On Oct. 13, there was a powerful natural gas explosion in Dnipropetrovsk, located in eastern Ukraine. About 30 people died.
Ever since the explosion, almost every Ukrainian politician has attacked Viktor Vekselberg, the owner of DnipropetrovskGorGaz, which is the local gas company that may be responsible for the blast.
Actually, Vekselberg owns only 50 percent of the company. The other half is owned by Mikhail Abyzov, but this is beside the point. Since Vekselberg is a public figure and a Russian oligarch to boot, he is a more attractive target to blame for the accident.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko declared that he would teach Russian oligarchs a lesson about “criminal liability, if they don’t understand their moral responsibility.” Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has “assembled a group of 10 lawyers that will force Mr. Vekselberg to pay for all losses caused by the accident.”
Ukrainian Emergency Situations Minister Nestor Shufrych, a member of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s coalition, announced that he would press for nationalizing DnipropetrovskGorGaz if Vekselberg failed to reimburse the ministry to the tune of $20 million, the amount the government apparently spent handling the disaster.
The primary cause of the gas explosion is not known. It could have been caused by the dilapidated condition of gas lines, a high-pressure surge or tampering with gas meters by residents of the apartment building.
People are lining up to hurl accusations at DnipropetrovskGorGaz. And the populist threats to nationalize the gas company are very disturbing. In the end, not a single Ukrainian politician has missed the chance to exploit the deaths from this tragedy as a personal public-relations opportunity or to promote the interests of their financial backers. And some are guilty of doing both.
“Is this the glorious democracy we were fighting for?” you might ask.
Yes. In fact, this is democracy in its best form. As a result of this public outcry, Vekselberg announced that he would pay the families of the deceased $100,000 each and $10,000 to each of the injured. It should be reiterated that the cause of the accident has not been established yet.
Do you recall how much was paid to victims after a similar explosion in Arkhangelsk took the lives of 60 people? I’ll refresh your memory: The families of the deceased received 100,000 rubles (about $4,000) each.
And how much did the victims of the Dubrovka theater attack receive as compensation? In 2004, even the most persistent plaintiffs managed to win a maximum payment of only 327,000 rubles (about $13,000). And then there was the Moscow City Court ruling that increased the compensation for Alla Alyakin, a Dubrovka hostage, by 2 kopeks.
Contrary to what many think, democracy is not justice at all. It is all a bunch of lies, demagoguery and populism. It is also about politicians who exploit a tragedy — and the public outrage that emerges as a consequence — to grab shares of profitable industries under the false mantra of “justice.”
But in this case, the result of this demagoguery and corruption is that Tymoshenko’s political bloc will pay each victim 2,000 hryvnas ($395), while the government will allocate 5,000,000 hryvnas (roughly $1 million) to compensate the victims and help them acquire new apartments.
Democracy has a price — an absolutely concrete price.
Compare the $100,000 that each victim in Dnipropetrovsk will receive with the additional 2 kopeks paid to Alyakina in Moscow. This clearly underscores the difference, in arithmetic terms, between a country where the president is compelled to please the people and a country where the people worship their president.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Description: A demonstration of how nuclear reaction works using a matrix of ping pongs set on top of mouse traps at a Physics show at the University of Bonn.
Hmm. This still doesn’t explain it to me. Am I missing something?
(CBS) The Skinny is Keach Hagey’s take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.
Boy, what a cynical bunch we’ve become. Readers of this week’s Skinny generated reams of comments on Monday’s column’s news that the government was backing away from its post 9/11 plan to distribute anti-radiation pills to residents near nuclear reactors. Responses ranged from those who saw the original plan as a political ploy meant to pump up fear of imaginary terrorists, to those who think the whole thing is silly because if the apocalypse comes, pills won’t help much.
The story came from USA Today’s report that the Bush administration may scrap a plan to give anti-radiation pills to millions of people, five years after Congress ordered that the tablets be made available to anyone living within 20 miles of a nuclear reactor. Congress issued the order based on fears that terrorists could attack a nuclear plant. The once-a-day pills protect the thyroid against ingested radioactive iodine by saturating it with harmless potassium iodide, thus guarding against thyroid cancer following radioactive exposure.
