A significant increase in thyroid cancers in children, a very rare disease for them, has been charted in the region – nearly 7,000 cases by 2005 in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. A 2006 Greenpeace report challenged that figure, suggesting that 16,000 people had already died due to the accident and predicting another 140,000 deaths in Ukraine and Belarus still to come. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s estimate of the expected death toll from Chernobyl was 4,000. It is uncertain exactly how many cancer deaths have resulted since. Of the 350,000 workers involved in cleanup operations, according to the World Health Organization, 240,000 would be exposed to the highest levels of radiation in a 30-mile zone around the plant. It would spew out more radioactivity than 100 Hiroshima bombs. Chernobyl is ranked as a “level 7 event,” the maximum danger classification on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. It was April 26, 1986, and this was just the start of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident of its kind in history. The workers wore no protective clothing and eight of them would die that night – dozens more in the months to follow. The first firemen to the rescue brought tons of water that would prove useless when it came to dousing the fires. Tons of radioactive radium and graphite shot 1,000 meters into the sky and began drifting to the ground for miles around the nuclear plant. Suddenly, its 1,200-ton cover blasted flames into the air. As they started to do so, however, the floor of the reactor began to tremble. It was a beautiful spring day and, in the control room of the nuclear reactor, the workers decided to deactivate the security system for a systems test. Journalists Ellen Cantarow and Alison Rose Levy believe the authorities should take action. Now a new high-pressure natural gas pipeline will be built within 105 feet of critical structures of the plant. A major accident at this plant could make the entire area of New York City uninhabitable. Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear power plant, located just 30 miles from Manhattan, has long been a cause for public concern.
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