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PAGE 14
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, SEPTEMBER 2, 1986
The Soviets say the death toll now stands at 31 and that 6,500 people may
die prematurely.
In addition, the 135,000 people evacuated in a 300-
square-mile area around the contaminated plant may not be able to return
for four years. Top soil is being scraped off in parts of a 1,000-square
mile area and hauled away for burial as nuclear waste.
The impact of the explosion is still being felt in parts of Europe where
winds carried and deposited radiation from the initial explosion. Sheep
farmers in Cumbria in northwest England, for example, have had no choice
but to destroy their animals.
But the effect of the disaster is
especially pronounced in Scandinavia, according to this report, which
moved over REUTERS news wire on August 21:
Latest measurements in Norway show increasing radiation levels
in sheep, reindeer and fish, while in neighboring Sweden,
berries popular all over Scandinavia have joined the list of
foodstuffs declared unfit for human consumption, following the
nuclear power plant accident in the Soviet Union.
Tor
Gunneroed, head of research at Norway's Directorate for Nature
Management, told reporters that latest measurements indicate
radioactivity in lichen--the main source of nutrition for
reindeer--may increase by four to five times on current high
levels. Gunneroed said the contamination meant that reindeer in
Norway and Sweden would be slaughtered in the hundreds of
thousands this autumn and their meat lost. Reindeer meat forms
a regular part of the Nordic diet. Gunneroed said researchers
now fear mass deaths of reindeer in two or three years from the
accuinuiatI'oil""of radiafron.
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The contamination of berries, meat and fresh water fish is
likely to play havoc with the eating habits of Norwegians and
Swedes.
In both countries, berries grow wild in huge amounts
and are a favorite dish. Lingonberry growers said West German
importers have blacklisted Sweden and domestic wholesalers are
reducing purchases of blueberries and arctic raspberries.
Researchers say cattle have so far escaped large doses of
contamination because they do not eat lichen or moss, which
covers much of the Nordic countryside.
Lichen, unlike root
plants, take nourishment from the air and absorbed much of the
extra radiation recorded in Scandinavia after the fire at the
Soviet nuclear plant.
The political fallout between the Soviets and their East-bloc neighbors is
difficult to calculate. The disaster certainly fed new stories into the
anti-Soviet joke mill c
n
aow do you measure Soviet-Polish friendship?" asks
a Pole. "With a Geiger counter.") Still, Eastern Europeans are heavily
dependent upon nuclear power generators for their electricity, with much
of the technology Soviet-supplied (though no East-bloc states use graphite
reactors) •
In Western Europe the Chernobyl blow-up fueled antinuclear
power groups in Britain and West Germany, but in France there was hardly a
ripple of official or public reaction, not even a government suggestion to
review the nation's ambitious, world-leading nuclear energy program.
In light of the damage and health risks produced when just one of four
reactors at one nuclear plant exploded, consider this fact: There are