Back when the White House was focused on conjuring images of mushroom clouds to sell the Iraq war, it called potassium iodide pills crucial to preventing thyroid cancer. But now that it’s looking like we might actually need all those nuclear reactors - plus a whole lot more of them - to power the country, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is arguing against distributing the pills.
Commenter brianbwb thought the original plan to distribute the pills was pure political theater. “The fact is that the dissemination of information about stockpiling the pills was part of Bush’’s terror campaign, to make the suckers out there think that fictional “terrorists” out there somewhere in the Middle East were “coming to get you”, armed with nuclear waste,” he wrote. “Now that the scare has worked and is now counter productive to the interests of the power companies” wish to go nuclear, they backtrack and say ‘Oops, we scared the suckers too much, lets back it off a little.’”
Meanwhile, commenter chfin5 thought the pill distribution program wasn’t such a bad idea, if only the government had stuck to it.
“When certain kinds of information comes from the government you just have to learn to ‘eat the grass’ and ‘leave the briers alone,’” chfin5 wrote. “However since some of the government warnings of us being attacked by terrorists with something radioactive say ‘when’ and not ‘if,’ I see no reason to doubt them. And for the government to stop making these iodine pills because of some offense to the nuclear power plant plans sure doesn”t make a lot of common sense to me. Go ahead and build your plants! … Anything to get our country self sufficient from the Middle East would be fine and dandy with me.”
Commenter ridingwoman put a reality check on the whole debate by pointing out that people near nuclear reactors are pretty much doomed if there’s a meltdown, pills or no pills.
“Having worked many years in a nuclear industry, let me explain something,” she wrote. “The pills will do NOTHING to prevent radiation exposure. They are only a way of protecting the thyroid, somewhat. A radiation spill or meltdown or catastrophic failure will be another story entirely. We are bombarded with radiation every day from the sun. Imagine a massive sunburn cooking you all the way through your body, slowly over days. Archive photos from the Chernobyl spill in Russia to see what could happen.”
Got that, kids? A massive sunburn cooking you all the way through your body, slowly over days. With that image in mind, arguing whether the pill plan was political or not seems a little beside the point. Come to think of it, just about everything seems beside the point.
As Mikhail Gorbachev became the Communist Party’s General Secretary and the de facto leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, he became aware of much that we would learn for sure only later. He saw the way in which the unbridled growth of the defense industry during the cold war had polluted the country. He realized that life expectancy had been in decline since 1964. And the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power station vividly demonstrated to him the dangers both of bureaucratic bodies getting carried away with their grandiose designs, and of keeping everything hidden behind a veil of secrecy. In addition, the collapse of Soviet agriculture showed him the uselessness of using chemicals extensively on farms.
The former Soviet leader opened a dialogue with the West and helped to end the deadlock of the cold war
All of this seems to have made Gorbachev exceptionally sensitive to voices that spelled out the risks of using pesticides; the dangers of reversing the flow of Russian rivers; the perils that a continuing arms race would present to the health of the people and the country’s ecology.
As Gorbachev realized that the fall of the Soviet system was imminent, he strove — and succeeded — to ensure that there was a peaceful, nonviolent transition of the closed and totalitarian Soviet society to democracy and openness. This is Gorbachev’s historical achievement. Once he embarked on that quest, greater ecological awareness of how the state was managed inevitably followed. Along with it came a new openness with regard to ecological data, together with popular participation in decision-making that affected the environment.
Once the U.S.S.R. collapsed, Gorbachev used his authority and experience to launch Green Cross International in the wake of the 1992 U.N. Rio Conference on Environment and Development. The Green Cross has emerged as a worldwide environmental-protection body that addresses everything from climate change to chemical contamination. “We are facing a global environmental crisis, a conflict between man and nature,” Gorbachev told an Australian newspaper last year. “And that means we need a dramatic change in politics, in attitudes.” If the world had more such leaders, we would be far better equipped to handle such challenges as global warming, the decline in ocean species and biological diversity, and all the other global ecological issues of our time.
