NH #253: Chernobyl 30th Anniversary SPECIAL – Mousseau, Yablokov, Sherman

A Nuclear Hotseat SPECIAL
on the Human and Genetic Impact
of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

This Week’s Featured Interviews:

  • Bonnie Kouneva, Chernobyl Survivor.  She was a 16-year old living in Sofia, Bulgaria, about 800 miles away from Chernobyl, when the accident started on April 26, 1986.  She talks about the impact on her life and the health of her children.  This former mountaineer and Greenpeace member currently lives in the United States.
  • Dr. Timothy Mousseau is an evolutionary biologist and faculty member of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Beginning in 1999, Professor Mousseau and his collaborators have explored the ecological, genetic and evolutionary consequences of low-dose radiation in populations of plants, animals and people inhabiting the Chernobyl region of Ukraine and Belarus. Full interview here.
  • Dr. Janette Sherman is well known for her work with epidemiologist Joseph Mangano on analyses of data after Fukushima that indicate a spike in US infant mortality and hypothyroidism. She also edited the English translation of Alexei Yablokov’s groundbreaking work on the book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.
  • Dr. Alexei Yablokov is a member of the Russian Academy of Science, and was environmental advisor to the Russian President Yeltsin and to the Gorbachev administration, as well as a co-founder of Greenpeace Russia. His book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment , compiled and translated into English more than 5,000 separate scientific reports on Chernobyl which completely contradict the World Health Organization’s report, which undermined the seriousness of the accident.
  • Ryuichi Hirokawa was the first non-Soviet photojournalist to document the Chernobyl disaster. The website on his humanitarian aid work with the children of Fukushima, based upon his experiences at Chernobyl, is at: kuminosato.net
  •   The Battle of Chernobyl – film: