. Entergy basically was saying well, if you let us run to 2032, there’ll be enough money in the fund. But there was no visibility of that process. And now we’ve got the visibility in the process to strip out the various components. Okay, so that brings me to the fourth point, is why do we have 35 years worth of nuclear fuel sitting in the fuel pool. The original concept of a nuclear power plant was this fuel would sit for 5 years and then it would be shipped for reprocessing. Reprocessing never happened and Yucca Mountain never happened so the fuel is building up on site. But there’s no reason why it has to be in the fuel pool. If you look at Fukushima Daiichi, they had fuel that had been removed from the fuel pool and was on the ground in dry cask storage. And the dry casks survived the earthquake and the tsunami just fine. The risk to the public is storing the fuel in the fuel pool which of course is what happened at Daiichi and why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said back out for 50 miles. They told Americans to evacuate out to at least 50 miles. So spent fuel storage in the wet fuel pool is now being allowed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And it’s actually being encouraged by utilities and reactor owners. It’s the same reason that the independent fuel storage is. It saves utilities money. If they wait until the plant shuts down, then they believe they can transfer all of that cost to get the fuel out of the fuel pool into the decommissioning fund. So it’s a financial instrument for them. Fairewinds isn’t alone in this. The Union of Concerned Scientists feels strongly that the fuel is much more dangerous when it’s in the fuel pool on the top of Vermont Yankee then if it had been moved to dry cask storage. So if utilities – and again, they’re hiding behind the fact we’re doing it to save our poor workers exposure – then, of course, the argument at Palisades holds true that if you need to get that plant up on line, you’re going to spend money and you’re going to irradiate people. But when it’s not a cost to keep the plant running, then they seem to worry more about their employees. So it’s not as safe. And yet it’s perpetuated because utilities feel they can push that issue down the road and when it hits decommissioning, they have another source of funds rather than operating revenues. And even if they got the money back over 4 years, they’d just say well, it’s gone for 4 years. Well, $400 million at 5 percent is $20 million a year x 4 or 5 years – there’s $100 million interest- free loan that the fund is giving to Entergy or to Kewanee or any of the other plants. So we’re really advocate that the NRC not give exemptions for removal of spent fuel as is funded from the decommissioning fund. We feel strongly that the plants are not safe if the fuel sits in that pool. Now I actually have a great bit of good news. And it’s the last two slides on the handout. The second-to-last slide shows the gross in the decommissioning fund over time since 1995. That was the only information I could have. It actually went back further. And you’ll notice it’s rather smooth until about ’06 and it gets bump after that. And the reason is that monthly data became available from the Department in about ’07 or ’08. So the bumpiness in the curve is not indicative of anything except that it’s based on monthly data. But the cool part is that the utilities in Vermont controlled that fund from ’95 until 2002 and invested it in the market and got 6.5 percent. The rate of growth in the fund when Vermont utilities were controlling it was 6.5 percent. When Entergy got it, it’s grown at 5.8 percent. So the Vermont utilities should pat themselves on the back. They were able to grow their fund somewhat faster than Entergy did. Both the 5.8 and the 6.5 are greater than the NRC assumption. So I really think the NRC is being conservative here by assuming 5 percent fund growth. And I think that’s a good thing. Because if you have another stock market retrenchment, you get to the point of being less than that. So a pat on the back to the Vermont utilities to get 6.5 percent and a pat on the back to Entergy to get 5.8 percent over the period that they owned the decommissioning portfolio. The last three financial things, though, are another concern. And the first one is the issue of limited liability corporations. The NRC allowed that to happen about 15, 17 years ago, as utilities – the traditional utilities sold off their generating assets, they were bought by limited liability corporations. And there were some great thinkers as this was happening that said this was not a good idea. Vermont’s Peter Bradford is a perfect example. A company called Synergy wrote a report that Bradford actually co-authored that talks about the risks of limited liability corporations. Maggie and I have been talking about this since ’07 when we published our first report, that limited liabilities are there to limit liability. And there’s actually four – three limited liabilities between Vermont Yankee and Entergy. Vermont Yankee is owned by a limited liability corporation that’s owned by a limited liability corporation that’s owned by another limited liability corporation. The net effect of this is that if they walk away, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that we’ll blow through that and we’ll go after the parent company. But every attorney I’ve ever talked to says that’s why we have limited liability corporations, so you can’t blow through it. And in the Maine report, we have statements from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission basically saying that we will blow through it. And then we have statements from Entergy clearly saying that in 60 years, they will enter into litigation with the State of Vermont if they run out of funds. So there are two parties here and Vermont’s kind of stuck in the middle. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s concept of the law as it exists is entirely different than the way it’s being interpreted by Entergy. So I won’t go into the exact quote, but trust me – I’m sure you’ve seen them in the papers – but Susan Small here has done a phenomenal job of identifying what the NRC said, and basically we will fight and make sure that the ultimate corporate parent is responsible. And Dave Graham has done a great job covering Vice President Toomey’s comments here that basically said that no, at the end of 60 years, we’ll come back and go after the utilities that previously owned the plant to cover costs. And that’s an issue that I don’t think we should wait 60 years to find out about. We’re basically deferring a potential liability. So limited liability corporations were not – the NRC didn’t think about at the end of life, what do you do for a power plant when they allowed these limited liability corporations. Related to that, we all know that part of the deal that was cut in 2002 was that the state would share 50-50 any remaining funds in the decommissioning fund. And to go back to that slide, if there’s $100 million left in 2032, as I interpret the MOU, Entergy gets half that and the state rate payers get half that. So there’s a potential $50 million windfall the rate payers of Vermont. Attached to this Maine report at the back is a long letter to the assistant attorney general and to Mr. Recchia from Entergy. And it’s a pretty nasty piece of work. The point, though, is that Entergy is now claiming, at least in that letter, that it is the FERC – Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – that controls who gets that money and it’s not bound by the original MOU. So we’re basically seeing that same issue – if you don’t like it, we’ll litigate. The last financial issue is that the fund is not auditable. I would hope that State Auditor Hoffer would become involved. What happened was, again, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission didn’t think about limited liability corporations. When a utility owned the fund, there were checks and balances and the Public Service Commission would oversee the auditing of the fund. But the NRC does not audit – does not do financial audits. And it seems to me that the State of Vermont is precluded from doing a financial audit. Well, the net effect of that is that Entergy can – Entergy has a subsidiary called TLG Services that does decommissioning work, and they’re funneling this decommissioning work to TLG Services. My question is, has there been a competitive bid. I don’t believe so. Basically, they couldn’t make money when the plant was running, but they now have a profit center to do decommissioning analysis so they can funnel the entire decommissioning fund through this wholly-owned subsidiary and essentially strip out inordinate amounts of profits.

M:       Are you surprised?

AG:     No. So my point is, Doug Hoffer does some phenomenal work auditing different functions. And I would hope – because again, half of the excess of the fund is ours –

M:       But if you deplete the fund and it all goes to your own in-house subsidiary or cousin, you don’t have to split what you’ve embezzled.

AG:     Right. And the problem here is that it’s an LLC. Back in the old days when it was owned by Vermont utilities, the public Service Commission, Department of Public Service, could intervene, could watch the process, could make sure that there was competitive bids. We don’t have that as it stands now and I don’t see any indication that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants to assume that function. By the way, this report that the Lintilhac Foundation provided the funds for was given to the NRC as part of the public comment period. And we actually have the acceptance. The NRC has it in their possession. But they have not made it a public document yet. So we will see over the months to come what the NRC’s reaction to that issue will be, because the issue of auditing these funds is one of the ones that we brought to the NRC’s attention. So that’s it for financial. I’ve got four safety issues that are relatively quick. First off is emergency planning. And I know Commissioner Recchia has been an advocate that we’ve got to keep the emergency plan in place until the nuclear fuel is safely out of the fuel pool onto the ground. I couldn’t agree more. There’s three senators – Boxer from California, Markey from Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders, who are also asking for that. They’re all democrats; they were all outvoted. I don’t think it will go anywhere. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does pay attention to states. So if enough states feel that we should have an emergency plan, I would think that there might be some leverage there. You know, we’ve had near misses during SAFSTOR. At Dresden out in Illinois back in the 90’s, a pipe froze and the nuclear fuel pool began to drain and they lost 60,000 gallons from the nuclear fuel pool, and it was heading down pretty quick. In another day, the fuel pool would have drained and the X-ray cloud coming out of the fuel pool would have been so high they would have had to evacuate the site. So SAFSTOR really isn’t safe store. And the other example is Fukushima, where the fuel pool in unit 4 was on the hairy edge of causing the entire site to be evacuated, too. So until the fuel is out of the fuel pool, I think you should have an emergency plan in place. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s position is that if there is an accident in the fuel pool, the radiation, whatever little bit there is, won’t leave the site; that it will be in what is called the owner-controlled area. And that’s Entergy’s position. The calculations show that it’ll stay in the owner-controlled area. If that’s true, they should give up their liability insurance. Right? We have Price Anderson liability insurance to protect the people and if you’re claiming now that the plan is perfectly safe and no radiation is going to leave the site boundaries, they should renounce their Price Anderson insurance, which of course has not happened. So first, they should keep the emergency plan in place until 5 years out, and that should come from the fund. I don’t have any problem with that.

M:       Is that the issue?

AG:     I think it is, yes.

M:       They don’t mind emergency plan being in place if the State of Vermont picks up the tab. That’s the issue.

AG:     With $2 million a year coming out of the fund – right now the fund is growing at $30 million or $40 million a year. It’s a cost – if we Vermonters feel it’s important, we should bear it, but the nuclear industry doesn’t want it. And I think that Entergy is just spouting the company line. But related to that is the other part. We know that it’s obviously safer than when it was running, but it’s not completely safe until that fuel’s on the ground and in the dry cask storage. And if you remember – I’m probably the only person in the state who remembers this, but in ’08, there was – the brakes failed on the crane as it was lifting fuel. So as it was, this crane is designed to handle about 120 tons. And they were lifting about 100-ton canister of spent fuel and the brakes failed. Now it didn’t go into full screaming down the – but they couldn’t control it. It went down, down, down, down. So we have a history in Vermont of the brakes failing. So the other thing that we’re recommending to the NRC is that when you move fuel – and you have to move fuel – and it’s important that you do move fuel – do it when the school is not in session. I mean there’s kids right across the street – 4,500 feet away. Now they can wait until the summer to do this or they can do it on holidays or whatever, but it just to me makes no sense to be moving nuclear fuel at a reactor that had a brake failure already. And the risk is remote. There’s no doubt about it. We all hope and pray, but why not get the kids on holidays, weekends or whatever and move the fuel then. It just seems to me to be a prudent thing to do. Last two things. You’re aware that they found strontium 90 on the site in the groundwater. When Maggie and I wrote a report for the Joint Fiscal Office, we recommended constant monitoring of the groundwater. And we also recommended that the extraction wells continued to be operated. That didn’t happen. Entergy shut the extraction wells down. And I just read that Entergy is going to stop the monitoring wells; at least is going to stop the Department of Health’s access to the monitoring wells in about 6 months. So we don’t know where that strontium is going but we do know the groundwater movement on that site is from the nuclear reactor toward the Connecticut River. The position that Fairewinds has taken is I know where that strontium 90 is coming from and it’s from that advanced off-gas (?39:15) building, the one that had the leak back in – well, the leak started in ’07 but it was discovered in 2010. We can decommission that piece of the plant now. And we know – when I was on the oversight panel, they had done borings under the AOG – Advanced Off Gas building, and they know that there’s strontium under the building. So why not decommission that building now? It would be funds for Brattleboro. There’s potentially a $50 million construction project here, which would help an area that could use the work. But more importantly, it stops – all the horses are not out of the barn. Some of the horses are, but we can get the horses that are in the barn and pick them up and store it. So one of our major technical recommendations is get the radioactive material out of the ground, clean up the AOG building now. You’ve got to do it anyway, it’s in the estimate.

