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By GIFF JOHNSON Survivors of two of the world’s worst
nuclear accidents discovered they have much in common during
activities in Majuro this week to commemorate the 51st
anniversary of the Bravo test, America’s largest hydrogen
bomb exploded on Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954.
“The reason the exposure was so bad is that we were lied
to all the time,” said Dr. Lyudmyla Porokhnyak, a citizen of
the Ukraine and a survivor of the world’s worst nuclear
reactor disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. Porokhnyak was
speaking Monday to a group of Marshall Islanders who
survived the Bravo test, which, much like the Chernobyl
accident, spewed radioactive fallout unsuspecting islanders
living downwind.
The heads of Marshall Islanders in attendance at Monday’s
conference to mark the 51st anniversary of Bravo nodded
repeatedly during Porokhnyak’s speech, confirming the many
similarities between the two experiences separated by three
decades and thousands of miles.
While Porokhnyak recounted how the authorities of the
then-Soviet Union initially attempted to cover up the 1986
accident and downwind contamination, Marshall Islanders
experienced similar efforts by the United States government
in 1954 to downplay the devastating impact of the Bravo test
on downwind islanders — government actions that they contend
led to further exposure of people in both countries.
Islanders were not evacuated from islands that were
engulfed in snow-like radioactive fallout for two-to-three
days after the Bravo test. Although many of the more than
200 islanders who were heavily exposed developed severe
radiation burns on their skin and had their hair fall out,
US Atomic Energy Commission authorities issued a press
statement following the test saying that “there were no
burns” and the islanders were in good health. US officials
then allowed islanders to return home to live in radioactive
environments soon after the test without any radioactive
clean up work on their islands.
Porokhnyak said that Soviet authorities attempt to hush
up the Chernobyl meltdown had disastrous results. Activities
— ranging from outdoor weddings and crop planting to May 1
rallies attended by millions in the Ukrane capital of Kiev —
were allowed to continue as if nothing had happened so as
not to cause a panic about the accident, resulting in people
being unnecessarily exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl
plant, she said. Even the people evacuated from Prypiat, a
city of 50,000 close to Chernobyl, were only resettled a few
miles further away, so continued to be exposed to radiation
in the environment, she said.
Rayon William, a Rongelap Islander, said on Monday that
she wasn’t on her home island during the 1954 hydrogen bomb
test at Bikini, but returned there with other islanders when
the US authorities said it was safe in 1957. “I ate food
from the land and sea,” she said, adding that she now knows
that the food was laced with radioactivity from the Bravo
test. “I’ve experienced many illnesses as a result of living
in a contaminated island.”
It wasn’t until after Rongelap Islanders evacuated
themselves from Rongelap in 1985 that the US Congress funded
scientific studies that confirmed Rongelap Islanders’ fears
that their home atoll was still contaminated and in need of
nuclear clean up work. Subsequently, the Congress funded a
$45 million resettlement trust fund that is now paying for a
clean up and resettlement program.
Monday’s conference was sponsored by the survivors group
‘ERUB’, an acronym for the four most heavily exposed islands
(Enewetak, Rongelap, Utrik and Bikini) that also means
‘broken’ or ‘damaged’ in Marshallese language.
Porokhnyak said that while the Soviet government was
responsible for the initial cover up of Chernobyl, a cover
up continues today by the United Nations and the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
“The U.N. and the IAEA are perpetuating the cover up,
saying that only 34 people died from Chernobyl,” she said.
“This figure is absurd.”
She charged that fully 10 percent of the 600,000 workers
who were brought into Chernobyl in the two months after the
accident to clean up and shut down the nuclear plant have
died in the 19 years since.
She said that medical workers in the Ukraine are seeing
many health effects that they believe are related directly
to the Chernobyl accident, including severe immune system
problems in the population. She cited what she described as
an “epidemic of tuberculosis” in the Ukraine that is highly
unusual for a developed nation. She also noted that
Ukrainian men have the world’s highest infertility rate,
which she attributes in large part to radiation exposure.
Porokhnyak said she was worried by declining funding for
medical and environmental studies needed to determine the
long-term risk to people in the Ukraine and the safety of
land around Chernobyl.
Rongelap Islander Almira Matayoshi, who was a child when
she was exposed to Bravo test fallout, said Monday that it
took nearly 30 years for Marshall Islands nuclear survivors
to begin gaining international attention to their plight by
speaking out at global forums and lobbying the US Congress
to focus attention on health problems in their islands. |
