The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  To an outside observer, whatever your intentions, ETHOS appears objectively to be in the service of the nuclear industry, whose deepest wish is to muzzle the scientific information relating to the Chernobyl disaster. Professor Fernex’ text “The Chernobyl catastrophe and health” provides evidence for this. The operation to remove Nesterenko, undertaken in ETHOS’ name, the subject of our discussion today, seems to confirm this.

  If you approach ComChernobyl (which, you say, falsely implicated ETHOS) to reverse its decision, Shevchuk, the official in question will, in all likelihood, write another letter to correct his mistake: the decision to evict Nesterenko from the five villages in Stolin will have been taken independently and not on your suggestion.

  No one will believe it, because you occupy the territory in its place, while nothing would prevent a collaboration.

  But nothing is ever final. It is people who make history. The institutions and politicians that sponsor you carry a lot of weight and have sufficient prestige so that the Belarusians could put this story of the five villages behind them. This could be a credible start to a collaborative approach in developing a radioprotection policy worthy of the name.

  2.—Radioprotection in the contaminated territories of Chernobyl is impossible without a scientific approach, applied to the organism of each child and of the food s/he absorbs. This is what the Ministry of Health of Belarus does not want to do, because it will not be able to continue publishing false generalised statistical data. It explains its opposition to the work undertaken by Nesterenko who uses spectrometers for human radiation, a concrete measure that reveals the true doses of contamination. These measurements are essential for the targeted prevention programme for each child and for the establishment of the correlation between radioactive load incorporated in the organism and the many illnesses studied by the anatomopathologist Bandazhevsky. But they also reveal the true scale of the Chernobyl disaster, which has only just begun. Failing to undertake scientific work and only providing education and social support, can become an alibi, which leaves everything just as it was—in a state of “ignorance and uncertainty”.

  I am really only just discovering ETHOS now but I have known about the levels of contamination in Olmany for three years. What you say and write bears no relation to what I have observed and for which I can provide the documentation. Giving the green light for the sale of milk from Olmany certainly helps the local economy and reinforces the power of local leaders—they will be very grateful to you—but it means the epidemic will continue to spread throughout the country. Because it is not the ETHOS team, who are present in the field for ten days now and then, that will guarantee that only clean milk will be exported.

  You are right that the Belarusians should take their destiny into their own hands. The Belarusians—in the first place, this means scientists like Nesterenko. Either their expertise will be used to develop a genuine radioprotection policy or there will be no radioprotection at all. Without these scientists, the peasant farmers are trapped, with no money and no information, and they will never have the strength to deal with what confronts them. The 370 centres must be re-established.

  I needed to clarify this as briefly as possible after our conversation; for myself, for you and for all those who read this.

  Lochard sent me an email which crossed mine expressing his surprise at the way ETHOS was presented in the documents that I sent him; that there was a misunderstanding about the nature and objectives of the project and that “the ETHOS team was very willing to cooperate with Nesterenko in the future”.

  5. PROFESSOR NESTERENKO’S PROTEST

  In his protest addressed to Vladimir Tsalko, president of ComChernobyl, on 15 January 2001, Nesterenko set out the facts:

  By reducing financial support, ComChernobyl has caused, year on year, a systematic decrease in the number of local centres managed by our radioprotection institute.

  The exclusion of the LRMC of Olmany, Gorodnya and Berezhnoie from the list of centres managed by the radioprotection institute will interrupt the continuity of information that is transmitted to ComChernobyl, on the annual contamination of food products in the Brest region. The three monthly comparisons from one year to the next which permit the observation of trends will be made impossible, and the development of general radioprotection recommendations will become more difficult.

  Furthermore, Olmany, Gorodnya, Berezhnoie are large villages with populations of between 1,500 and 2,500 each. The loss of information on the contamination of food products in these villages will make it impossible to undertake the targeted monitoring of inhabitants, through the measurement of radioactive load with human spectrometry correlated with Cs-137 contamination of local food products, consumed by the different families.

  I consider it necessary to inform you that the vice-president of the previous management of ComChernobyl, I.V. Rolevich, withdrew authorisation from Belrad for the management of twenty-four centres in Leltchitsy, one of the most contaminated districts of the Gomel region, entrusting them first to local authorities and then to Gomel’s scientific radiological institute. In our opinion, this has merely resulted in the loss of important information on the contamination of food products.

  In view of the above, I urge you not to take the decision to remove the local centres of Olmany, Gorodnya and Berezhnoie from the Radioprotection Institute of Belrad’s management.

  In fact, the decision was final. Today in 2006, not one LRMC is financed by the Belarusian government.

  6. THE EXPLANATORY LETTER TO ARTE WHICH

  WORRIED ETHOS

  For the attention of Thierry Garrel

  Director of Documentaries

  Arte, France

  31st January 2001

  I promised you a translation of Nesterenko’s letter of protest that he sent recently to ComChernobyl in Belarus. It highlights the role of ETHOS in the management of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster.