M:       Before it gets to the river?

AG:     It’s a pay-me-now or pay-me-later, but pay me later on steroids. If this stuff starts to spread throughout the site as it moves out of the plume, the costs are greater. So let’s – it just seems to me to be more prudent from a cost standpoint to pick up that AOG building now and bottle up what radiation is leaking out. Last point, and I know Dr. Irwin and I see eye to eye on this – is that the NRC’s release criteria to give the site back to the state is you can’t find radiation down to 3 feet. Below that, they don’t care. They don’t look. Well, we know we’ve got strontium 90 in the groundwater now at 20 or 30 or 40 feet. So we’re asking – and I know that Dr. Irwin in his comments made the same recommendation that Fairewinds did – that the release criteria is not appropriate for when you know you have a leak. And this is not something that can be walked away from. So in closing, I testify all over the country. I’ve testified in California and Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. It’s nice to be in this building where people – where the legislators pay attention to the – this is just nice to be back. That’s all. Thank you. And I got you back on schedule.

M:       I just have a process question. So we hear about these things, but when you say them I go oh, I’m not quite sure I caught all that. So can you just walk through very briefly the casks. So they shut down the reactor and that involves removing the fuel rods from the reactor, right? And they go into the spent fuel pool. And then what’s the next step from there? They are removed from the pool and they go where? To dry cask storage?

AG:     Yes. It takes – the fuel that’s in the reactor most recently stays physically hot for about 5 years and it can’t be in dry cask storage. But there’s 39 years worth of fuel or 35 years worth of fuel in the pool, some of which could be removed right now. But at the end of the day, to do dry cask so that air can cool it, you’ve got to wait 5 years. Entergy has to have licensed reactor operators monitoring the fuel pool because it’s mechanical. It’s not passive. There are active systems, pumps and heat exchangers that have to run all the time. Seismically qualified pumps and heat exchangers have to run all the time. So after 5 years when you begin to remove the fuel – it might be 6 years, but around that – after 5 or 6 years, you can reduce cost dramatically because you don’t have to keep the engineers keeping things running, the mechanics keeping things running and the operators – the licensed operators. It’s a cost reduction that occurs about 5 years out.

M:       And how many years of spent fuel is in the pool currently?

AG:     It’s full.

M:       Is it just the last five years?

AG:     They removed – there’s six canisters of fuel on the pad right now. And they removed that fuel to make room for more fuel. And now the fuel pool is cooled again. So they never completely emptied the pool. Again, the goal is – they paid for removing those canisters and they sued Department of Energy and got some money back. That came out of Entergy’s budget.

M:       How many more canister’s worth of fuel have yet to be removed?

AG:     I think about 30. It could be 35 or 25 but it’s around 30 more canisters on a thick pad that’s seismically qualified.

M:       And if they could empty the pool completely, then you’re saying they don’t have to have operators there, they’re not running pumps all the rest. So as best you know their goal because it reduces the ongoing cost of that ?44:44 before the other decommissioning costs are addressed?

AG:     Yes. I think it’s every utility and every reactor operator in the country’s goal is to empty the pool 5 or 6 years out. The question is, who pays for it.

M:       And then the other question is, in that sequence of events, when does decommissioning actually begin, as opposed to managing the plant you already just own? Where’s that line?

AG:     Well, officially, they are in decommissioning now. And that means that the NRC resident inspectors don’t live in Vermont any more and things like that. So that the official – there’s a transfer that occurs when they notify the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it’s over. But the actual dismantlement of a plant occurs when there’s funds to see it through.

M:       How long was it between when Maine stopped producing power – Maine Yankee – and it went through the 5-year phase – when did it begin to dismantle the plant and ?45:55

AG:     We could be dismantling parts of Vermont Yankee now. The turbine hall is not terribly radioactive and things like that. But eventually you’ve got to consolidate it down to the spent fuel pool if you wanted to. But Maine was done in 10 years. Connecticut Yankee was done in 10 years. Connecticut Yankee, as they were doing it, they discovered a leak of strontium 90 into the aquifer that ran up their costs by hundreds of millions of dollars. But it wasn’t a limited liability corporation; it was a utility. And those hundreds of millions got spread out over everybody in Connecticut – 8 million people, a lot bigger state than ours. And they agreed to spread the cost out over 10 years. So that the issue of a strontium leak to the aquifer has been faced and is significant but it’s never been faced with an LLC.

MG:    Thank you so much.

M:       Thank you very much. And thanks to the Lintilhac Foundation.

The post State Senate Listens, Will NRC Hear? appeared first on Fairewinds Energy Education.

The land surrounding Chernobyl was once rich farmland, full of towns and people. Now, the forest has taken over and eerie ghost towns are all that’s left in the evacuation zone, and the massive radioactivity release remains in the water, soil, and flora of the area.

The victims of Chernobyl continue to be born. Young children, born victims to this nuclear tragedy with physical ailments and malformations, leave their homes and travel to Cuba to seek medical treatment.   Today, forest fires can rage in tinder dry malformed forests in the evacuated zone spreading radioactive debris worldwide. Chernobyl’s accident has not ended.

We live in a time when the worldwide risk of nuclear power has been proven. The people throughout the world cannot afford the tragic meltdowns at TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi to be repeated.

The catastrophic meltdown at Chernobyl began 29 years ago today. Please join us in commemorating the lives of those lost and living with the contaminated legacy and ongoing tragedy that is Chernobyl today and will be for decades to come.

Learn more by visiting these related links:

Forest Fires Threaten New Fallout from Chernobyl

Revolutionary Care: Castro’s doctors give hope to the children of Chernobyl

Ghost Town: the journey of a Ukrainian woman named Elena traveling through Chernobyl by motorcycle, photodocumenting her journey along the way

Chernobyl Legacy, photos by Paul Fusco

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

Written by Alexey V. Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko and Alexey V. Nesterenko, Edited by Janette Sherman-Nevinger, free pdf download available

Recent breaking news story of child of Chernobyl nuclear disaster to run in Rock the Parkway Half Marathon

The post Chernobyl – A Human Perspective appeared first on Fairewinds Energy Education.

Minsk, Belarus. Children’s Home #1 , photo by Paul Fusco

The Uneasy Sleep of Chernobyl

By Sue Prent

I was an expectant mother here in the United States in 1986 when news of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster began to seep through the veil of secrecy surrounding the Soviet Union. Though the events leading to the meltdown began unfolding on April 26 of that year, news of any potential for international impacts was well-off the radar of average Americans like me until the warmth of approaching summer drew us into our gardens.

It was the first time since our childhood civil-defense drills in school that I had even thought about radiation. Suddenly, Strontium-90, the “bone seeker,” was in the news, and I remember harboring estrogen-fed pangs of empathy for expectant mothers whom fate had placed in Ukraine that spring.

We were told that Chernobyl was on the other side of the globe, so there was little chance of the radiation reaching us all the way over here. Of course, in due course some of it did, but that time America won the luck lottery.

Maps of the radiation release in 1986 describe a graceful but malevolent plume, blanketing the western Soviet regions, curling in wispy trails through Europe, and petering out over Asia and beyond.

As was the case at Fukushima Daiichi, the radiation deposited in various regions over which the lethal cloud drifted, was unevenly distributed and spotty.   Even if the Soviet overlords had been fully prepared and acted in a responsible manner, attempting to quickly evacuate the known affected areas would still have left “hot spots” scattered well beyond the perceived scope of the disaster.

If the Soviets had applied one-tenth of the effort that they invested in suppressing bad news to ensuring that the plant had operated safely in the first place, and to planning evacuation in the event of a nuclear power disaster, many thousands of lives and tens of thousands of people with life-altering disabilities might have been spared.

Thanks to Soviet obstructionism and a distinct lack of curiosity on the part of international nuclear regulators, we were left with virtually no usable lessons from Chernobyl. The world received absurd underestimates of the human toll and of the quantity of radioactive material that was ejected into the atmosphere from hundreds of tons of plutonium and other isotopes present in the molten reactor core.

Now we confront a fresh hazard rising from the ghost of Pripyat where the devastated Chernobyl reactor lies inadequately entombed.

In case you missed the news, there is an escalating war going on in eastern Ukraine. Pripyat lies to the west near Kiev, the capitol. That’s just across the Dneiper River from the contested region.

Russia doesn’t want to wake the sleeping giant any more than Ukraine does, but in a war, accidents happen…and renegade terrorists happen…and forest fires most certainly happen, as well.

This is perhaps the biggest worry in Chernobyl, because fires break out every day, in war and in peace.

Incineration re-releases all of the deadly isotopes that have been sequestered for almost 30 years inside living trees that were blanketed with fallout way back in 1986. The tree roots drank deeply of the radioactive groundwater all around them.

Funny thing about Chernobyl: the tiny insects that routinely reduce dead trees to formless mulch in the rest of the world seem to have disappeared from the habitat of the Exclusion Zone.

Oh, we’ve all heard about the “Wolves of Chernobyl,” those supposed harbingers of natural resilience in Pripyat, that seem to defy the alarming Geiger counter readings. The nuclear industry has taken great pains to highlight a superficial resurgence of life in the Exclusion Zone. What they leave out is the truth that biodiversity in the region has been dealt a deadly blow by radiation.

The balance of nature in that “Peaceable Kingdom” has been disrupted in ways that will magnify with time. While some larger mammals like the celebrity wolves may appear to be doing well right now, it is to a great extent because their principle predators, humans, have been removed from the environment.

Smaller organisms like birds and insects have not been so lucky. Greatly reduced in number, many species now bear the signs of advancing mutations.

Contrary to what many people may think, the genetic imprint of radiation does not limit itself to a single generation. The effect is redoubled by the presence of ever degrading isotopes in the living environment of the offspring, where they are routinely re-introduced through ingestion, then redistributed to affect different cells in possibly different organs of future generations.

These facts bring us back to the trees and the tiny organisms nature relies upon to return them to the soil. In the absence of those organisms, the trees stand tall, withering through winter cold and summer heat. Forest fires are the real enemy in this region of the Ukraine. Winds sweep the fires through tinder dry stands of exhausted trees, releasing and wildly redistributing the radioactive particles that have long been held in check within their living hosts.

This deadly cycle of contamination will repeat countless times, as it will take hundreds to thousands of years to reduce all the different isotopes in this lethal radioactive payload to a state of harmlessness. With each iteration more individuals will be affected, absorbing the genetic signature of nuclear damage and passing it along to their progeny.

Because the Soviet regime officially blocked any effort to honestly capture disease and morbidity statistics resulting from Chernobyl, any estimate of the total number will inevitably fail to capture the true scale of this tragedy. The lack of accountability in what was then the Soviet Union is compounded by the special interests of governments and regulatory agencies all over the globe, which found it convenient not to press the issue at the risk of losing public support for their own nuclear energy programs.

Apologists for and promoters of nuclear energy have so feared repercussions from an informed public that they have made every effort to discredit virtually all evidence that radiation, other than that sufficient to cause obvious immediate injury, can be harmful in any way. This singularly fantastic position depends on both a gullible and uncurious audience for its efficacy, and the fact that no one wants to believe a truly frightening fact about a world we feel powerless to change.

