A Place to Stand

Doctor Andrew Craik's memory (letter today) of Chernobyl is playing him false. He is wrong in remembering that all the fire-fighters at Chernobyl died of radiation. The total casualties from that "disaster" were 56, including those killed in the immediate explosion and 3 elsewhere who died of thyroid cancer. It is true that the antinuclear movement predicted 1 million cancers and half a million deaths which would be easily statistically provable had it happened. In fact the current number of such is zero.

   He is correct to remember that various British farms were prevented from selling mutton due to the detected radiation levels. He clearly doesn't know, because the media have been silent on it, that though the Chernobyl radiation had a short half life an is virtually all gone in Ukraine, the radiation in these farms is unchanged - thus proving that it cannot have any link to Chernobyl but is natural background radiation which has been there for at least 10s of millions of years. Of course admitting this & removing the restrictions would be to admit that the entire anti-nuclear movement is politically driven Luddite hysteria, comparable to medieval witchburnings and our political class clearly consider the farmer's livelihoods less important than concealing that fact.