Grönarealisten

There is no doubt that the workers at this plant east of the Ural Mountains performed dangerous work. Enveloped in a permanent atmosphere of fear -- with intelligence agents in black coats constantly hurrying through the hallways -- about 150 men would lift the warm, spent fuel elements from the reactors and carry them to the radiochemical plant......

.....While the same work was performed with remote-controlled robotic arms in the West, the Soviet workers were not even given masks to wear. There was nothing to stop plutonium gases from entering their lungs.....

......And yet the amount of health damage sustained by these workers was astonishingly low. The GSF study has examined 6,293 men who worked at the chemical plant between 1948 and 1972. "So far 301 have died of lung cancer," says Jacob. "But only 100 cases were caused by radiation. The others were attributed to cigarettes."


Finns mycket godbitar i artikeln. Mycket läsvärd. Arbetarnas förhållanden vid Mayakfabrikern var totalt jävla förkastligt. Men trots att de inte skyddades för fem öre från de giftiga och radioaktiva ämnen de arbetade så var det väldigt få som faktiskt led konsekvenser av det. En rökare löper större risk att dö av cancer än någon som i flera år arbetar med plutonium utan skyddsutrustning, det ger lite perspektiv på det ämne som brukar kallas "världens farligaste" av diverse fanatiker. 1,5% av de som jobbade på Mayak har dött i lungcancer på grund av strålning och över 3% pga rökning.

Ett till klipp ur artikeln.

Officially 47 people -- members of the emergency rescue crews -- died in Chernobyl from exposure to lethal doses of radiation. This is serious enough. "But overall the amount of radiation that escaped was simply too low to claim large numbers of victims," explains Kellerer.

The iodine 131 that escaped from the reactor did end up causing severe health problems in Ukraine. It settled on meadows in the form of a fine dust, passing through the food chain, from grass to cows to milk, and eventually accumulating in the thyroid glands of children. About 4,000 children were afflicted with cancer. Less well-known, however, is the fact that only nine of those 4,000 died -- thyroid cancers are often easy to operate on.

Varför kan ingen svensk tidning skriva artiklar som denna? Är det för politiskt inkorrekt? Passar det inte in i alla domedagsprofetior som vi ständigt ska matas med? Eller är det så enkelt som att majoriteten av journalister hatar allt med kärnteknik att göra? Synd att jag inte hittar journalistens email adress, för jag vill väldigt gärna skriva och tacka denna karln för en strålande artikel!