  In order to understand his letter, which I am also sending to European parliamentarians who are interested in the fate of independent scientists, it is important to know that between 1991–1993, inspired by the democratic renewal of post-communist societies, ComChernobyl supported and financed 370 Local Radiological Monitoring Centres (LRMC) set up by Professor Nesterenko’s independent institute Belrad. Located in the largest villages in the areas of Belarus that are contaminated by radionuclides, these centres provided information to the population and helped them deal with the dangers. The centres were equipped with machines to measure radiation and were managed locally by doctors, teacher and nurses. They provided advice to people on food hygiene and preparation to limit their ingestion of radionuclides.

  Responding to a request for expert advice from the Belarusian Minister in charge of Emergencies, Professor Fernex had this to say, in a letter that he addressed to President Lukashenko:

  “Today, there is a new epidemic which deserves as much attention as the plague or smallpox: radiological contamination affecting vast regions. People are mainly contaminated through food that contains radionuclides.

  The Belrad Institute has measured hundreds of thousands of food samples, brought by people from villages in the contaminated zones, using remarkably precise mobile spectrometers. These are produced in Minsk and are therefore, relatively cheap. The people get the results of the measurements and at the same time they receive advice on nutrition and ways to prepare food which will reduce the content of radionuclides (soaking meat in salt water, skimming cream off milk etc). The institute is providing the public with information and a continuing education for people of all ages.

  Professor Nesterenko has contributed to the discovery of the aetiology of new clinical syndromes in children who consume food that is contaminated with Cs-137.

  In order to prioritise interventions, the children of the most contaminated regions must be identified and followed up. The Belrad Institute measures whole-body radioact
ive load with a very effective, mobile radiometric chair. They have undertaken more than 60,000 measurements. ”

  (As I explained to Garrel:) The extreme economic difficulties in Belarus and the absence of any interest from the rich countries have allowed the nuclear lobby to rapidly normalise this situation that threatened its monopoly on scientific information and could prevent it hiding the real dimensions of the catastrophe. It introduced its own advisers into various decision-making bodies and using research that produced false conclusions, it determined the direction taken by the Belarusian medical establishment.

  Michel Fernex: “It took doctors and pathologists to demonstrate the correlation between levels of Cs-137 and Sr-90 in food and in the environment, and the appearance of new and known illnesses such as diabetes and atherosclerosis, where symptoms of illness such as hypertension and myocardial infarction are appearing earlier and earlier, even in young children.

  It is thanks to Professor Yury Bandazhevsky and his team in Gomel, that knowledge has advanced, correlations have been established, and the necessary experimental proof provided to demonstrate the physiopathology of a whole range of illnesses, each of which can be correlated to an abnormal concentration of Cs-137 in the affected organ (heart, liver, kidney, digestive system etc)”.

  With the support of Western NGOs, Nesterenko and his team travel between contaminated villages in their minibus-laboratory, donated by the Irish. In order to reduce radioactive load in children’s bodies, they provide periodic treatment with an effective adsorbent—apple pectin—which has positive effects on their health. Until the last few months, Belrad worked under contract with local health authorities of the contaminated territories. The Ministry of Health recently issued instructions to health authorities to discontinue their preventive programmes with the Belrad Institute, to the detriment only of the contaminated children. (Belrad is a non-governmental organization and does not report to the Ministry).

  The support that this tiny island of civil society receives from the West has allowed it to stay afloat until now. If that support is reduced, the scientists will leave.

  What does all this have to do with ETHOS?

  ETHOS does not question the nuclear lobby’s policy which, in practice, leaves the inhabitants exposed to the consequences of the disaster and, through every possible means, obstructs scientific research and the diffusion of reliable information. ETHOS undertakes no systematic individual measurements followed up with a preventive cure such as that provided by Belrad but it uses (to what end?) the data gathered by Belrad in the field. It provides no information to people about the way radioactivity in food causes an increase in radioactive load in the inhabitants. This data should be used to direct effective and achievable aid programmes from the international community.

  In fact the help offered by ETHOS is a sham.

  ETHOS, though it may employ some sincerely motivated people, shares the interests of the nuclear lobby and of the Belarusian government and contributes to stifling the information in the three monthly bulletin, published by Nesterenko, that provides a unique source of information about the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster on human health.

  Knowing that this information was being read by people at Arte may have worried ETHOS. Needlessly. Two months later, Arte was to turn down my proposal for a documentary about the conflict of interest that was paralysing, at the highest levels of the UN, any action on the part of the World Health Organization and blocking medical and scientific research about Chernobyl. (The documentary was however made at a later date by a Swiss television company) Instead, Arte produced a faceless documentary on ETHOS113.

  113 Pouvons nous vivre ici? (Can we live here?), Arte France, 2002.

  7. ETHOS MANAGEMENT PROVIDES AN UPDATE TO ITS MEMBERS

  Position of the ETHOS team regarding Professor Nesterenko’s activities.

