Photo of the Chernobyl reactor building after the accident (1986)

Dear readers, dear friends,

This is an absolutely unique eye-witness story on Chernobyl. Of the survivors, Alexander Yuvchenko was among the nearest to the scene of the accident of 26 April 1986, and certainly one of the most technically competent to ever speak of his experience on this occasion. He was an engineer at the Chernobyl power plant, on duty that night at Reactor Number 4, in an office quite close to the explosion, living the experience of seeing the injured and giving first aid, being in the control room and witnessing what happened there and recording here the first perceptions of the accident.

According to the extract of his story published on the internet, this film is a rather spectacular eye-witness account (see URL below). It is to be broadcast for the first time and will undoubtedly further traumatize public opinion.

Alexander Yuvchenko will appear in "Disaster at Chernobyl" on Discovery Channel in Europe at 10pm (UK time) (21H00 UTC/GMT) on sunday 29th August 2004.

This gentleman who was at the wrong place at the wrong time speaks openly of his experience. As he says at the end of the interview published on the web (see the New Scientist article below), he is not anti-nuclear, despite these happenings, provided that safety is considered as a priority. This is exactly the argument and position of EFN.

It would be interesting:

1/ to view this documentary, and to try to understand whether it is true or fanciful,

2/ to secure a copy for EFN's archives, and

3/ perhaps to contact Alexander Yuvchenko afterwards, if his story isn't too fanciful, to invite him to become a member of the Committee of Honorary Members of EFN.

To find out what it's all about, don't miss this documentary and, if you are not afraid to know, visit the following URL: http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinterview.jsp?id=ns24611

This account looks apparently authentic, but we wonder if it has not been dolled up and sensationalized. It's not easy to have a good opinion at a distance, without having well informed connections on the spot. The infos we have so far is that the story looks true, but we haven't seen the film yet.

For more information, so as to be able to speak knowingly to people around you, I suggest that you read or re-read the papers on Chernobyl in the "Documents" section on EFN's web site :
http://www.ecolo.org/documents/listdoc-en.htm#tchernobyl

You will find about thirty documents there, several of them exclusive, which will help you understand what heally happened at Chernobyl the night of 26 April 1986, the environmental fall-out, the consequences for public health, etc.

A big "thank you" to Berol and Jim Muckerheide for passing this information to us.

EFN in the headlines - The Independent does it again

Pr James Lovelock (FRS), 84 years old, a member of EFN, considered by the environmental community as the historical father of environmental thinking since the 1960's, recently shaked the environmental community and went into the top headlines around the world with his cover article published by The Independent on 24 May 2004 describing why nuclear energy is the only ecological solution to the world's energy problems. This article was republished and commented by the press in many countries, and bounced around the world all summer, for example in "Le Monde" in France (also as a cover story) and in many other media. After this article was published in The Independent, the British government announced that it was reconsidering the future of nuclear energy in a more favourable way.

EFN was contacted by numerous journalists this summer for other articles, TV interviews for the BBC and other press magazines. Since then a growing fraction of our time is devoted to the media.

The Independent was rather happy about this story, and is planning to publish a similar story again. Day before yesterday, they phoned Jim, asking him if he was willing to write a new article on nuclear energy. Jim suggested that they publish his preface to my book instead of writing a new article. I gave them the authorization to do so as long as EFN and our web site could be mentioned.

Photo : Pr James Lovelock (left) with his friend Bruno Comby (right) President of EFN, after a walk of several hours in nature, discussing about our planet, its future, and nuclear energy (with the statue of Gaia, Greek Goddess of the Earth, in the background).

The Independent will therefore, in principle tomorrow (saturday 28 August 2004), publish the full version of the preface to inform its readers about the environmental benefits of nuclear energy.

Click here to read the preface to the book "Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy" to be published tomorrow.

Click here to read Jim's first article published in The Independent (cover story) on May 24th 2004.

Click here for more information about the book "Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy".

Click here to access Pr James Lovelock's official web site (hosted by EFN on www.ecolo.org/lovelock).

EFN also needs support, you can help us by becoming a local correspondent, spreading the information around you, or supporting us if you can.

Sincerely yours, with kindest regards,

Bruno Comby

 ____________

I spent my childhood in the English countryside over 70 years ago where we lived a simple life without telephones or electricity. Horses were still a normal source of power and we hardly imagined radio and television. One thing I remember well was how superstitious we all were and how tangible was the concept of evil. Men and women who in other ways were intelligent, fearfully avoided places said to be haunted, and they would suffer inconvenience rather than travel on Fridays that were the 13th day of the month. Their irrational fears fed on ignorance and were quite common. I cannot help thinking that they persist, but now these fears are about the products of science. This is particularly true of nuclear power plants that seem to stir the dread that in the past was felt about a moonlit graveyard thought to be infested with werewolves and vampires.

The fear of nuclear energy is understandable through its association in the mind with the horrors of nuclear warfare, but it is unjustified; nuclear power plants are not bombs. What at first was a proper concern for safety has become a near pathological anxiety and much of the blame for this goes to the news media, the television and film industries, and fiction writers. All these have used the fear of things nuclear as a reliable prop to sell their wares. They, and the political disinformers who sought to discredit the nuclear industry as potential enemies, have been so successful at frightening the public that it is now impossible in many nations to propose a new nuclear power plant.