Despite their best efforts, it is impossible to overlook the photographic evidence of deformities and the cumulative record of dramatic changes in morbidity, disease and mutations among populations in areas that were most heavily exposed. That accurate record is available to anyone who cares to read the detailed and dispassionate compilation provided in “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment” by biologist, Alexey V. Yablokov and his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Science.

These scientists do not need to make the argument that the dramatic increase in cancers and deformities amongst the population were the direct result of radiation exposure. The statistics by themselves make that case admirably well.

Future generations are sadly destined to bear witness to this tragic truth.

The post Chernobyl Tragic Truth appeared first on Fairewinds Energy Education.

Fairewinds Energy Education commemorated the nuclear catastrophes at Fukushima Daiichi and Three Mile Island during March and April and Sunday, April 26, marks 29 years since the horrific and memorable meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine. Burlington, Vermont playwright and author Spencer Smith, who created the readers’ play Voices From Chernobyl joins Maggie Gundersen, president of Fairewinds Energy Education, in this week’s emotional and moving Fairewinds’ video production about the ongoing Chernobyl tragedy.

Spencer Smith remembers 1986 and the nuclear mess that the meltdown at Chernobyl created and her Peace Corp service from 2001-2003 in the Ukraine further deepened her interest in the Chernobyl meltdown and concern for those still experiencing the significant human repercussions. As a Peace Corp Volunteer, Spencer was advised not to swim in the lakes, not to eat foraged berries and mushrooms, and definitely not to drink the water due to residual traces of radioactive chemicals from Chernobyl, which remains to this day an uninhabitable radioactive zone. Spencer learned from first hand accounts about the Soviet Union’s cover up during the Chernobyl nuclear crisis that subsequently exposed hundreds of thousands to high doses of radioactivity.

After her Peace Corps service, Spencer moved to Vermont where she became involved with the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance in Montpelier in an effort to draw attention to the shutdown of Vermont Yankee. After reading Voices From Chernobyl, the highly acclaimed book by Soviet journalist Svetlana Alexievich, Spencer created the readers’ play Voices From Chernobyl, in an effort to make people around the world more aware of this ongoing catastrophe for the people of the Ukraine. Exiled from her own country, Svetlana Alexievich’s work is that of a truly dedicated journalist who risked her life by entering radioactive zones in order to interview victims and expose their stories about the truth of nuclear power.

Spencer’s play tells the story of six of Svetlana’s interviewees: the wife of a fireman, a physicist, a scientist, an executive of Chernobyl, a peasant who moved back to the contaminated area, and a mother.

“If you look back at the whole of our history, both soviet and post- soviet” said Svetlana Alexievich, “it is a human common grave and a blood bath, an eternal dialogue of the executioners and the victims, the accursed Russian questions, what is to be done and who is to blame. The revolutions, the gulags, the Second World War, the Soviet-Afghan War hidden from the people, the downfall of the great empire, the downfall of the giant socialist land, the land utopia, and now a challenge of cosmic dimensions: Chernobyl. This is a challenge for all the living things on earth. Such is our history. And this is the theme of my book. This is my path, my circles of hell.”

LISTEN:

FAIREWINDS ENERGY EDUCATION –Spencer Smith interview (transcribed 4-20-15)

MG:    Thank you for joining us today at Fairewinds Energy Education. Today’s video guest is Spencer Smith. And we’re here to talk about voices from Chernobyl. Spencer received her MFA in writing from Vermont College. She’s published fiction, two plays and a novel, “Depth of Field.” In New York City, she worked as a writer, producer in corporate television. And currently Spencer is writing a memoire of her experiences as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine from 2001 to 2003. She’s returned for visits to Ukraine in 2006, 2009 and plans to visit again this June. Spencer also taught creative writing, fiction, screenplays, memoire, at American colleges and universities, as well as in the Ukraine, and on a Fulbright in Belarus, Russia. Spencer, thank you for joining us today.

SS:       Thank you for inviting me. It’s good to be here.

MG:    It’s good to have you here. How did you first become interested in Chernobyl?

SS;       Well, I remember the disaster in 1986. I remember there was question of what was going on because the Swedes were picking up radioactive signals and they thought it was one of their reactors. And then soon after – of course, the Soviets were trying to keep it totally quiet, they thought they could do that for some reason – and so unfortunately, because they didn’t tell the world, a lot of people were exposed. I know that the family I lived with during Peace Corps training in Western Ukraine, I remember not the first time I was there, but when I went back later for a visit, the young wife of the family – her mother is my age – said my mother and I were out in the radioactive rain. We never told anyone. And of course she had a child later who thankfully is fine. But another friend of mine was in Germany and she was pregnant – 8 or 9 months pregnant with twins and she was very upset, of course, because they got a very heavy – she was out working in her garden all day when it was raining. So I’ve kind of over the years picked up bits. Now when I was in Ukraine the first time in ’01 to ’03, nobody wanted to talk about Chernobyl. Of course, the Peace Corps did. They told us not to go swimming, not to eat wild berries or wild mushrooms, not to drink the water, all kinds of precautions. And there were other problems, of course. There was a lot of other industrial pollution besides Chernobyl but that was, of course, the worst. So – and now, of course there’s a renewed interest in having nuclear reactors in Ukraine.

MG:    They’re trying to build new ones now?

SS:       Yes, because of their energy problems. They want to get away from natural gas. Well, it’s all over Europe. I mean the French, of course, are going ahead. They believe it’s clean. I saw a portion of an interview last night where they said, well – some spokesman saying well, at least we have clean energy here in France – you would know this – what percent nuclear power they are.

MG:    (3:36) I think we’re at around 19 percent –

SS:       In this country?

MG:    Yeah. And I think France is higher than that, but I don’t remember off the top of my head, because they’re having trouble with some of their reactors now. They have a lot of pollution. They’ve leaked a lot of radiation from the reprocessing system, which doesn’t work correctly. And then what’s left – they don’t know what to do with all that waste, and they’re dumping it in Siberia. So their whole system doesn’t work and now –

SS:       This is the French who are dumping it in Siberia?

MG:    The French are dumping it.

SS:       Lucky Russians.

MG;    What they were supposed to reprocess.

SS:       Well, it’s bad news everywhere. Now you asked about Chernobyl and what I knew about it when I was there. When I got back, this book came out in 1997 in Russian. It has a different – Molitva Tchernobylskaia which means “The Prayer of Chernobyl,” but the English translation, “Voices from Chernobyl” By Svetlana Alexievich, a well-known soviet journalist, except she’s exiled – not exiled, but she left for her own safety.

MG:    So did you ever meet her?

SS:       I never met her but I was so taken with this book when it got translated in – I guess it was in ’05, and I saw it in ’06. I guess it was just before or just after a visit back to Ukraine. So then I became involved in the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance when I was living in Montpelier. And it was getting to be either end of March or early April and I said well, you know, the Chernobyl anniversary will be next month. I think it was going to be the 21^st anniversary. And I said we should do something to get people’s attention. And so everybody said yeah, that’s a great idea, what do we do. Well, I had just read this book and I thought maybe I could make a readers’ play out of that.

MG:    That’s a good solution for you as a screenwriter and playwright.

SS:       Well, I had written. And so I did it in a couple of days really. I created a narrator and then I took six characters from the book. There are actually 100 characters in the book. But I took six plus created a narrator to sort of hold things together. And it worked very well and we did it first twice in Montpelier and then we did it in Burlington and Shelburne –

MG:    (6:09) That’s when I first met you was the very first performance in Burlington.

SS:       Okay. That was the one maybe at Burlington College? Or was it at the View U Church? We did both.

MG:    I saw both places. And I was so struck and just touched. It’s tearful and it’s so emotional. I felt so badly for the people.

SS:       Well, it’s great, because the people are telling their story in their own words. She’s a very skillful interviewer obviously, and then instead of having her questions in there, it’s just presented as monologues by these people and their stories. So I picked a variety. I have an illiterate peasant woman, I have the wife of a firefighter who died a couple of weeks afterward because they were sent with no protection to the site. Then I had the head of the Belarusian – I guess – I don’t know, nuclear – anyway, the top scientist in Belarus.

MG:    I liked that character a lot.

SS:       And there’s another scientist who came in later who talked about how like 250,000 soldiers were sacrificed to the disaster. And of course still they’re trying to enclose the thing because it’s still releasing tons of radioactive material, and they don’t have the money for it. And Europe has been pouring a lot of money – billions into this – and still it’s not secure.

MG:    Well, everyone’s backed off and my understanding is that by 2018, that sarcophagus has to be resealed. But there are – currently there are no funds available to do it. And as we look at this, I mean the 30^th anniversary of this tragedy – this full meltdown will be in 2016 – next year. So I think it’s really mindful that we talk about this.

SS:       Well, there’s also a thing, I think we talked about it, where there wasn’t a lot of forest in that area. There were forested parts, but mostly it was farmland and people – there were some small towns there. But since it’s been abandoned, people could no longer live safely there. The forests have grown up and now there are forest fires there. And so all that contaminated material is burning and sending radiation.

MG:    We’ve talked about that on our website and done some tweets on our Twitter feed because it’s just devastating that that is happening again. And we’ll have a link up there to that material when this video is on the site. I was especially touched by the character you mentioned earlier from Belarus – the scientist.

SS:       Most of them were from Belarus because even though it happened in Ukraine, it was right on the border of Belarus and the wind blew most of the radiation north into Belarus. There’s a joke when I was in Belarus later, the president said, well, we weren’t irradiated in Minsk because when the cloud came north, it parted around Minsk. You know, I’m like, well, it’s soviet humor.

MG:    (9:14) As our viewers on Fairewinds Energy Education know, we just finished a whole lot of material on Three Mile Island. And one of the things people who were at Three Mile Island talk about, which the scientist in Belarus spoke about in your play is the metallic taste and the quiet, that all the birds stop, there’s no sound, and what that meant. And the plume issue was something that we talked about as well, with Dr. Ignaz Vergiener moved up the river by Three Mile Island and he studied everything. And the plume moved right up along the river and followed certain paths. And that’s the same thing you’re saying here. The plume goes where it goes by the meteorology. And that wasn’t fully studied at Three Mile Island. His testimony was excluded. And you have, as you’re saying, some people claiming oh, it never hit us in Minsk because it went around us. And you have what happened in Japan with Fukushima Daiichi in that people were evacuated into the plume because the meteorologists didn’t play a role in that process.

SS:       Well, I guess if the plume had gone in a slightly different direction, they would have had to evacuate Tokyo, which is incredible to think – just think of New York city – well, of course, we have a plant just 40 miles north of New York City.

MG:    Right, the Indian Point plant, and the evacuation plan will –

SS:       There’s no way to –

MG:    No. There’s no way to evacuate. It’s hopeless.

SS:       So this is a really fine book. I recommend it. The original that the play is taken from. And the play I guess will be also posted in text form. You have an audio version, but also in text form if people want to perform the play, they can download it and have a community reading.

MG:    That was one of my questions for you: Who should they connect with? Should they write? Do they have to write for permission or can they –

SS:       No. I posted at the top of the text that I sent to you that anybody can perform this play as long as they don’t charge admission. And you’re allowed to charge a small – not charge, but ask for a small donation just to help if you have to rent a space to do it or something like that.

MG:    That’s wonderful.

SS:       Yeah. And it was the Dalkey Archive Press that actually did the American version, and we had a lawyer in our group, Ben Scotch, who contacted them and they said that these were the terms we could use it, if we weren’t making money from it.