Alexei Yablokov is Chairman of the Green Russia political faction and Vice Chair of the Russian Democratic Party Yabloko
Filed under: Uncategorized — Cindy Marie Jenkins @ 11:25 pm
The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking … the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)
Filed under: People, History — Cindy Marie Jenkins @ 8:17 pm
Chernobyl voices: Lena and Anya Kostuchenko
Lena Kostuchenko, 39, and her daughter Anya, 19 Chernobyl zone evacuees in Kiev
I was five months’ pregnant when the accident occurred. My husband and I were spending the weekend at my mother’s house in Kopachi (a village just south of the power station). We woke up on Saturday morning and decided to go to Chernihiv, the nearest big town, to buy maternity clothes.At the bus stop we saw lots of fire engines and troop carriers on the main road. We waited and waited, but no bus came. Eventually a policeman told us there would be no buses, because there had been an accident.There had been small accidents before, so we did not worry. We worked in the garden all day.
In 2004, Anya caught meningitis and was in a coma for three days
On the Sunday I had to go to work in Pripyat. Again there were no buses, so we set off on foot. But I began to feel very ill, before I had got half way. My husband helped me home, then walked to Pripyat alone.
When he got back, he said the town had been evacuated. By then I had got out of bed and wandered outside. Another policeman finally told me the truth - he said there was high radiation and pregnant women should get out at all costs. At that time I did not know what radiation was.
Abortions
Police were blocking the main road, but we drove to Ivankiv via back roads. Two days later I ended up in hospital. Doctors threw away my clothes, and “decontaminated” me with a cold shower.
There were lots of other pregnant women there. The doctors said all would have abortions, or induced births. They did some of the abortions quickly, then changed their mind and said we would all give birth, after all.
We went to Chop (on the Hungarian border) then to Mykolayiv (near the Black Sea). In each new town, I had to throw away the clothes I had bought in the last one. They must have been contaminated by my own radioactive body.
I gave birth to Anya two months early. She was big - 2.5kg (5.5lbs) and 49cm tall - but her nails had not formed and she was a yellowish colour, so she was put in an incubator. I was not allowed to see her for eight days.
Blood disease
Later, when we moved to Kiev, specialists hospitalised her on sight. Her haemoglobin count was about a quarter or a third of the normal level. At that time you could not say it was because of Chernobyl - it could be anything except Chernobyl. Much later a haematology professor told me I had been very unlucky: I was in the wrong place at the wrong time of my pregnancy.
Anya is like a house plant. She has a very rare blood disease and almost no immunity. In 2004 she caught meningitis and was in a coma for three days. A doctor told me it was all over, but she pulled through.
In the 1990s a law was passed, which promised benefits to Chernobyl invalids, but it said nothing about child invalids. Together with some other parents I formed an organisation, Flowers in the Wormwood, which successfully lobbied for the law to be changed.
There is a tendency now to play down the problem of Chernobyl, and, if possible, to forget it. Once the 20th anniversary has passed, I think the state will begin to withdraw support.
Filed under: Uncategorized — Cindy Marie Jenkins @ 8:10 pm
While I don’t continue working on VOICES to create specifically an anti-nuclear piece, this is still a video to watch. - CINDY
HELLO FRIENDS,
I have edited a video for MUSE (Musicians United to Sustain the Environment.) Was up until 4 am editing with Jackson Browne, we launched the video yesterday. Please enjoy the video, but most importantly CALL YOUR CONGRESS PERSON to stop the 50 billion dollar Bailout for the Nuclear Industry to build more plants. Think of our CHILDREN and their future.
Thank you for your time.
-Tracy
For Release: 11 am Eastern October 11, 2007Contact:
Sam Boykin, 212.584.5000, sboykin@fenton.com
Joel Finkelstein, 202.822.5200, jfinkelstein@fenton.com
No-Nukes Musicians Launch Campaign to Stop the Nuclear Bailout
Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt Spark Effort
Energy Bill Would Subsidize New Nuclear Reactors with Taxpayer Billions
LOS ANGELES and WASHINGTON, DC Musicians Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Graham Nash announced today a new campaign to stop Congress from bailing out the nuclear power industry. They launched the campaign with the release of a YouTube video and national petition effort all available at www.nukefree.org. The artists will deliver the petitions to Congress at a press conference and Lobby Day in Washington D.C. on October 23rd.
