Greenpeace to Reyes: Learn lessons from Chernobyl

An international environmental organization on Wednesday lashed out at Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes' plan of exploring nuclear options to bolster the country’s demand for energy. Von Hernandez, Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaign director, said in a statement that Reyes failed to learn lessons from environmental disasters caused by the use of nuclear energy such as those experienced in Chernobyl in Ukraine and Kashiwazaki in Japan. Reyes earlier said that his department wanted to pursue nuclear options to avert power crisis that could hit Visayas and Mindanao in 2009 and Luzon in 2010 or 2011. Greenpeace said the plan would again be opposed by stakeholders and concerned groups just like what happened in the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant “that was built on a fault line and was cancelled due to opposition from local communities." The 1986 Chernobyl disaster is considered the world’s worst nuclear accident. A 2005 report from the Chernobyl Forum, led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) attributed 56 deaths to the explosion of Chernobyl’s nuclear number 4 that was near the city of Pripyat in Ukraine. WHO and IAEA estimated that there could be 4,000 extra deaths from the disaster due to the victims’ exposure to radioactive waste. They also said that in 2002, 4,000 children who lived within the vicinity of Chernobyl, were diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Meanwhile, on July 16, 2007, radioactive materials leaked undetected from a nuclear power plant when an earthquake of magnitude 6.8 hit Kashiwazaki, Japan. It was reported that about 315 gallons of radioactive water had leaked into the sea. “(We must not) forget (that) our country is located in the typhoon belt and on the edge of the Pacific ring of fire that makes it prone to extreme weather events and earthquakes. Combine this with our government’s inept capacity to maintain and enforce safety standards or environmental guidelines (and) you have potential disaster in the making," said Hernandez. - GMANews.TV