MG:    (12:06) That’s wonderful. I feel that’s really important. You said you’re still in touch with many of the people there, and you’re going back in June. What are you going to be doing in June when you’re back there?

SS:       Well, I’m going to visit with my friends who I know. And I may be giving – do some readings of my writing in local libraries. My friend, the Dean of Foreign Languages at the University is making it possible for me to stay there free, so of course – I was there for a month I guess in ’09 and I think I spent $100 the whole month. Save money by going there. And that’s not the point. So yeah, I’ll visit with friends and after I’m there for about 3 weeks, I’ll probably go to Sweden and see friends I’ve known since high school days in Sweden to recover from what I saw in Ukraine.

MG:    It’s sobering.

SS:       Yeah, it’s very upsetting because of the – because of this terrible war that the Russians – Putin has pushed. And they’re very anxious because he’s already taken Crimea, if anybody – probably now people have seen a map of Ukraine and have a sense that Crimea is this peninsula off the southern part of Ukraine. And the Russians, through the separatists, but it’s really a Russian-led thing, are working through the east and they want to come right along the south and take that whole south, because they also want the city eventually where I will be going, to Nikolaev because it was their only warm water ship building center. The other one is in Murmansk, which is inside the Arctic Circle.

MG:    Well, all of the war and the fact that there isn’t money to cover the sarcophagus. The concrete is deteriorating and they need to do that. With all of that in mind, what’s it like for people living there? What’s the financial situation? Can you tell our viewers that?

SS:       Well, it’s very hard for the average person because if you think about the fact. I was there – well, I was first there in – well, I left in ’03 after being there two years. The exchange rate was 5 to 1. One Dollar would get you five hyrvinia. When I went back in ’09, it was 10 to 1. It’s now about 25 to 35 – it fluctuates – to 1. And their pensions and their salaries are not going up. And my friend the dean said that what’s happening is there’s this tremendous energy for civic rebuilding of the country, but it’s all, as he put it, horizontal. In other words, you have this corrupt elite and these oligarchs who’ve been controlling everything and how to break that pattern. Plus apparently the KGB from Russia had infiltrated a great deal of the army and also the intelligence service in Ukraine. It’s a hard thing. There’s this long history of Ukraine and Russia together, but pats of it have been never or hardly ever part of Russia in the west and the east was a part of Russia from about 1800 on.

MG:    (15:20) I just saw a video today, a television video, of a young woman, she’s in her early 20’s, who’s running in a half marathon in Kansas City. And she is a child of the Chernobyl disaster. A group of doctors originally brought her to the U.S.

SS:       Oh, there’s been a whole program of doing that with children.

MG:    She has no – her legs stop at her knees, and the doctors have made her prosthetic legs and she has no feet. And so she’s learned to run. And she’s missing many fingers on her hands from the impact of Chernobyl, the radiation exposure that her mom was – received.

SS:       There are so many children that – yeah, horrendously –

MG:    She’s still in touch with her own family, but they had put her in a special school that was to try and help her because she couldn’t get along in a regular system. But doctors – U.S. doctors went to those areas and proceeded to look at different children that they could help surgically and bring them here. And so she spent 7 or 8 summers here and really learned a lot. And she ended up the host family – 3 host families sponsored her to take university here. So she’s graduated from college and she’s now living in Kansas City and she’s running in this half marathon. And she said she’s –

SS:       Was she from Belarus or Ukraine, do you know?

MG:    It didn’t – it said Ukraine. That’s all it said. But I don’t know any closer than that. It was a regular channel media, news story.

SS:       When I was in Belarus, there’s a huge cancer hospital on the outskirts of Belarus. You have to go by bus forever. I guess they don’t want people to see it basically. So I went out there because I had some little growth on my eye and this local doctor thought, oh, you probably have cancer, you go out there. And this woman there, this doctor said, oh, we can cut that out tomorrow for you. I said I think I’ll wait until I get home. Of course, it disappeared on its own. But there were a lot of – it was a pretty depressing looking place. But there were some vans there that were clearly from other countries who take children. And I can’t remember the countries now. There were several countries in Western Europe that also had taken children every summer, to get them out of the radiation. Because the radiation is still there in Belarus.

MG:    Well, that’s happening currently. A lot of children from Japan are taken to other places in the world to help them because there’s so much radiation in Fukushima Prefecture. It’s challenging. After researching – I have a couple more questions for you – after researching this material and writing the readers’ play, what are your opinions about nuclear power?

SS:       (18:22) Oh, well, I think it’s pretty evident. I think it’s a big mistake. I mean it’s the whole idea of – it was just a bad idea to split the atom. It was only done for military purposes, and then they had all this stuff laying around. What are we going to do with this? Oh, we could boil water with it.

MG:    Einstein said it was the worst idea for boiling water ever. How do you feel about what’s happened at Vermont Yankee now? Because you said you were involved with Vermont Decommissioning –

SS:       I know that they were ordered to shut down and they’re not producing heat, not producing electricity any more. But the thing is still there, and I’m sure it’s – there were a lot of things that needed to be repaired before they shut down, which may be causing problems now. You’re probably more up on that than I am. But you did mention – maybe you could say a little more about it – about the need to – what was it – you were talking about –

MG:    Well, it’s really important for our viewers and listeners to understand that the federal government is trying to make changes to the decommissioning policy. And they’re trying to make sure that communities have to keep the waste and are responsible for further cleanup if the utilities and energy companies don’t. And that’s just not what the communities or the states took on. These companies have made a lot of money and they should be fully responsible for the cost of commissioning and entire cleanup. The statute – the Federal Code of Regulations – is clear.

SS:       So the law is clear.

MG:    The law is clear. It’s the Code of Federal Regulations –

SS:       There needs to be a lawsuit perhaps. I don’t know, is the state thinking about bringing a suit?

MG:    That I don’t know. We have done a really involved study and submitted it to the NRC and the State. We had a Lintilhac Foundation grant to do that and we’ve spent a year doing that. And it’s just terrifying now as all different groups – the State of Vermont submitted materials, we submitted materials, different interveners all around the country have submitted materials because 7 plants are being decommissioned now in the U.S. And as those were being submitted to the NRC for their rule making, they have not put those on their website at all. They’re not allowing everyone to see what the comments were; and behind the scenes, they’re working with the industry to change the rule to help the industry. So it’s pretty frightening.

SS:       Pretty immoral.

MG:    Yeah. I think it’s immoral, too.

SS:       I could read you this short quote from Svetlana Alexievich. And this is the woman who wrote the book and is such a dedicated journalist and really put her own life in danger to go into the zones to interview people. She said: If you look back at the whole of our history, both soviet and post- soviet” – remember she was a soviet journalist – “it is a human common grave and a blood bath, an eternal dialogue of the executioners and the victims, the accursed Russian questions, what is to be done and who is to blame. The revolutions, the gulags, the Second World War, the Soviet-Afghan War hidden from the people, the downfall of the great empire, the downfall of the giant socialist land, the land utopia, and now a challenge of cosmic dimensions: Chernobyl. This is a challenge for all the living things on earth. Such is our history. And this is the theme of my book. This is my path, my circles of hell.” Heavy stuff.

MG:    Very heavy stuff. Spencer, thank you for sharing that quote and thank you for joining us today. We really appreciate having you.

SS:       It’s always great having a visit.

MG:    In closing, I want to ask our viewers to please look at this material on our site. We’ve done a retrospective and commemorative piece on Fukushima Daiichi, we’ve also done two huge pages and given you lots of material to read about Three Mile Island. And now Spencer was kind enough to join us today and talk to you about Chernobyl. And she’s been there and met with Ukrainians and knows first hand –she’s written a beautiful readers’ play that I hope you’ll listen to. It’s up on our site. And I hope you work with us to find a more sustainable energy future.

Japanese Translation: 

「チェルノブイリからの声」脚本テキスト

Voices From Chernobyl – text for Performance

公開者：フェアーウィンズ・エネルギー教育 Fairewinds Energy Education

公開日：2015年4月21日

著作権：Traditional Copyright: All rights reserved

＊＊＊　以下、ダウンロードPDFテキストの日本語訳　＊＊＊

どなたでもこの劇を上演することができますが、観劇料を徴収することはできません。

経費を補填するための献金を受領することはかまいません。ダルキー・アーカイブ出版。

チェルノブイリからの声

VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL

核惨事の口述歴史

The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

原典著者：スヴェトラーナ・アレクシ―ヴィッチSvetlana Alexievich

（上演用脚色：S・スペンサー・スミスS. Spencer Smith）

証人、発言順：

ナレーター

リュードミラ・イグナテンコ、消防隊員ワシリー・イグナテンコの妻

ワレンティン・ボリセヴィック、物理学者、ベラルーシ科学アカデミー核エネルギー学会研究所の元所長。

ワシリー・ネストレンコ、ベラルーシ科学アカデミー核エネルギー研究所の元所長。

セルゲイ・ソボレフ、チェルノブイリ遮蔽実行委員会の副委員長。

アンナ・バダエワ、汚染ゾーンに戻った小農。

ラリサ・Z、母親。

ナレーター：

チェルノブイリからの声。

スヴェトラーナ・アレクシーヴィッチによる書物から、スペンサー・スミスによる脚色。

1986年4月26日、ウクライナの首都であり、300万人の人びとが暮らす都市、キエフからわずかに64キロ北方のチェルノブイリで、史上最悪の原子炉事故が勃発しました。

チェルノブイリ惨事はヨーロッパの4分の3を汚染しました。わたしたちは、この事故の結果、どれほど多くの人びとが早すぎる死を迎え、あるいはどれほど多くの子どもたちが奇形で生まれるのか、決して知ることはないでしょう。現時点［2008年］で唯一、ニューヨーク市のロシア人、ベラルーシ人、ウクライナ人居住者――チェルノブイリのあと、故国を去った人びと――のあいだで白血病の異常発生が報告されています。白血病は、発症するのに約20年かかる癌です。

キエフの住民にとって幸運なことに、だがベラルーシの国民にとって不運なことに、あの日の風は北向きに吹いていました。485を超える村が永久に放棄されなければなりませんでした。今日にいたっても、（700,000人の子どもたちを含め）ほぼ210万の人びとが汚染された土地に住んでいます。［最新の統計値を使ってもよい］

みなさんがお聴きになる声は、この惨事のときを生きた人びとの声です。取材インタビューをおこない、人びとのことばを1冊の本にまとめたジャーナリストは、みずからの命をかけてそうしたのであり、これからみなさんが耳を傾ける人たちの多くは、すでに亡くなっています。

［間］

リュードミラ・イグナテンコ、消防隊員ワシリー・イグナテンコの妻。

リュードミラ：

わたしたちは新婚夫妻でした。店に行くときでさえ、手をつないで歩いていました。わたしは彼に「愛している」とよくいっていました。でも、その当時、どれほど愛していたか、気が付かなかった。なんの考えもありませんでした…

わたしたちはプリピャチ、彼が勤務する消防署の宿舎に住んでいました。わが家は二階でした。他にも3組の若いカップルが住んでおり、全員でキチンを使っていました。一階に車両を保管していました。赤い消防車です。

ある夜、騒音が聞こえました。夜も更け、真夜中を過ぎていました。わたしは窓の外を見ました。彼はわたしを見ました。「窓を閉め、ベッドに戻って眠りなさい。原子炉で火事だ。すぐ戻る」。

わたしは爆発そのものを目撃しなくて、炎だけを見ました。なにもかも――空全体が――光っていました。高く立ち上る炎。そして煙。熱気は――消防署にいてさえ――凄かったです。