Initial petition signers include Ben Harper, Natalie Maines and Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks, Melissa Etheridge, Maroon 5, Keb Mo, Patti Smith, Pearl Jam, Herbie Hancock and dozens of others. Already the Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, U.S. PIRG, Environmental Working Group, TrueMajority.org, Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Working Assets Wireless have joined the effort. The musicians are urging the public to sign the petition.
The Senate version of the Energy Bill, currently before Congress, authorizes the Department of Energy to provide virtually unlimited loan guarantees for funding of new nuclear reactors. The nuclear energy industry has already indicated it wants $25 billion in guarantees for 2008, and another $25 billion for 2009, with untold billions more to come after that.
The petition states:
“We ask that all members of Congress join us in working to remove from the pending Energy Bill massively expensive loan guarantees—potentially a virtual blank check from taxpayers— for the building of many more nuclear power plants. We strongly support those parts of this Energy Bill that advance Renewable Portfolio Standards, increased fuel efficiency for automobiles, and other safe, clean solutions to global warming.”
The YouTube video, produced by Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation, integrates an adapted version of the Stephen Stills song, “For What It’s Worth” with information about both the problems of nuclear power and the potential of safe, green energy, including:
The vulnerability to attack, or accident, of both the reactors and the thousands of shipments of radioactive nuclear waste moving through neighborhoods across the country.
How subsidies to nuclear power would depress investment in sustainable safe sources of energy.
The global warming pollution produced in reactor construction, and in the mining, milling and transport of nuclear fuel and waste.
Graham, Bonnie and Jackson worked, with many others, on the issue of nuclear power throughout the 1970’s, culminating with the 1979 series of five “No Nukes” concerts at Madison Square Garden. The Rally, feature film and triple album based on those concerts along with the ongoing work of grassroots organizations helped catalyze overwhelming public opposition to nuclear power. There have been no new atomic reactors ordered and built in the U.S. since then.
Instead of new nuclear reactors, the artists are urging Congress to get behind those parts of the Energy Bill that advance safe, economically viable solutions to global warming.
###
PETITION TO STOP THE NUCLEAR BAILOUT
To: The 110th United States Congress
We ask that all members of Congress join us in working to remove from the pending Energy Bill massively expensive loan guarantees—potentially a virtual blank check from taxpayers— for the building of many more nuclear power plants.
We strongly support those parts of this Energy Bill that advance Renewable Portfolio Standards, increased fuel efficiency for automobiles, and other safe, clean solutions to global warming.
The tragedies of September 11th, 2001, underscore how vulnerable atomic reactors are to terror attacks by airplanes and missiles. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island remind us that major nuclear accidents can also be caused by human error.
The problem of radioactive waste remains unsolved. All reactors create deadly by-products that must be isolated for centuries. These wastes will have to be moved throughout the nation on trucks and trains, which could themselves have accidents and become terror and proliferation targets. There is no storage site even planned for the wastes that would come from new reactors. The controversial dump under construction at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which may never open, cannot handle even the waste from reactors already in existence.
Huge quantities of energy are used for nuclear fuel enrichment, transportation, construction and waste storage. This is no solution to global warming. Reactors in Alabama and France have already shut because they are super-heating nearby rivers and streams.
The “new generation” nuclear plant now being built in Finland is already 18 months behind schedule and $900 million over budget. This is a design planned for our country. If construction begins here, tax and ratepayers will be stuck with the bill.
The Senate version of the Energy Bill could authorize the Department of Energy to provide virtually unlimited guarantees for backers of new reactors. The industry indicates it wants $25 billion in guarantees for 2008, and another $25 billion for 2009, with untold billions more to come after that.
