ABSTRACT
The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, according to one United Nations (UN) volume, was ‘the greatest technological catastrophe in human history’ (Savchenko, 1995:xv; Shrader-Frechette, 1999, 2000). Nearly 7 tons of irradiated reactor fuel was released into the environment—approximately 340 million curies. Included in the release were radioactive elements with a half-life of 16 million years. Yet we humans cannot protect ourselves from such radiation because we are biologically not equipped to do so. We are unable to taste, touch, smell, hear or see radiation. Its effects are silent but deadly. Less than six years after the accident, already there had been a hundredfold increase in thyroid cancers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Most of these will be fatal (for verification of these comments see Henshaw, 1996:1052; Rytömaa, 1996; Poiarkov, 1995; NEA and OECD, 1996:28; Makhijani et al., 1995:98).