  On 8th February, a report was sent to ETHOS’ different partners, to various French and Swiss personalities in a number of NGOs and to French journalists by Wladimir Tchertkoff. The report is a protest against the removal of Professor Nesterenko from the Local Radiological Monitoring Centres (LRMC) in the villages involved in ETHOS Project 2. Tchertkoff, until then, was unknown to the ETHOS team who do not know the exact nature of his links with Professor Nesterenko. Tchertkoff’s presentation of the ETHOS project is inaccurate and unacceptable to the team.

  In response to my critique which was qualified as “virulent and based on imprecise and partial information and mistaken interpretations”, the letter provides a historical account of the activities undertaken by ETHOS Project 1 (1996–1999), of its relationship with Professor Nesterenko which was more or less non-existent, and with the dosimetrist of Olmany which was highly productive, and sets out the development and the ideas behind the consortium which was to become ETHOS Project 2. In fact this new project was never to see the light of day, but became the programme CORE, financed by the European Commission and directed by the CEPN team. There was never any question of radioprotection but rather of “radiological quality”, an obscure and ambiguous term (see Chapter III, page 284). For the moment, within this new hypothetical framework, as stated in the letter addressed to ETHOS members, “a discussion has been initiated” with partners in local government for the “development of indicators of radiological quality suitable for use by the population in the context of local management” and for the “local development of charts and tables for follow up work on the radiological situation at village level”. In the context of these discussions, it was recognized that “the project submitted to the Chernobyl Committee did not take into account the effect that this option might have on Professor Nesterenko’s work”. But what, in any case, is the purpose of this “option”, these “quality indicators”, these “charts” and “tables” if, as Mr Ollagnon, a team member said to Dr Fernex, “We are doing good work, but the children are more and more unwell”? The only thing that is clear from this letter is that ETHOS is occupying the territory and publicising its work pro domo through a substitution of roles in which it takes over the information and local training activities initiated by Professor Nesterenko, and leaves him with the “construction and management” of a mythical and non-existent “national observatory”. A public relations and marketing exercise which satisfies those from whom they receive their orders, who in turn present ETHOS as the model and expert in the management of the CORE programme.

  In concrete terms, the usefulness of ETHOS’ presence among the inhabitants of the contaminated villages is incomprehensible since it is not involved in health protection and the contamination in food does not decrease but rather tends to increase after their visits according to measurements made by Nesterenko.

  I refer the reader to Michel Fernex’ analysis of the ethical aspects of this programme launched by the nuclear lobby in an article entitled “When the nuclear lobby attacks its victims”. In the introduction entitled “The key lies”, he writes:

  Teachers, PhD students in agronomy, sociology, technical studies and physics, were brought together to work on the project ETHOS in the contaminated zones. The role imposed on them by the lobby, of which they are probably unaware, is the elimination of existing structures that provide radioprotection for the population. In fact, any measures that draw attention to the seriousness of the radioactive contamination of the country and its impact on people’s health are unacceptable to the nuclear lobby”.

  Chapter III

  CORE: AN INEFFECTIVE AID PROGRAMME

  On 6th December 2003, Le Figaro announced the launch of the program CORE in an article optimistically entitled “A turning point in international aid”:

  There was much emotion at the meeting in Paris on Thursday which brought together Belarusian leaders of the Chernobyl Committee, representatives of UNDP 114 and UNESCO as well as French organisations and associations that are to participate in the program CORE (Cooperation for Rehabilitation). Seventeen ye
ars after the explosion of the Ukrainian reactor, this is the first time that an international development programme has been launched in Belarus. CORE is the successor to the ETHOS project which was set up at the end of the 1990s by a handful of experts in radiation risk from France.

  114 United Nations Development Programme.

  On 2nd December at the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain finally provided their support to the programme, after President Alexander Lukashenko, who governs the country with an iron fist, finally agreed to repeal a law which imposed taxation on humanitarian aid. CORE will be involved in the most contaminated districts: Bragin, Stolin, Slavgorod and Chechersk. Overseen by the Chernobyl Committee (its director, Vladimir Tsalko is a prefect) CORE is involved in a number of areas, including health, radiology, economic and social aspects, education and culture.

  The health component, directed by the IRSN, will consist of an evaluation of the health of children aged 0–15 years. This is an important step because unusual illnesses are regularly diagnosed in this age group. What illnesses do the children suffer from? “The Belarusians do not define the illnesses in the same way, so we do not really know” explains Catherine Luccioni of IRSN. Under the direction of European scientists, the evaluation will be undertaken by doctors at the Chechersk hospital, and paid for by IRSN, which is allocating 50,000 euros to this operation. In about a year we may finally know whether these illnesses are due to chronic contamination at low doses, or not. On its side, Médecins du Monde will undertake various activities with infants and pregnant women.

  A victory for the imprisoned Professor Bandazhevsky.

  “I had the privilege of visiting Professor Bandazhevsky in his prison cell. I can assure you that he would be more upset than anyone if the work he initiated on children’s health in the contaminated territories, was not pursued” declared Stéphane Chmelewsky, French ambassador to Belarus, by way of encouragement to the CORE participants.