By Praful Bidwai - April 2011 (Transnational Institute (TNI)) - Three partial core meltdowns and other crises have precipitated a nuclear nightmare. This is a wake-up call for the world.
It was a mere coincidence, if a tragic one, that the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan happened just a few weeks short of the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine, which falls on this April 26. Chernobyl is the world's worst-ever industrial accident, far worse than the Bhopal gas leak disaster of December 1984. Some 3,000 to 3,500 people perished in Bhopal in the first week of the chemical accident. The death-toll from the illnesses caused by that exposure has since risen to an estimated 15,000 to 20,000.
In Chernobyl, the number of additional cases of cancers and leukaemias caused by radiation is estimated to range from 34,000 to 140,000, leading to 16,000 to 73,000 fatalities. Some studies, including one published by the New York Academy of Sciences, put the number of fatalities at more than 10 times higher than the last figure.
A disaster waiting to happen
In many ways, however, the Fukushima disaster was not a coincidence at all. It was only waiting to happen. A part of that inevitability is attributable to the siting of as many as six reactors in a highly seismic area close to a subduction zone, where tsunamis tend to occur. Some of it is explained by the flaws of the Boiling Water Reactor design of the United States multinational General Electric. Yet another part is attributable to the questionable operating practices and accident management of the station operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO).
From Chernobyl to Fukushima: the hazardous journey of nuclear power - TNI
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