煙が出ていたのは、屋根を覆うアスファルトが燃えていたからです。彼は後ほど、タールのなかを歩いてようだったといいました。男たちは炎を叩き消そうと努め、燃えているアスファルトを足で蹴っていました。防護服を着用していませんでした。火事で呼ばれた。ただ、それだけのことです。

時間がすぎてゆきました。4時。5時。6時。わたしたちは6時には、ここから25マイル離れた彼の両親の家まで、じゃがいもの植え付けを手伝うために出かけることになっていました。

7時。7時になって、わたしは彼が病院にいると告げられました。病院に駆けつけましたが、警察がだれも入れてくれません。ご主人が消火に駆り出された他の奥さんたちも来ていました。でも、誰もなかに入れてもらえません。救急車だけです。警察は、「救急車は放射能まみれだ！　後ろに下がれ！」と怒鳴っていました。

わたしはついに、病院の医師である友人を見つけました。「なかに入れて！」と、わたしは彼女に懇願しました。「できない。彼は具合がわるいのよ。全員がそうだわ」。

わたしは彼女にしがみつき、行かせませんでした。「ただ彼に会うだけ！」。

「いいわ」と、彼女はいいました。「でも、15分か20分だけよ」。

彼は膨れあがり、すっかりむくんでいました。彼の目をほとんど見ることができません。

「彼はミルクが必要だわ。大量のミルクが」と、わが友である医師はいいました。「彼らは1日あたり少なくとも3リットルは飲むべきなの」。

「でも、彼はミルクが大嫌いなの」

「いまは、飲むわ」。

当時はわかっていませんでしたが、あの病院の医師たちと看護師たち――特に用務員たち――の多くが、みずから病気になり、死ぬことになります。

朝の10時に、撮影係のシシェノクが亡くなりました。彼が最初でした。

わたしは夫に、「ワーシャ、わたしはなにをすべきなの？」といいました。

「ここから出るのだ！　行け！　わたしたちの赤ん坊を守るのだ！」。

「まず、あなたにミルクを持ってこなければ。それから、どうするか決めましょう」。

友だちのターニャが駆けこんできました――夫が同じ病室にいたのです。わたしたちは彼女の父親の車に乗り込んで、町へ行き、見つける限りすべてのミルクを買いこみ、戻ってきました。しかし、彼らはミルクを飲んだ途端に吐きはじめました。彼らは意識を失いました。点滴を受けました。医師たちは彼らにガス中毒にやられたと告げていました。だれも放射能のことをなにも口にしませんでした。軍人たちだけが外科手術用のマスクを着用していました。軍人たちは町のいたるところにいて、道路を封鎖し、なにか白い粉で街路を洗っていました。

あの夜、わたしたちのだれも病院に入れてもらえませんでした。人でごった返していました。ワーシャが窓辺に来て、なにか叫びました。わたしには彼がなにを言っているのか聴き取れませんでしたが、だれかが聴きました。

彼らはモスクワに搬送されました。

わたしたち妻は一致して、彼らと一緒に行こうと決めました。わたしたちは兵士たちを殴ったり引っ掻いたりしました――いまでは町中、警察ではなく、陸軍が出動していました。ひとりの医師が出てきて、彼らはモスクワに空輸されるが、わたしたちは衣類を持ってくる必要があるといいました。彼らが原子炉で着ていた衣類はすべて焼却されていました。わたしたちが衣類を持って、走って戻ると、飛行機はすでに離陸していました。彼らはわたしたちを騙したのです。

ナレーター：

ワレンティン・ボリセヴィック、物理学者、ベラルーシ科学アカデミー核エネルギー学会研究所の元所長。

ワレンティン：

あの日、わたしはミンスク郊外の森のなかにある研究所に出勤していました。すばらしい天候、春！　わたしは窓を開けました。空気は新鮮ですがすがしかったですが、冬の間じゅう、窓の外にソーセージのかけらを吊るして養っていたアオカケスが周辺に見当たらなかったので驚いていました。どこかでもっとましな食事にありついたのだろうか？

そうこうしているうちに、研究所の原子炉でパニックが持ち上がりました。空気清浄機フィルターの線量計値が200倍に跳ね上がったのです。これは非常に深刻だ。このレベルは、放射能危険区域で作業するさいの最高許容レベル――6時間あたりの最大値――に相当しています。最初に立てた説は、熱発生器のひとつで気密シーリングが破損したというものでした。点検しましたが、異常なしでした。

この時点で構内ラジオが、作業員は建屋を離れないようにと勧告されていますと発表します。個々の建屋のあいだの区域は無人になっていきます。人っ子ひとりいません。ゾッとする、奇妙な光景でした。

計測係たちがわたしの事務室を検査します――机が放射し、わたしの衣類が放射し、壁が放射しています。わたしは起ち上がります。自分の椅子に座っていることさえ、嫌です。

われわれの研究所で非常事態がありうるのだろうか？　いくらか漏れたのか？　わたしはわれわれの原子炉を非常に誇りにしていました。わたしはその1ミリも残さず、研究しつくしていました。

わたしは近場のイグナリナ原子力発電所に電話します。彼らの機器は狂乱状態になっています。彼らもまたパニックになっています。次にわれわれはチェルノブイリに電話します。だれも応答しません。われわれはランチタイムまでに、ミンスク全域の上空を放射能の雲が覆っていると気づきます。われわれは、放射能の質がヨウ素であると決定しました。これは原子炉で事故が勃発したことを意味していました。

リュードミラ：

わたしは両親に、モスクワのワーシャのところへ行かなければならないと伝えました。わたしの母は、「妊娠中の身で、どこへ行くというの？」とわめいていました。そこで父に一緒に行ってもらうことにしました。父は銀行へ行き、ありったけの預金をおろしました。

わたしは、旅のことはなにも憶えていません。

わたしたちはモスクワで最初に見かけた警察官に、チェルノブイリの消防隊員たちはどこに収容されているのかと訊ねました。それは国家機密でしたが、彼は教えてくれました。第6病院。放射線医学専門病院です。

入りこむのに、入り口を見張っていた女性を買収しなければなりませんでした。

ついにわたしは放射線医学部長のオフィスに入室しました。彼女はただちに、「お子さんをお持ちですか？」と質問しました。

わたしはすでに、自分が妊娠していることを隠す必要があると悟っています。まだ妊娠中の身には見えません。

「子どもが二人います」と嘘をいう。「男の子と女の子です」。

「よかった。では、あなたはもう子どもを生む必要がない。でも、お聴きなさい。彼の中枢神経系は完全に抵抗力を失っており、頭脳もそうです。また、お聴きなさい。あなたが泣きだすようなら、わたしはあなたを室外へ蹴りだします。そして、キスもハグも完全にご法度です。彼の近くに寄ることさえ、してはなりません。面会時間は30分です」

飛行機に乗ってきた人たちは28人います。彼らはみな、プリピャチにいる子どもたちや家族のことを知りたがっています。わたしは彼らに、町全体が避難したと伝えます。あの日、原発で働いていたグループの女性が、子どもたちを心配して、泣きはじめます。

あのとき、わたしは善良な人たちに大勢会いました。病院の年老いた女性門番を思い出します。彼女は、「治療の施しようのない病気があります。あなたはただ座って、それを見つめなくてはなりません」とわたしに諭してくれました。

ワーシャは変貌しはじめました。わたしは毎日、まったく新たな人物に会っていました。炎症が体表に現れはじめました。最初、炎症は小さな病斑でした。そして、大きくなりました。彼の皮膚は幾層も重なって剥がれ落ちました。このことをお話するのは、不可能です！

わたしは彼をとても愛していました！

彼らは余命14日と告げました。14日で、彼は死ぬでしょう。

ナレーター：

ワシリー・ネストレンコ、ベラルーシ科学アカデミー核エネルギー研究所の元所長。

ワシリー：

だれかがチェルノブイリの釈明をしなければならないだろう。彼らは犯罪者なのだ！　時はいたるだろう。50年かかるかもしれず、だれもが老いぼれになって、彼らは死んでいるかもしれない。だから、われわれは事実を後に残さなければならない。

あの日、4月26日、わたしは仕事でモスクワにいた。そこで、わたしは事故について知った。

わたしは、ベラルーシ共産党の書記長、ニコライ・スリュンコフに電話をかけた。彼らは彼につないでくれなかった。わたしを、わたしをよく知っている彼の補佐官に連絡した。

「モスクワから電話している。スリュンコフを出してほしい。いますぐ彼が知っておく必要のある情報がわたしにある。緊急情報だ」

わたしは政府回線を使っているが、事故について話しはじめるやいなや、回線が切れる。わたしでさえ、ブロックされている。だから、適切な機関が聴いてくれていることを願うのみである。

スリュンコフにつながるまで、2時間かかった。

「わたしはすでに報告を受けておる」と、スリュンコフはいう。「火事があったが、すでに鎮火した」。

わたしは我慢ならない。「それは嘘です。どんな物理学者であっても、黒鉛は1時間あたり5トンかそこらのペースで燃えるとあなたに進言するでしょう。それがどれほど長く燃えるか、お考えください！」。

わたしは最初のミンスク行き列車に乗る。朝には、自宅に着いている。息子の甲状腺を測定する――当時としては、理想的な線量計である。1時間あたり180マイクロレントゲンを記録した。彼には、ヨウ化カリウムが必要だった。子どもはコップ半分に2ないし3滴の溶剤、成人で3ないし4滴を必要としていた。原子炉は10日間にわたり燃えていたので、この処方を10日間つづけるべきだった。

だが、だれも――科学者たちも、医師たちも――わたしたちに耳を貸さなかった。

わたしは4月29日、ついにスリュンコフの官邸、受付に乗り込む。彼らはわたしを入室させてくれない。わたしは入室しようとし、そうしつづける。わたしはそこに5時半まで座っている。5時半になって、有名な詩人がスリュンコフの執務室から出てきた。わたしは彼を知っている。彼はわたしに、「同志スリュンコフとわたしはベラルーシ文化を論じ合っていたのですよ」という。

わたしは爆発する。「ただちにチェルノブイリから全員を避難させなければ、ベラルーシ文化もなければ、あんたの本を読むものもいるものか」。

リュードミラ：

病院はわたしの私物をすべて、衣類さえ取り上げ、ローブを与えてくれました。わたしの持ち物すべて、放射能化していました。

わたしの父、姉と兄がモスクワに来て、あれこれ運んでくれました。5月9日の戦勝記念日、ワーシャはわたしに、花火を見たいので、窓を開けてほしいと頼みました。

そして、枕の下から3本の赤いカーネーションを引き出し、わたしにくれました。彼は看護師にお金を渡し、買ってきてもらったのです。

わたしは彼に駆け寄り、キスしました。

後ほど、わたしが廊下にいると、目眩（めまい）がしました。医師がやってきて、わたしの腕を捉えました。すると、唐突に、「あなた、妊娠しているのですか？」。

「いいえ、いいえ！」といいながら、わたしは恐れていました。

「嘘をついてはいけません」と、彼はため息をつきました。

翌朝、医長がわたしを彼女の執務室に呼び出しました。

「なぜあなたはわたしに嘘をついたのですか？」と、彼女はいいます。

「他に方法がなかったのです。わたしがいえば、あなたはわたしを家に送り返していたでしょう。これは神聖な嘘だったのです！」

「あなたはなにをしでかしたの？」

「わたしは彼と一緒にいました」

わたしは生涯、あの医長に、わたしを入室させてくれたことで感謝しているでしょう。他の妻たちも来ましたが、入れてもらえませんでした。男たちの母親たちだけです。もはや繁殖力を失い――出産することもありません。

