World must act ‘to avoid Chernobyl repeat’

Nuclear radiation campaigner Susie Greaves will be speaking in the city later this month about the crisis and its similarities with Chernobyl, the Ukrainian catastrophe of 1986.

In March 2011, a tsunami hit the Japanese coast and triggered the world’s worst industrial disaster when meltdowns occurred at three nuclear reactors at the power plant site in Fukushima prefecture.

Last month, news broke of 300 tons of highly irradiated water leaking from a water tank into the Pacific Ocean when a rubber seal failed.

But Ms Greaves, who will be giving the talk at Boulevard Village Hall, Boulevard, at 7.30pm on September 16, said this could pale compared to what may happen in November, when 1300 fuel rods are to be removed from a safe pool on top of a crumbling building.

She said: “In the light of the news from Japan this week, it is obvious that the company TEPCO and Japan itself cannot control the situation. International efforts are needed to avert a catastrophe in which Tokyo would have to be evacuated and Northern Japan rendered uninhabitable. “There are enormous discrepancies in mortality figures for Chernobyl given by various international organisations. Citizens are suffering now more than ever.

“In fact, the health effects from the accident in 1986 are at a peak now – 27 years later. In Japan, astonishingly, citizens have been abandoned to their fate in Fukushima prefecture.

“They are living in areas where levels of radioactivity are far higher than the evacuation limits set at Chernobyl.

“Living in areas as contaminated as this will lead to the same levels of illness and premature death that have been experienced in the contaminated territories of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.”