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ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE: NUCLEAR WASTE AND ITS EFFECT ON THE ENVIRONMENT Iryna Kurowyckyj Next year in April of 1996 the world will mark the tenth anniversary of the nuclear power plant explosion in Chornobyl, Ukraine which irradiated most of Europe and points as distant as California. The Soviets were responsible for this disaster and left the federation of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia to deal with it. The disaster has no parallel in modern history. According to the ’’Washington Post” National Weedky Edition, Chornobyl today, nine years after the disaster, still has high levels of contamination in the area surrounding the nuclear plant. The greatest problem in the long term is the move ment of nuclear contamination by underground water as reported by the French government’s institute for Protection and Nuclear Safety in April of this year. The ground water flowing toward the Prypiat River picks up radioactive particles under the powerplant. More radia tion is picked up from the bed of the cooling pond, where radioactive water was pumped during the 1986 accident. Radiation reaching the river flows into the Dnipro River — the Ukrainian Mississipi. The sarcopha gus built to shield the atmosphere from the radiation inside is cracking and deteriorating faster than expected, allowing radioactive dust to seep into the air. It is estimated that there are 800 temporary nuclear dumping sites with high concentrations of plutonium scattered among the abandoned farms and villages in the forests of the exclusion zones. These sites continue to contaminate the environment. Many are unmapped. Yet in 1995, more than 24 million people, mostly farmers, continue to live in contaminated territories with polluted air, water and soil. The government of Ukraine agreed this April to permanently close Chornobyl by 1999. This decision has been applauded by Western nuclear industry and government officials. The Ukrainian laws on nuclear activity and radioac tive security states that radioactive wastes may not be brought to the territory of Ukraine from other countries. Yet outside the city of Rivno, Ukraine, canisters of radioactive waste with unknown origins arrived for burial. The problem of nuclear waste utilization and the cleanup of radioactive pollution has not yet been solved in Ukraine. The construction of plants for utilization of nuclear and radioactive waste and the creation of spe cial repositories for their final entombment are planned by the complex program of modernization worked out in Naples by the Ukrainian energy industry in accor dance with the G-7 “Action Plan". The plans for the construction of “ Ukryttia-2” (“Shield-2”) have recently been prepared by the “Al liance” consortium. In accordance with this project the great quantity of radioactive wastes from the Chornobyl territority will be entombed in this object. Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are not the only coun tries burying nuclear waste in the earth’s surface. In Senegal, Africa buried nuclear waste is starting to leak into the ocean. In other parts of the world we find sim ilar situations. Japan, because of earthquake conditions, dumps its nuclear waste directly into the ocean. Even 20 ’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, КВІТЕНЬ 1996 Continuing our series on the Chornobyi nuclear disaster, we turn to the problem of global efforts to dispose of nuclear waste and the continuing hazards of nuclear contamination. Below, in full, are the remarks of Iryna Kurowyckyj who was a panelist at the workshop on Environmental Disaster and Its Effects on Women and Children. Ms. Kurowyckyj is vice-president in charge of Public Relations of the UNWLA and honorary president of NCW (National Council of Women). Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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