ヴォロージャ・プラヴィクの母親はいつも彼に寄り添って座り、「わたしを身代わりにお召しください！」と神に懇願していました。

ナレーター：

セルゲイ・ソボレフ、チェルノブイリ遮蔽実行委員会の副委員長。

セルゲイ：

わたしは実はプロのロケット屋です。わたしはロケット燃料が専門で、わが国の宇宙センター、バイコヌールで勤務していました。奇蹟のような時でした――人民に空を与え、人民に宇宙を与える。ソヴィエト連邦の人民全員がユーリ・ガガーリンと一緒に宇宙へ行ったのです。

わたしは家族の都合でベラルーシに移住し、当地で職歴に終止符を打ちました。わたしは当地に来ると、このチェルノブイリ化空間に夢中になりました。それはわたしのものごとに対する感性の矯正剤になりました。わたしは常に最先端テクノロジーを扱ってきましたが、それでもこのようなものを想像するのは不可能なことでした。

わたしたちは寄付金を集め、病気の人たち、死んでいく人たちを訪問します。わたしたちは年代記を執筆し、博物館を創立しようとしています。わたしは時どき、わたしたちは博物館でなく、当地に葬儀場を持つのだと考えます。今朝のこと、わたしがコートを脱がないうちに、女性が入ってきて、泣いて――泣いているどころか、喚いているのです――「あの人の勲章と証明書を持っていって！　恩典を全部持っていって！　夫をわたしに返して！」。彼女は長いあいだ喚いていました。そして、彼の勲章類、彼の証明書類を置いていきました。さて、そのようなものを博物館に収容し、展示するとします。人民はそれらのものを観覧できます。しかし、彼女の叫び――彼女の叫びをわたし以外にだれも聴いておらず、わたしがこれらの証明書類を展示すれば、わたしはそれを思い出すことになるでしょう。

ヤロシュク大佐は、いまにも死のうとしています。彼は化学者・線量計測員です。雄牛のように健康でした。いま彼は麻痺して寝たきりになっています。彼の妻は枕を返すように、彼を寝返させます。スプーンで彼に食べさせています。彼は腎臓に結石があり、それを粉砕しなければなりませんが、その種の手術にかかるお金の持ち合わせがわたしたちにはありません。わたしたちは貧困者であり、人民の施しもので生き残っています。そして、政府は金貸しのように振舞っています。政府はこのような人民のことを忘れ去ったのです。彼が死去した暁には、彼らは、通りに、あるいは学校か軍部隊に彼にちなんだ名称を冠することでしょう。だが、それも彼の死後になってからだけのことです。ヤロシュク大佐。彼はゾーンを徒歩で横断し、放射線値最高地点の標識を立てました。彼らは、ことばの十全な意味で、彼をロボットのように利用しました。そして、彼はこのことを理解していましたが、それでも行きました。

原子炉で、彼らは火を消すためにロボット――機械――を使おうとしました。しかし、放射線レベルがロボットには高すぎました。ロボットは機能することができませんでした。そこで彼らは、人間、生身の人間を送りこみました。兵士たち。

210個軍部隊が惨事によるフォールアウトの一掃作業に投入されました。これは340万人の兵士に相当します。屋根の清掃を担当した人員は鉛のベストを着用しておりましたが、放射線は下から来るのであり、彼らは安っぽい通常のブーツを履いていました。彼らは連日、屋上に2分間滞在し、その後、除隊となり、証明書と100ルーブル［現時点のレートで235,000円］が下賜されました。

彼らは全員、若い人たちでした。彼らはいま死のうとしておりますが、あれは彼ら向けの仕事でなかったと理解しておりました…

彼らは人身御供でした。核爆発の危険が存在する瞬間があり、その爆発は3ないし5メガトンのものになっていたでしょう。それは、キエフとミンスクだけでなく、ヨーロッパの広大な部分が居住不能になることを意味することになっていたでしょう。あなたに想像できますか？　ヨーロッパの破局です。

リュードミラ：

とうとうワーシャは、すべて透明カーテンの向こう側、特別生命維持室に収容されました。だれもなかに入ることを許されません。彼らはカーテン越しに注射したり、すべてのものを投与したりしていました。彼の病状がとても悪かったので、わたしは部屋を離れることができませんでした。彼はしょっちゅう、わたしを呼びました。ついに用務係たちが作業を拒否しました。彼らは兵士たちに壁を拭かせたり、寝具を変えさせたりしました。

そして毎日、だれかが死にました。ティシュラが死んだ。ティテノクが死んだ。毎日が、わたしの頭脳に振り下ろされる大ハンマーのようでした。

わたしはだれかが、「君は理解しなければならないが、これはもはや君の夫ではなく、強度の毒性を持った放射性物体なのだ。君は自滅的ではない。御身を大事にするのだ」といったのを憶えています。

でも、わたしは、彼が自宅でいつもわたしの手を取り、眠っているあいだ、一晩じゅう握っていたようすを憶えていました。だから、病院で、わたしは彼の手を取るのです。

ある夜、わたしたちだけのとき、彼は「ぼくたちの子どもにとても会いたいな」といいます。

「あなたはどんな名前をわたしたちの子どもにつけるの？」と、わたしはいいます。

「君が決めろよ」と、彼。

「どうしてわたしが？　わたしたち二人いるじゃないの」。

「その場合、男の子なら、ワーシャ、女の子なら、ナターシャだな」。

ある日、わたしは廊下に出て、看護師に「彼は死ぬわ」といいます。

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「なにをお望みだったの。彼は1600レントゲン浴びたのよ。400レントゲンが致死線量です。彼は核反応炉なのですよ」。

男たちの全員が死んだとき、彼らは病院全体を一新します。壁を剥ぎ取り、寄木細工の床を掘りとります。

ある日、わたしはワーシャを残し、ターニャの夫ともうひとりの埋葬に立ちあうため、彼女と共同墓地に出かけます。わたしが戻ったとき、看護師はワーシャが死んだといいました。「彼は間際のときにあなたの名前を呼びましたので、わたしはあなたがすぐに戻ってくると彼に告げました」。

彼らは死体安置所で彼を正礼装で装いました。でも、彼の体が入らなくて、靴と制服を裁ち切らなければなりませんでした。彼の体はすっかり膨れあがり、歪んでいました。最期のときには、彼の肺と彼の肝臓のかけらが口から飛びだしていました。

この正礼装のまま、彼らは彼をセロファン袋に入れ、木製の棺桶に安置しました。彼らは棺桶をもう1枚の透明な袋で包みました。彼らはわたしたち全員に、わたしたちが遺体を自宅に持ち帰るのは不可能であると言い渡しました。

彼らは、「彼らは非常に放射線値が高く、モスクワ共同墓地でセメント・タイルの下の密封亜鉛霊柩のなかに埋葬されます。あなたがたがしなければならないのは、ここでこの書類にサインすることだけです」といいました。

ワシリー：

ついにわたしは、スリュンコフとの面会にこぎつけ、われわれは彼ら人民を守らなければならないと彼に告げた。ウクライナでは、すでに避難している。彼は、「君たちの研究所の男たちが線量計を手に走り回り、みなを怖がらせているのは、なぜなのだ？　わたしはすでに、モスクワと、ソヴィエト放射線防護委員会議長、イリン教授と相談したのだ。彼は万事が正常であると申しておる。われわれは、陸軍、われわれの軍装備の一切を危地に投入しておる」といったのである。

あなたはいま、チェルノブイリに何千トンものセシウム、ヨウ素、鉛、シルコニウム、カドミウム、ベリリウム、ボリウム、量さえわからないプルトニウム――全部で450タイプの放射性核種――があると知るべきである。それは、ヒロシマに投下された原子爆弾の350発分に相当する。わたしは、かつてトラクター工場の監督だったスリュンコフに、「彼らが人民に説明を求めるとき、あなたは、自分がトラクター専門家であり、放射能にどんなことができるのか知らないとおっしゃるのだ。だが、わたしは物理学者だ。わたしは放射能の影響を存じている」といった。

だが、彼の観点から見て、これはなんだろう？　束になった物理学者、一部の教授連中が中央委員会になにをすべきか、いいつけるなんて、どうしたことなのか？

（間）

いや、彼とその他の連中は犯罪者のギャングではなかった。あれは無知と服従の共謀にもっと似ていた。彼らの生きかたの原則は、火中の栗を拾わないこと。彼らの最悪の恐怖は、パニックであり、真実が明るみに出て、失職することなのだ。彼らは、万事を隠蔽したかった。それで、なにが起こった。

わたしを信じてほしい。もしわが国がいまだにソヴィエト連邦であったなら、いまだに閉鎖システムのなかで生きていたなら、人民はいまだにチェルノブイリのすぐ隣りで暮らしていただろう。

ナレーター：

アンナ・バダエワ、汚染ゾーンに戻った小農。

アンナ：

わたしが最初におっかなかったのは、菜園と裏庭で窒息したモグラを見たことです。だれが窒息させたのかしら？　モグラはふつう、地下から出てきません。そして、わたしの息子がゴメリから電話して、ブヨが出ているか、聞くのです。

「虫はいないし、蛆虫さえいないよ」と、わたしは息子にいいます。「ミミズもいない」。

すると息子は、「それが最初の兆候だ。もし虫やミミズがいないなら、放射能が強い印だよ」といいます。

「放射能って、それはなに？」と、わたしは聞きます。

「ママ、それは一種の死なのだよ。ママ、おばあちゃんに逃げなければならないと言ってよ。ママたちはぼくのところに住めばよい」

「でも、まだ菜園の作付けが済んでいないし」。

わたしが時どきラジオを点けると、彼らは放射能でわたしたちを怖がらせます。でも、放射能が来てから、わたしたちの暮らしはよくなりました。周りを見てください。彼らは、オレンジ、3種類のソーセージ、その他、ほしい物を持ってきてくれます。ここ、この村に！　わたしの孫たちは――医者に診てもらいに――世界中に行ってきました。

そして、これ、放射能って、なんだろう？　あなたは見たことありますか？　それに色がない、匂いもないという人がいれば、土みたいに黒いという人もいます。

どれほどわたしたちを怖がらせることか？　でも、リンゴが庭に成り、木々には葉っぱが茂り、じゃがいもは畑のなかで育っています。チェルノブイリなんてなかった、でっちあげだとわたしは思います。彼らは人民にトリックをかけたのです。わたしの妹とその夫は行ってしまいました。

でも、起こったことは、起こったことです。

わたしのパパは、ミツバチ、それを5群れ、飼っていました。2日間、ミツバチは出てきませんでした。ただ巣のなかに居座っていました。ミツバチは待っていたのです。パパは爆発のことを知りませんでしたが、裏庭中を駆けまわって、これはなんだ、なにが起こっているのだといっていました。そのころ、ラジオはなにもいいませんでしたが、ミツバチは知っていました。

それに、もしわたしがあのことを考えると――どこの家でも、だれかが死にました。あの通り、川の向こう側――女たちみな、男がいなくて、男たちはみな死にました。だから、つくづく考えると、わたしたちのところの女はみな、空っぽです。3人のうちのひとりは、女の部分がだめになりました。老いも若きも。女たちのだれもが、適時の出産をしているのではありません。

彼らは、わたしたちの水さえ飲めないと脅します。でも、水なしで、どうすればいいのですか？　すべての人は、体内に水を持っています。岩でさえ、水を持っています。すべての命は水の賜物です。

