Contact: Mary Olson / olson.mary@gmail.com
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List of expert contacts below
[August 13, 2022 Asheville, North Carolina] Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is in an active war zone. With its six reactor units, it poses an unprecedented global radiological hazard on a par with the Fukushima nuclear disaster or worse. (1) Gender and Radiation Impact Project calls on all sides in the conflict to stand down on behalf of children, particularly young girls, who under-reported findings show are the most sensitive to the radiation a nuclear disaster would create. (2)(3)
“Massive release of radioactivity is unacceptable, it hurts everyone, however it causes disproportionate harm to females of all ages. Nuclear reactors inside war zones must not be targets,” said Brita Larsen Clark, Board member of Gender and Radiation Impact Project.
“Radiological emergencies harm everyone, but children suffer a higher rate of cellular damage that leads to more cancer across their lifespan. The impacts of radiation exposure are twice as great to young girls compared to young boys,” said Mary Olson, Director of Gender and Radiation Impact Project.
The general public needs to be made aware that female bodies in every age group suffer more radiation harm than males. The difference in harm between the sexes is greatest when the exposure is in young children.
This information comes from 60 years of tracking the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as reported by the National Academy of Science in 2006, sixty years after the nuclear destruction of these cities. In 2011 the data published by NAS was analyzed by Mary Olson.
“When we look at sixty years of cancer data from the A-bomb survivors, we see ten times more cancer (per capita) from the exposures that were to young girls, compared to the exposures to adult males. This comparison is important since key radiation protection standards are based on the adult male, who, it tuns out, is the most radiation-resistant part of the human lifecycle. We don’t know why females are more harmed, but this news should be a siren going off for everyone in Ukraine—and worldwide. Every radiological disaster is a much bigger disaster for girls and women,” said Mary Olson, Director of Gender and Radiation Impact Project.
Zaporizhzhia, with 6 operating reactor units on one site is in a zone where active shelling (4) is placing the entire world at critical risk of severe radiological emergency. Radioactive releases to the environment continue to cause harm for many decades. Ukraine has three other nuclear energy sites with a total of 15 reactor units, plus the closed Chernobyl site, which has also been disrupted by the war. The American Nuclear Society is also calling for cessation of fighting in the area. (5)
History’s top three nuclear disasters have all been the result of explosions distributing dangerous irradiated nuclear fuel over wide areas. The finest particles and gases have been spread worldwide. A shell impact on a Ukrainian reactor core would have similar outcomes.
Here are the three top radiological disasters to date:
· Kyshtym in September, 1957 contaminated hundreds of square miles in the Soviet Union, when liquid wastes from processing irradiated fuel exploded. Lethal levels of radiation spread over populated areas.
· April, 1986 at Chernobyl, one of 4 Soviet reactors at the site exploded and the graphite core burned for 10 days, exposing much of Europe to elevated levels of radiation and reactor fuel debris, the highest contamination being local, in Ukraine and Belarus. Fatalities due to the accident have been reported as being between 50,000 and 5 million. Large regions of the area continue to be radioactivity contaminated and unsafe to enter, even 35 years later.
· March 2011 when three US designed reactors at Fukushima Daichi exploded and released reactor fuel to both air and water, impacting a large area of Japan and the Pacific Ocean. Solid cancers resulting from exposure are still developing and will do so for decades.
In each of these nuclear disasters, children--including girls--were exposed. Due to the under-reporting of the disproportionate harm to girls from radiation, people have not had the information they need (6) to ensure greater safety and protection for everyone, including those most harmed.
The finding that radiation is more harmful to females, compared to males, as reported by Mary Olson at both the 2014 and 2022 Vienna Conferences on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons (7), is primary evidence for the new Treaty on The Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
[Citations below]
Qualified Experts Available for Comment:
Dr Helen Caldicott, MD, Author and Expert hcaldic@bigpond.com
Dr Ian Fairlie, PhD, Radiation Consultant ianfairlie@gmail.com
Dr Linda Marie Richards, PhD, Nuclear Historian linda.richards@oregonstate.edu
Mary Olson, Director, Gender and Radiation Impact Project olson.mary@gmail.com / Cell phone: +1 828-242-5621
Dave Lochbaum, Nuclear Safety Consultant davelochbaum@gmail.com
Cindy Folkers, Beyond Nuclear Radiation & Health Specialist cindy@Beyondnuclear.org
Citations
(1) See Beyond Nuclear, Reactors in a war zone pose unimaginable risks, February 2022, posted: https://beyondnuclear.org/reactors-in-a-war-zone-pose-unimaginable-risks/ see also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/13/its-madness-ukraine-holds-breath-as-putin-turns-nuclear-plant-into-frontline
(2) Olson, 2019. Disproportionate impact of radiation and radiation regulation. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol 44 #2. https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2019.1603864.
(3) Makhijani, et al 2006. Science for the Vulnerable. Posted at www.ieer.org.
(4) BBC August 11, 2022. More shelling of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been reported, with Ukraine and Russia again blaming each other for the attack. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62505815
(5) American Nuclear Society SmartBrief e-letter of 08/12/2022, http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/prgPCJyjsCDtrFlhCigacUCicNdsBs
(6) Cindy Folkers is an educator with Beyond Nuclear and created this teaching tool in 2022: https://beyondnuclear.org/tornado-in-a-library-a-video-primer-of-radiation-damage/
The Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons report (see page 41 and 42) is posted here: https://www.bmeia.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Zentrale/Aussenpolitik/Abruestung/HINW22/HINW22_Publikation_Web_gross.pdf