Replies

Ah I guess you are using the word ‘drivel’ to refer to information you don’t like?

Let’s see, there are several radioactive open lakes in Russia but here’s a link to get you started. Once you get the names down you can find more documentation from other sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak
Here’s another
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster_
and another
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2010/08/15/12391.shtml

For a more accurate take on Chernobyl, try the YOUTUBE video series The Battle For Chernobyl (ten part series, each part is about 10 minutes). It includes interviews with Gorbychev, Hans Blix, people who were there etc. When I went to get the link to the first part for you, I found the video present in one piece lasting 1 hour 32 minutes - this is probably more convenient. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiCXb1Nhd1o
There are other excellent videos - Nova’s series Inside Chernobyl’s Sarcophagus is good too as is “ Chernobyl - the severe days”

And an example of an international medical report:
From the NEA.org website report on Chernobyl:

“For the eight years prior to 1986, only five cases of childhood (less than 15 years old on the day of accident) thyroid cancer were seen in Minsk, which is the main Belarussian centre for thyroid cancer diagnosis and treatment for children (De94). From 1986 to 1989, 3 to 6 cases of thyroid cancer in children were seen annually in Belarus. In 1990, the number jumped to 31, to 62 in 1991, then to 87 in 1993. By the end of 1998 the total had reached over 600 in Belarus. Nearly 50% of the early (1992) thyroid cancers appeared in children who were aged between one and four years at the time of the accident. Atthe same time 382 were diagnosed in the Ukraine.

The histology of the cancers has shown that nearly all were papillary carcinomata (Ni94) and that they were particularly aggressive, often with prominent local invasion and distant metastases, usually to the lungs. This has made the treatment of these children less successful than expected, whether undertaken in Minsk or in specialised centres in Europe. In all, about 150 000 children in Belarus had thyroid uptake measurements following the accident. Other data from Ukraine and Russia show a similar, but not as pronounced, increase in the incidence of childhood thyroid cancer since 1987. “

Here are the member countries of the Nuclear Energy Agency:
http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea/mcnea.html

This link sounds interesting if only I had a subscription:
ACCIDENTS WITH POPULATION EXPOSURES (PDF File)
Urals, Russia, was the site of several serious radiation events. So far. only fragmentary descriptions of the situ- ation have been published in the open ...
rpd.oxfordjournals.org/content/62/1-2/87.full.pdf

*sigh*

This one is just plain sad:

Abstract
Chelyabinsk was one of the former Soviet Union’s main military production centers, which included nuclear weapons manufacturing. Accidents, nuclear waste disposal and day to day operation of the Mayak reactor and radiochemical plant contaminated a vast area of the province. In the early 1950s there were so many occurrences of death and disease from the nuclear waste dumping in the Techa river that 22 villages along the river banks in a 50 kilometers zone downstream from Mayak were evacuated. In 1957, a nuclear waste storage tank accident released radiation double the amount released by the Chernobyl accident. This accident was kept secret and 10,700 people were evacuated. The severe environmental contamination of this region led to dramatic increases in cancer rates, birth defects, and sterility. Over the past 33 years, there has been a 21% increase in the incidences of cancer, 25% increase in birth defects and 50% of the population of child bearing age are sterile. http://www.wentz.net/radiate/cheyla/index.htm

Here’s another link”
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-30/news/mn-1908_1_nuclear-disaster

I’ll include my own anecdote here:
had dinner with a Russian nuclear scientist who told us all about a talk he was to give to an international body of scientists gathering in Georgia (USA). He was excited to be the one to brag to the foreign scientists about Russia’s innovations to remove the problem of radioactive waste (shortly before Chernobyl) . This was in the 1980’s. He stood up and began to tell them all about the way that Russia had conserved the waste by mixing them into concrete used to make schools and hospitals. First one scientist jumped to his feet to call to him “Please tell me this isn’t true!” then another. Pandemonium ensued as the audience recoiled in horror. My friend sheepishly said that Russia didn’t understand the health impacts very well and assumed that dilution with concrete was sufficient and believed that all the furor in the west about what to do with nuclear waste really had more to do with an unwillingness to waste valuable resources.

I am having trouble finding the link for the white domes that cause people to become sick by standing near them because the page it appeared on was basically exploring the folk knowledge saying that these were actually from aliens! I’ll see if I can find it looking back through the history of my browser. It was certainly odd - the domes are said to have no door and be covered with a nail-file like abrasive substance that cannot be scratched? Strange.