他になにをお話しましょうか？　あなたはだれに頼みごとをするのですか？　人びとは神に祈りますが、神に頼みごとをしません。あなたはただ生きなければならないのです。

リュードミラ：

2か月後、わたしはモスクワを再訪しました。共同墓地に行ったのです。そこでわたしは陣痛を起こしました。彼らは救急車を呼び、わたしを同じ病院、放射線病院に搬送しました。彼らはわたしに彼女を見せました――彼女は女の子であり、わたしは、「ナターシャ！　あなたのお父さんが名づけてくれたのよ！」と呼びかけました。

彼女は――腕も、脚も――健康そうでした。だけど、肝臓に肝硬変がありました。彼女の肝臓は28レントゲンありました。また心臓も損傷していました。彼らは4時間後、彼女が亡くなったとわたしに告げました。そしてまたもや、彼女の遺体をわたしに渡してくれませんでした。

［沈黙］

わたしは発作を起こすものですから、喚いてはいけないものとされています。

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彼らが小さな木の箱を持ってきて、彼女はこのなかだというので、見てみました。すでに荼毘に付されていました。「彼女を彼の足元に寝させてあげてください」と、わたしは頼みました。

わたしはいつもブーケを2束持って共同墓地に行きます。一束は彼のため、もう一束は彼女のため。

わたしが彼女を殺した！　わたしの小さな女の子がわたしを救った。彼女は放射能の衝撃の全部をみずからの体内に取り入れ、まるで放射能の避雷針のようだった。

やがてわたしは夫を見つけました。わたしは彼にすべて――真実を包み隠さず――告げました。わたしの生涯全体で唯一の愛を抱いているとさえ語りました。

わたしは男の子を出産しました。アンドレイ。わたしの友人たちは、わたしに止めさせようとし、医者たちはわたしを脅しました。「あなたは子どもを持てない。あなたの体は出産に対処できない」。彼らは子どもが腕なしで生まれるだろうと脅しました。でも、彼は立派に生まれました。いま学校にいます。好成績を収めています。

アンドレイとわたしが連れ立って散歩に出かけたとき、わたしは初めての発作を起こしました。なにも覚えておらず、病院で目覚めました。

アンドレイも病気です。彼は2週間、学校で過ごし、次の2週間、家で医師と一緒にいます。それが、わたしたちの暮らしかたです。

この新しい場所――通り全体――にわたしたちの多くが住んでいます。彼らはこれをチェルノビルスカヤと呼んでいます。大勢の人たちがいまでもパートタイムで仕事に行っています。もはや原子炉の近くに住んでいる人はいません。でも、みなさんはそこへ仕事に出かけています。彼らは原子炉の閉鎖を恐れています。どこのだれが彼らを雇いたいと思うのでしょうか？　彼らはしばしば亡くなります。突然死するのです。

わたしたちがなにをくぐり抜けてきたのか、だれも訊ねません。だれも死について聞きたくないのです。怖くなることなど、聞きたくありません。

でも、わたしは愛について、あなたに語りました。わたしたちの愛について…

ワレンティン：

3時30分――14時間後！――になって、われわれはチェルノブイリの原子炉で事故があったと知らされました。

その夕刻、研究所のバスで半時間かかってミンスクへ戻る途上、われわれは押し黙り、あるいは別のことを話していました。だれもが起こった事態について話すのを恐れていました。だれも、自分の経歴、自分の家族を危険にさらしたい――国家の敵呼ばわりされたいとは思っていませんでした。

わたしのアパートのドアの前に濡れ雑巾が置かれていました――ということは、わたしの妻がわたしの秘密通話を理解したというわけです。突然、この激怒がわたしを鷲掴みにしました。秘密主義のクソッタレ！　わたしは妻の住所録、そして娘の住所録を手に取り、みなに一人ひとり、電話しはじめました。わたしは、ミンスクの上空全体に放射能の雲があるといいました。彼らがする必要のあること、洗髪し、窓を閉め、洗濯物をバルコニーから取り入れ、ヨウ素を飲むようにと――そして、その正しい服用法を――告げました。

人びとの反応は、「ありがとう」というものでした。

わたしは、彼らがわたしを信じなかったか、あるいはたぶん起こっている事態の重要性を理解しなかったのだと考えています。

その夜、友人から電話があり、この人もやはり核物理学者です。彼がいうには、5月の連休をゴメリの親戚の家で過ごしたいそうです。チェルノブイリから石を投げるほどの距離――しかも、幼いお子さんたちを連れて行くという！

「大した考えだ！」と、わたしは彼を怒鳴りつけます。「気は確かか！」。

彼はたぶん、わたしがお子さんたちを救ったことを憶えていないでしょう。

ナレーター：

ラリサ、母親。

ラリサ：

事故のあと、ほどなくして、彼らはわたしたちの村を避難させたいと欲していました。その後、彼らはその村にペケ印をつけてリストから削除しました――政府はじゅうぶんな資金を持っていなかったのです。そして、わたしはすぐに恋に落ちました。わたしは結婚しました。当地で愛が許されないことをわたしは知らなかったのです。

わたしの祖母は何年も昔、なべて繁栄し、なべて花開き、果物を実らせ、川に魚、森に獣が満ちる時がやがていたるが、人はそのどれひとつとして使うことができないと聖書に書いてあるのを読みました。そして、人は同類のなかに自分を広めることができず、自分の系列を存続できないのです。わたしはこの古い預言を、おっかないお伽話みたいだと思いながら聴いていました。わたしはそんなものなんて信じていませんでした。

わたしの小さな娘――カーチャ――彼女は違っています。彼女は他の人たちのようではありません。大きくなると、わたしに訊ねます。「どうしてわたしは他の人たちのようではないの？」。

彼女が生まれたとき、赤ん坊ではなく、彼女は小さな袋、どこもかしこも縫い合わされ、開口部はひとつどころでなく、まるで目のようです。カルテはいいます。「女児、複数の複合病理を持って出生：肛門形成不全、膣形成不全、左側腎臓形成不全」。医療用語でいえば、こう聞こえるのです。でも、お尻の穴はない、オマンコはない、腎臓はひとつと言っているだけです。

2日目、わたしは手術の済んだ彼女を見詰めていましたが、それが彼女の人生の2日目。彼女は目を開け、微笑んだのですが、わたしはいまに泣き出すだろうと思っていました。だが、神さま！　微笑んだ！

彼女のような子どもは生きていられません。すぐに死んでしまいます。でも、わたしが愛していたので、彼女は死にませんでした。

彼女は4年間に4回の手術をしました。あれほどの複合病理を抱えて誕生し、生き残った子どもは、ベラルーシで彼女ただ一人です。

［一瞬の静止］

わたしは二度と産めないでしょう。あえて産みません。わたしが分娩室から戻ると、夫は夜中にわたしにキスしだしました。わたしは横たわり、震えていました。

医者たちがしゃべっているのを聞きました。「あの女児はシャツを着て生まれたのではなく、甲冑一式を着て生まれたのだ。テレビで公開すれば、出産したいと思う母親は一人としていないだろう」。

わたしは教会へ行き、あれが勃発したとき、わたしはそこに、間近にいたと司祭に告げました。司祭は、わたしが罪をあがなうために祈るべきだと申しました。でも、わたしの家族のだれひとりとして、だれも殺していません。どんなことで、わたしに罪があるのでしょう？

彼らは彼女に肛門を作りました。膣を作りました。だが、これから先、外国で医療支援を求めなさいと彼らはわたしたちに助言しました。わたしの夫の稼ぎが月に120ドルだというのに、どこに行って何万ドルも確保するのでしょう？　ある教授は穏やかに、「彼女の病理をもってすれば、おふたりのお子さんは科学にとって非常に興味深いのです。あなたがたは他国の病院に手紙を書くべきです。興味を持っていただけるはずです」とわたしたちにいいました。

だから、わたしは書きます。［泣きたいのに我慢］わたしは、わたしたちは半時間ごとに彼女の尿を手で絞り出さなければならないのですと書きます。いつまでこのようなことを続けられるでしょうか？　実験であっても、わたしの女の子を招いてください。彼女に死んでほしくないのです。生きていさえするなら、実験室のカエル、実験室のウサギになっても、わたしとしては大丈夫です。

［泣く］

わたしの娘について、みなさんにお伝えください。書き下ろしてください。彼女は4歳で、歌い、踊ることができ、こころで詩を知っています。彼女の精神的発達は正常です。しかし、わたしたちは4年間、彼女とともに病院で暮らしてきました。わたしたちは彼女をひとり残しておられません。1か月か2か月、自宅に戻っていると、彼女は、「いつ病院に戻るの？」とわたしに聞きます。病院が、友だちのいるところ、子どもたちが育っている場所なのです。

わたしは文書を入手したいと思いました――彼女が大きくなったとき、わたしたち、わたしと夫が悪かったのではないとわかってくれるでしょう。わたしは4年間、医師たち、官僚たちと戦ってきました。重要人物たちのドアをノックしました。電離放射線と彼女の悲惨な状態の関連を確認する医師たちの文書を入手するのに、4年かかりました。医師たちは、「あなたのお子さんは先天的な障害の患者なのです」といいつづけて、わたしに拒んでいたのです。わたしは家系を調べました――だれもが80歳代か90歳代まで生きていました。わたしの祖父は、94歳でようやく亡くなりました。

医師たちは、「わたしたちには指示マニュアルがあります。このタイプの症例を一般疾患と呼ぶものとされているのです。20年か30年たって、チェルノブイリに関するデータベースが整えば、わたしたちはこうした症例を電離放射線に結びつけはじめることになるでしょう」といいました。

ある官僚はわたしに怒鳴りつけました。「あなたはチェルノブイリ特権がほしいのだ！　チェルノブイリ被災者基金がほしいのだ！」。なぜわたしが彼の執務室で卒倒しなかったのか、わたしにはどうしてもわからないでしょう。

わたしはいま、妊婦たちに奇妙この上ない眼差しを向けます。わたしは見ません――妊婦たちに非常に素早い一瞥をくれるだけです。驚嘆と恐怖、嫉妬と歓喜――このような混じりあった感情をすべて、わたしは抱いています。報復の感情さえも。わたしはある時、わたしが隣家の妊娠している犬を――巣のなかの鳥を――同じ目で見ているという考えに取り憑かれしまいました。

おお、わたしの女の子！　わたしのカーチャ！

ナレーター：

第4原子炉、いま被覆物として知られる存在は、その鉛・金属中核部のなかに約20トンの核燃料をいまだに抱えています。

石棺は上出来に仕上がり、比類なく建造され、サンクト・ペテルブルクから来た設計技師たちはおそらく誇らしかったはずです。

しかし、それは人の手が介在せずに建造され、プレートがヘリコプターとロボットの支援を借りてつなぎ合わされ、その結果、ほころびがあります。いくつかの見積もりによれば、いま200平方メートルを超える隙間や割れ目があり、放射性粒子がそこから漏れだしつづけている…

石棺は崩壊するのでしょうか？　継ぎ目や構造物の多くは、それが頑丈かどうか確かめるために、その場所まで行くのがいまだに不可能なので、だれもこの問に答えることができません。だが、だれもが、被覆物が崩壊すれば、その影響は1986年当時よりずっと恐ろしいことになると知っています。

【姉妹記事】

The post Voices From Chernobyl appeared first on Fairewinds Energy Education.

