NH #564 – Chernobyl Radiation “Souvenirs” = Russian Sickness – Gundersen, Mangano

This Week’s Featured Interview:

• Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Energy Education and a licensed nuclear reactor operator, provides a more nuanced view of the consequences of Russian troop actions at Chernobyl. He also gets into how the dangers created by the loss of power to the New Containment Building have much to teach us about American nuclear reactors – including how the U.S. nuclear industry changed laws and regulations to allow less-protected reactors to be built. He also covers parallels between how the facility operators at Chernobyl reacted to the dangerous loss of offsite power to the emergency response of plant manager Masao Yoshida at the Fukushima during the worst hours of the triple-meltdown disaster.
  
• Joseph Mangano is an epidemiologist and founder of Radiation and Public Health Project. Here, he provides a few insights into the health problems the Russian troops can expect to experience as a result of digging trenches and being out in the field of the Red Forest – the most radioactive area of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness):

Give a man or woman a fish, they’ll eat for a day. Teach them to fish, they’ll eat for a lifetime. Grow some fish in tritium irradiated water from Fukushima… and do you really think that will make people to trust that the fish is OK so you can dump your radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean? (Meanwhile, a lot of us have given up sushi for good…)

Links:

• Russian Blunders in Chernobyl: “They Came and Did Whatever They Wanted” – Round-up article of what’s been learned thus far about the damages done to the site – and their own troops – when Russia held control of the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
• Ukrainians shocked by ‘crazy’ scene at Chernobyl after Russian pullout reveals radioactive contamination – Another strong article providing dramatic reports on exactly what the Russian troops did inside the New Containment Building and on the grounds.
• Is contaminated soil from the (Fukushima) nuclear accident waste? A valuable resource?
• More Nuclear Hotseat episodes following the Nuclear Ukraine story:
  • NH #563: UK Marine Biologist Tim Deere-Jones fills in the picture of radiation risks, IAEA minimizing reports, radioactive Russian troops as Ukraine regains control of Chernobyl. https://bit.ly/3JfknD1
  • NH #562: Ukraine shows that all nuclear reactors are targets of war, not only Zaporizhzhia & Chernobyl. Your neighborhood nuke is a dirty bomb on the ground. Dr. Paul Dorfman, nuclear consultant to governments, on why renewables are our only option.
  • NH #561: Author Kate Brown and veteran activist Harvey Wasserman on continuing Chernobyl radiation risks in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – radiation lab blown up, forest fires in radioactive exclusion zone.