By Anna Cameron
Dr. Alexey Yablokov, a former environmental advisor to the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin, expressed serious concern Friday over response to the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima energy plant.
“My experience studying Chernobyl gives me a very bleak [and]…negative impression [of] Fukushima,” Yablokov said during a news briefing at the National Press Club.
Though the immediate magnitude of the Fukushima crisis does not compare to that of Chernoybl, Dr. Yablokov expressed heightened concern based on the comparatively high population density of Fukushima, as well as the potential contamination of the surrounding territory by plutonium.
“If plutonium is released, [there will be] enormous consequences, it is forever,” said Yablokov. “This territory will be dead and uninhabited forever [since] it is impossible to clean after plutonium contamination.”
Other experts who appeared with Yablokov chastised officials for their inability to convey legitimate information to the public concerning the current state of the nuclear crisis.
“Industry and government have already begun to downplay these effects,” noted Cindy Folkers, a health specialist at Beyond Nuclear, an organization opposed to nuclear energy and weapons. “They do this by saying that the radiation doses are safe, or radiation will decay to safe levels quickly.”
However, Folkers claims various studies performed by the National Academy of Sciences and other research institutions prove otherwise.
“As with past accidents,…information for Fukushima is incomplete regarding both the radioactive releases and the health impacts that they may have,” noted Folkers. “We need to ask the proper questions of these officials to find out what they are and are not looking for, and what they actually know, versus what they are sharing with the public….We cannot allow the lies and mistakes of [past] nuclear accidents…to be repeated for Fukushima.”