In an effort to answer this question, Dr. Kanat guides us through an understanding of isotopes and explains Madam Curie’s research into radioactivity, which led to the discovery of unstable isotopes like uranium. Unstable isotopes are as their title suggests- unstable, constantly splitting, and always in a state of decay. A perfect example of unstable isotopes may be seen in the video referred to by Fairewinds Crew Member Sue Prent in her blog post, The Uranium Waltz. Sue writes,

“To the strains of a Strauss waltz, puffy little trails begin to erupt from the uranium in staccato straight lines, shooting through the alcohol cloud and radiating in all directions like soft white fireworks. It’s a mesmerizing sight to behold. It is also a sobering one, because what we are enabled to observe through that cloud of alcohol is the behavior of one of the most aggressive toxins on earth: radioactive decay.

This is the stuff that gives nuclear weapons their destructive energy; the instability that, in the course of things, has been somewhat inefficiently harnessed to generate simple electricity.”

Nuclear power plants are home to large concentrations of constantly splitting unstable isotopes. Dr. Kanat explains how with the discovery of radioactivity, and the adoption of extreme cultivation of radioactive isotopes, humans have left their geological mark. How much does this affect the Earth? Not really all that much. By alluding to dinosaurs, and other extinct species that came before us, the real question we should be asking ourselves is: How much does radiation affect us?

The post Nuclear Age Impacts Humans appeared first on Fairewinds Energy Education.

By Maggie Gundersen

 I was startled in October 2011, when I received a phone call and email from Karl Hoffmann, a German Public Radio and Television (ARD) correspondent and freelance journalist, requesting an opportunity to interview and film Fairewinds’ chief engineer Arnie Gundersen for an opera about the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island (TMI).

As the founder and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, I was inundated with requests for interviews, meetings, and technical information following the March 2011 triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi. As can be imagined, this request by Karl Hoffmann to be interviewed for an opera about the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island (TMI) was certainly a surprise.

This video is the German version of a dynamic multi-media opera entitled Three Mile Island created with Karl Hoffmann’s amazing audiovisual documentation by dramatist Guido Barbieri, composer and international conductor Andrea Molino, and impresario and musician Oscar Pizzo. The talks I had with Karl during the next several weeks led to the filmed interview of Arnie Gundersen at Fairewinds’ offices in late October that ultimately led to this German production and the subsequent Italian production that both Arnie and I attended in May 2012. In conjunction with the Italian premiere of the stage production Three Mile Island, Action & Passion for Peace organized a round table discussion entitled “The Smoke Curtain, Nuclear accidents and contaminations: what information?” [See more details below.]

 At Fairewinds’ request, our Austrian friend Andreas Kohler and other colleagues graciously translated to English and subtitled this filmed Three Mile Island live stage production so that we could share it worldwide. We are very thankful for their efforts, and to Guido Barbieri, Karl Hoffmann, Andrea Molino, the donors and so many others who made this production a reality. We also give special thanks to the victims and residents of Three Mile Island who have allowed their stories to be told, so that people around the world can have a deeper understanding of nuclear power tragedies and the smokescreen of silence (The Smoke Curtain) that governments and the nuclear industry wrap around these nuclear power debacles.

Behind the Scenes

Hoffmann, who has spent more than 30 years living and working in Italy as a radio and television correspondent, said this project arose from the personal friendship he developed with noted Austrian meteorologist Dr. Ignaz Vergeiner, who had completed a detailed meteorological analysis about the movement of radioactivity and the radioactive plume following the TMI meltdown. Dr. Vergeiner’s work has held up under careful scrutiny, been substantiated in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, and Dr. Vergeiner’s son Dr. Johannes Vergeiner is carrying on his father’s legacy of solid research in meteorology.

Arnie and Dr. Ignaz Vergeiner were two of numerous experts retained to testify in the Three Mile Island class action case. Judge Sylvia Rambo, the federal judge on the case, did not allow any experts from outside the United States to testify, so Dr. Vergeiner’s testimony was never heard in court nor was his expert witness testimony allowed into the proceedings.

Dr. Vergeiner, according to Hoffmann, was always bothered that his scientific data was discounted not because of the science, but because he was not an American citizen, even though at that time he was living, working, and teaching in the United States and was raising his children here. As a journalist, Karl became captivated by Vergeiner’s story. When Dr. Vergeiner was diagnosed with cancer, Hoffmann began a series of interviews totaling seven hours of filmed interviews with Vergeiner that are the basis for this performance.  Dr. Vergeiner was hopeful that Karl Hoffmann would publicize his work and make it known to as many people as possible.  Certainly, the human perspective created in this magnificent operatic concert fulfills that hope.

According to ZKM Media Blog The Morning Line http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/stories/storyReader$7942

“With his new project “Three Mile Island”, Andrea Molino undertakes to remind us of an event that happened 30 years ago and is largely forgotten: the nuclear accident that took place in Three Mile Island on the morning of the March 28th, 1979. One of the reactors in the nuclear power plant began to heat up because of a faulty cooling system − a tragedy that has been kept out of the limelight, a conspiracy of silence.

The research of the Austrian meteorologist Ignaz Vergeiner leaves no doubt: In the first 24 crucial hours the radioactive cloud traveled much further than the authorities admitted. The damage to people, objects and the environment was serious and irreversible. Unfortunately Vergeiner’s premature death put a halt to his efforts. But he had revealed the details in a 7 hour filmed interview with his friend, the German journalist Karl Hoffmann.

The multimedia staged concert with Molino’s music is thus based on written and videorecorded contributions by Ignaz Vergeiner, collected by Karl Hoffmann. Guido Barbieri is responsible for the texts and dramaturgy. An interactive intermedial installation − the “Cloud” − designed by a creative team of the ZKM | Karlsruhe and of the Department of Art & Media of the Zurich University of the Arts, will react in real time with the live performers and provide documentary style, factual information: the voice and face of Vergeiner, the testimonies of the survivors and the interviews with family members of the nuclear accident victims filmed on location. These audiovisual materials are continuously counterpointed by the “Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart”; the narration is reinforced and underlined by an extremely variated vocal texture. The instrumental part, performed by the “Klangforum Wien”, is also organically involved in this dialogue and with the help of amplified percussions, wind and string instruments adds meaning, lightness and expression to the element ‘air’.

“The Cultural Turn and its Practice in the Humanities

The climate and protection of the environment are themes that also impact upon art and which can no longer be thought of in separation; noteworthy representatives from research and politics will be discussing these themes prior to the opera evening on the panel “The Cultural Turn and its Practice in the Humanities”. The extent to which an augmentation of the three-pillar model of sustainable development − until now constituting economic, ecologic and social sustainability − surrounding cultural perspectives is meaningful forms the thematic subject in the panel discussion. The model was co-developed at the Research Center in Karlsruhe, in 1998.”

A coproduction of ZKM | Karlsruhe, Accademia Filarmonica and Istituzione Universitaria di Concerti in Rom, in cooperation with Zürcher Hochschule der Künste

The event is part of the 21st Europäische Kulturtage Karlsruhe

The Meteorological Setting of the

‘TMI-2’ Nuclear Accident on 28 March 1979

A multimedia staged concert upon written and video-recorded contributions

by Ignaz Vergeiner collected by Karl Hoffmann

Music: Andrea Molino

Texts and Dramaturgy: Guido Barbieri

World Premiere at ZKM | Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, 29.3.2012

Andrea Molino – Composition, Artistic Direction

Guido Barbieri – Libretto and Dramaturgy, in collaboration with Andrea Molino

Karl Hoffmann – Audiovisual Documentation

Holger Stenschke – Sound Direction, Interactive Environment

Bernd Lintermann, Manuel Weber, Nikolaus Völzow – Medial Staging

Anna Falkenstern – Video editing

Zurich University of the Arts, Department Media Arts – The Cloud, Interactive Videoinstallation

Birgit Bücker – Voice

Klangforum Wien

Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart

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The Uranium Waltz

By Sue Prent

Unless you’re a science geek who routinely trawls YouTube for entertainment, you probably haven’t seen this fascinating clip that observes a small pellet of uranium as it just sits sealed in a lighted cloud chamber infused with vaporized alcohol.

To the strains of a Strauss waltz, puffy little trails begin to erupt from the uranium in staccato straight lines, shooting through the alcohol cloud and radiating in all directions like soft white fireworks. It’s a mesmerizing sight to behold.

It is also a sobering one, because what we are enabled to observe through that cloud of alcohol is the behavior of one of the most aggressive toxins on earth: radioactive decay.

This is the stuff that gives nuclear weapons their destructive energy; the instability that, in the course of things, has been somewhat inefficiently harnessed to generate simple electricity.

It takes a whole lot of uranium, a relatively low energy source of radiation, to produce a little bit of weapons-grade plutonium. Between the mine and the battlefield, turning uranium into reactor fuel is a convenient first step on the way to enabling nuclear weapons, which is a major reason so many countries want “nuclear power”.

The dependent relationship between nuclear weapons and nuclear power stations provides one of the biggest bones of contention in the world today.

Setting that aside for others to consider, and returning to the simple lesson that is so vividly illustrated by the video, one cannot ignore the fact that even the tiniest particle of uranium is alive with radioactive potential.

Imagine the environmental hazards associated with every stage of uranium processing, from extraction to waste disposal, when every tiny particle is literally bristling with projectile energy.

While uranium in minute amounts is a common enough component of rock and soils available almost everywhere, there are relatively few places on earth where concentrations of uranium rich mineral deposits are great enough to represent opportunities for cost-efficient mining.

The danger to mine workers is not so much from the uranium ore, which has low concentrations of pure uranium relative to the mass in which it is sequestered. The real danger lies in the fine particulates and radon gas that are released from the rock in the course of mechanical extraction.

This hazard threatens the surrounding environment and population as well, since slurry and waste from the mining operation find their way into groundwater and may be redistributed through the air as well.

Even decades after uranium mines have been exhausted for all practical purposes, surrounding populations must endure the continuing threat posed by tailings, a waste byproduct of uranium mining. For example, hundreds of residents of the Navajo communities of North Church Rock and Quivera, New Mexico, where two nearby uranium mines ceased to be profitable and were abandoned at the close of the Cold War have suffered enormous health risks due to the mountainous piles of waste that the uranium mines simply left behind.

Ever since these New Mexico mines closed, corporate owners of the two lethal stacks have been feuding with the federal government over who is responsible for the cleanup.

At least one of the waste piles is scheduled to move down the road to a tailings dump, which will distance it somewhat from the local population, if not from the greater environment.

That move in itself raises another point of contamination in the uranium fuel chain: transportation. To transfer the waste to a less objectionable location, it is estimated that 38 open dump trucks will be required. Loading the trucks will stir up so much harmful particulate matter that the government will relocate residents for up to five years following the move in order to allow the dust to settle again, and to monitor the grounds for remaining contamination.

Just imagine each of those tiny particles being energized like that uranium pellet in the cloud chamber, and small enough to be inhaled… Now imagine what happens on a cellular level when all that bristling energy lodges deep in the human lung and continues to radiate indefinitely.

As those loaded dump trucks wheel through the environment to their ultimate destination, it isn’t difficult to imagine that they will be seeding the air with radioactive dust and particulates, endangering all who live and work along the way.

These same hazardous scenarios play out on a daily basis around active uranium mines, and at the processing plants where uranium ore is refined into nuclear fuel. I would guess that the concentration of harmful radiation in millings and tailings might be even greater as the uranium undergoes further refinement in the fuel production process.

Even if none of the collateral contaminants distributed by mining are considered, when nuclear energy production is viewed strictly from the perspective of fuel sourcing, it is clearly far, far from a “clean” energy source.

Cited Links:

http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-uranium-emits-radiation-inside-cloud-chamber

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/2014/08/06/uranium-mining-%20navajo-reservation-cleanup-radioactive-waste/13680399/

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