The industry wants these subsidies because after fifty years, atomic power has been rejected by the marketplace. The first commercial nuclear reactor opened in 1957. But after fifty years of proven failure, Wall Street will not independently invest in more of them, and still no private insurance company will underwrite the possibility of a major reactor disaster.
In fact, nuclear power has been left behind by a profitable revolution in safe, clean, renewable energy sources, and in energy efficiency. Wind, solar, bio-fuels, geothermal, ocean thermal and more are shaping a green-powered Earth that produces jobs and sustainability. This is the true solution to global warming.
These wasteful reactor loan guarantees would siphon away resources better spent on truly competitive sources of power.
So we ask that they be removed from the Energy Bill. Higher auto mileage standards, biofuels, energy efficiency and requirements for renewable energy are what we need to survive and prosper, not more taxpayer bailouts for the proven failure that is atomic energy.
Filed under: History — Cindy Marie Jenkins @ 8:04 pm
I am posting this because:
(a) I need a break from the next play I am writing
(b) I am going to develop the character of Stepanov further for the next Draft of Chronicle of the Future
(c) the bbc site is very extensive
1986: Soviets admit nuclear accident
The Soviet Union has acknowledged there has been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The report, from the official news agency, Tass, said there had been casualties but gave no details of numbers. It said aid was being sent to the injured.
The report said that one of the reactors had been damaged in the accident, but gave no further details beyond saying that measures were being taken to “eliminate the consequences of the accident”. It also claimed the accident was the first at a Soviet power station.
The report was the first confirmation of a major nuclear catastrophe since monitoring stations in Sweden, Finland and Norway began reporting sudden high discharges of radioactivity in the atmosphere two days ago.
Meltdown
The accident is believed to be the most serious in the history of nuclear power, worse even than that at the Three-Mile Island power station in the United States in 1979, when there was some release of radioactivity but nobody was injured.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, just north of Kiev, consists of four nuclear reactors, known as light-water cooled, graphite-moderated reactors - a type hardly used outside the Soviet Union.
Nuclear experts say the levels of radioactivity recorded indicate that the nuclear core of the damaged reactor may have melted down.
Full-scale alert
The number of casualties, both immediately and in the future, from radiation sickness, is expected to be high, although the exact number may never be known. It is not believed, however, that there is any risk to the health of anyone outside the Soviet Union.
The discharge of radioactivity was so great that by the time the fallout reached Sweden, 1,000 miles away, it was still powerful enough to register twice the natural level of radioactivity in the atmosphere.
The sudden jump in radioactivity levels was enough to prompt a full-scale alert in Sweden, which initially believed the accident had happened at its own nuclear power station, on the Baltic coast. The evacuation of 600 workers had been ordered before experts realised that the source of the radioactivity must have been within the Soviet Union.
Chernobyl remains the world’s worst civil nuclear disaster. It emerged that design flaws had led to a power surge, causing massive explosions which blew the top off the reactor.
Estimates of the numbers affected vary tremendously. A report in 2005 by the Chernobyl Forum, set up by a number of bodies including the World Health Organisation, the UN and governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, concluded that fewer than 50 people, most of them workers at the plant, died as a result of exposure to radiation. Most of them died immediately after the disaster, but some survived until as late as 2004.
The forum estimates up to 9,000 people could eventually die from radiation exposure - although Greenpeace claims the figure could be much higher, up to 93,000.
The contamination spread across neighbouring Belarus, and into Europe. In north Wales, sheep on some 350 farms still have to be tested for radiation before their meat can be eaten.
A concrete sarcophagus was hastily built to cover the damaged reactor, but it is weakening over time. It is due to be replaced in 2007.
Chernobyl continued to produce electricity for another 14 years, until international pressure forced its closure in 2000.
An official exclusion zone around the plant remains in place, extending for 30 kilometres (18 miles). It is one of the most radioactive spots on Earth.
I did some search on MySpace. I typed in the search “Chornobyl” and a bunch of stuff came up. A lot of people write about the incident and I also found some people who are personally affected by it.
One couple for example adopted two children from Chornobyl. Find out for yourself by going to MySpace.
In 2004, Anya caught meningitis and was in a coma for three days 