No source of power is entirely safe, even windmills are not free of fatal accidents, and Bruno Comby's fine book gives a true and balanced account of the great benefits and small risks of nuclear power. I wholeheartedly agree with him and I want to put it to you that the dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as our main energy source are far greater and they threaten not just individuals but civilization itself. Much of the first world behaves like an addicted smoker: we are so used to burning fossil fuels for our needs that we ignore their insidious long-term dangers.

Polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has no immediate consequences, but continued pollution leads to climate changes whose effects are only apparent when it is almost too late for a cure. Carbon dioxide poisons the environment just as salt can poison us. No harm comes from a modest intake, but a daily diet with too much salt can cause a lethal quantity to accumulate in the body.

We need to distinguish between things that are directly harmful to people, and things that harm indirectly by damaging our habitat the Earth.

Bubonic plague in the Middle Ages was directly harmful, caused immense personal agony and killed thirty percent of Europeans, but it was a small threat to civilization and of no consequence for the Earth itself. The burning of carbon fuels and the conversion of natural ecosystems to farmland cause no immediate harm to people but slowly impair the Earth's capacity to self-regulate and sustain, as it has always done, a planet fit for life. Although nothing we do will destroy life on Earth, we could change the environment to a point where civilization is threatened.

Sometime in this or the next century we may see this happen because of climate change and a rise in the level of the sea. If we go on burning fossil fuel at the present rate, or at an increasing rate, it is probable that all of the cities of the world now at sea level will beflooded. Try to imagine the social consequences of hundreds of millions of homeless refugees seeking dry land on which to live. In the turmoil, they may look back and wonder how humans could have been so foolish as to bring so much misery upon themselves by the thoughtless burning of carbon fuels. They may then reflect regretfully that they could have avoided their miseries by the safe benefice of nuclear energy.

Nuclear power, although potentially harmful to people, is a negligible danger to the planet. Natural ecosystems can stand levels of continuous radiation that would be intolerable in a city. The land around the failed Chernobyl power station was evacuated because its high radiation intensity made it unsafe for people, but this radioactive land is now rich in wildlife, much more so than neighboring populated areas. We call the ash from nuclear power nuclear waste and worry about its safe disposal. I wonder if instead we should use it an an incorruptible guardian of the beautiful places of the Earth. Who would dare cut down a forest in which was the storage place of nuclear ash?

Such is the extent of nuclear anxiety that even scientists seem to forget our planet's radioactive history. It seems almost certain that a supernova event occurred close in time and space to the origin of our solar system.

A supernova is the explosion of a large star. Astrophysicists speculate that this fate may overtake stars more than three times as large as the Sun. As a star burns - by fusion - its store of hydrogen and helium, the ashes of the fire accumulate at the centre, in the form of heavier elements like silicon and iron. If this core of dead elements, which are no longer able to generate heat and pressure, should much exceed the mass of our own sun then the inexorable force of its own weight will cause its collapse in a matter of seconds to a body no larger than 18 miles (30 kilometers) in diameter but still as heavy as a star. We have here, in the death throes of a large star, all the ingredients for a vast nuclear explosion. A supernovae, at its peak, produces stupendous amounts of heat, light and hard radiations, about as much as the total produced by all the other stars in the same galaxy.

Explosions are never one hundred percent efficient. When a star ends as a supernova, the nuclear explosive material, which includes uranium and plutonium, together with large amounts of iron and other burnt-out elements, scatters in space, as does the dust cloud of a hydrogen bomb test.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the Earth is that it formed from lumps of fall-out from a star-sized nuclear bomb. This is why even today there is still enough uranium left in the Earth's crust to reconstitute on a minute scale the original event.

There is no other credible explanation of the great quantity of unstable elements still present. The most primitive and old-fashioned Geiger counter will indicate that we stand on the fall-out of a vast ancient nuclear explosion. Within our bodies, half a million atoms, rendered unstable in that event, still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.

Life began nearly four billion years ago under conditions of radioactivity far more intense than those that trouble the minds of certain present-day environmentalists. Moreover, there was neither oxygen nor ozone in the air so that the fierce unfiltered ultra-violet radiation of the sun irradiated the surface of the Earth. We need to keep in mind the thought that these fierce energies flooded the very womb of life.

I hope that it is not too late for the world to emulate France and make nuclear power our principal source of energy. There is at present no other safe, practical and economic substitute for the dangerous practice of burning carbon fuels.

James LOVELOCK.

Presentation of this book - Author of this book - Order this book

Copyright notice : you are authorized (and encouraged) to distribute, translate in other languages and/or publish the text of this preface by James Lovelock freely, in paper or electronic form. You are authorized to send it to the media for publication, with the authorization to be published, under the condition that : 1/ it is republished or transmitted as is, without any modification 2/ you send a copy of the published article(s) to: efn[at]ecolo.org 3/ translation(s) be sent to EFN for reviewal before publication, such translation(s) may be posted on EFN's web site and/or to EFN's mailing lists.

Bruno Comby, EFN founder and president (http://www.ecolo.org ), is a well known Euorpean environmentalist, the author of 10 books published in 15 languages on ecology and energy, including the bestseller "Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy" (published by TNR Editions), a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique in France, and holds a postgraduate qualification as nuclear physicist from the Superior National University of Advanced Technology in Paris (ENSTA).

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