TWO Ukrainian experts working on the results of the Chernobyl disaster have appealed for an end to European expenditure on refurbishing old reactors in eastern Europe.
Mr Volodymyr Usatenko and Ms Natalia Proebrazhenka are in Ireland as part of a Greenpeace tour to commemorate the 10th anniversary tomorrow of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
Mr Usatenko is an engineer who spent 62 days as a "liquidator" attempting to close the holes in the reactor immediately after the explosion. He is now chief adviser to the government on nuclear issues.
Ms Proebrazhenka is a scientist who assisted in the evacuation of children from Kiev, the Ukrainian capital 100km from Chernobyl. She has been working with sick and dying children since.
Both are now convinced that all nuclear reactors should be closed down.
Mr Usatenko said that 10 years after the accident the causes are still not known. Some 800,000 people were involved as "liquidators". Many died immediately, and many have died from radiation related illnesses in the 10 years since.
The psychological effects as people wait to become ill are severe, and some have been unable to bear the strain.
His own health was immediately affected. Some days he felt the radiation directly, with changes in body temperature and vomiting while he was working. His teeth fell out and his eyesight was permanently affected.
"But I survived and today I'm healthy," he said.
The genetic effects would last for 30 generations, and the half life of the plutonium polluting the land was 24,000 years.
Ms Proebrazhenka said that the explosion had been a catastrophe for Ukrainians. People were not evacuated immediately and no medicine, such as iodine, was given to protect them from radiation effects.
Of the "liquidators", 60,000 had died; 40,000 of the soldiers sent in were now invalids.
Almost a million children had been identified as suffering from illnesses directly caused by radiation. These included leukaemia, blood and liver diseases and a weakened immune system. "We call this Chernobyl AIDS," she said.
She appealed for medicine for these children, and clean food. The water, land and therefore the whole food chain were contaminated.
Forty per cent of the forests were polluted, and the fire there in recent days had sent more radioactive material into the air.
At the press conference the director of Greenpeace Ireland, Ms Clare O'Grady Walshe, pointed out that the European Bank of Reconstruction, set up to invest in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, was responsible for continuing investment in the nuclear industry there.
The campaigns director of Greenpeace, Mr John Bowler, pointed out that while most Irish people knew about the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield, few knew about the old and dangerous nuclear reactor at Wilfa in Wales, only 60 miles away.
An accident there could make the whole of Ireland an exclusion zone, like the area around Chernobyl, he said.
Commenting on the announcement two days ago of the closure of Unit One of Chernobyl, he asked: "What about Unit Three? What about the other 900 reactors around the world?"
A spokeswoman for the Chernobyl Children's Project said that its delegation in the area, led by Ms Adi Roche and including 34 ambulances, four trucks and two medical aid vans, was turned back by the fire. They were all safe in Minsk.
The wind was blowing the radiation away from Minsk towards the Ukraine. The CCP team still intended to deliver the aid to the villages in Belarus, she said.