Radiation will affect a million people: expert warned about possible disaster at Zaporizhzhia NPP consequences
Photo: Energoatom
As a result of a possible catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia NPP, the zone of radiation contamination will be 2 million km2, and 1 million people will receive radiation damage, not only in Ukraine. Therefore, children should be taken out of the Zaporizhzhia region right now because they and pregnant women suffer the most from radiation.
Tetyana Tymochko, head of the All-Ukrainian Environmental League, announced this on TSN.
"According to our state authorities, 30,000 (km2 – ed.) may be an exclusion zone. This is almost ten times bigger than the exclusion zone after the Chornobyl nuclear power plant explosion. But if we are talking about potentially contaminated territories, then if after Chornobyl it was 200,000 km2, then there are already predictive calculations that this time, potentially polluted territory will amount to 2 million km2. This is simply an unprecedented territory," the expert explained.
She added that in the event of a disaster, almost the entire territory of the Zaporizhzhia region would not be suitable for life for decades.
"Thousands of people are now under direct threat of damage by radioactive elements. What is happening now at the station is an unprecedented act of nuclear terrorism," Tymochko stressed.
"Military equipment is located in the very halls of the nuclear units. Mining of the territory, which can end with explosions at any moment, can damage the equipment. And the Ukrainian specialists who service the Zaporizhzhia NPP are under constant psychological pressure. And this makes it impossible to make the right technological decisions 24/7 constantly," the ecologist noted.
She also informed that 600,000 people suffered radiation damage after the Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster. And in the event of a disaster at the ZNPP, this number might be 1 million. And the number of dead may be ten times greater than a result of the explosion at the Chornobyl NPP, which until now was considered the largest nuclear disaster.
"The scale will affect not only Ukraine but russia and Belarus, the countries of the Black Sea basin, and European countries, which are now exclusively expressing concern," the expert noted.
She emphasized that there is practically no protection from radiation. People near nuclear power plant will suffer the most from high-dose radiation.
"Therefore, it is already possible to advise children to be taken out of this zone. Pregnant women and children suffer the worst. We already have more than 30 years of experience after the Chornobyl accident; many people were born after that accident but suffer from various diseases. There are, of course, hypoprotective measures, and I hope that if this situation worsens, the population will be warned, so that part of the population is simply evacuated," said Tymochko.
Reference
The russian occupiers mined the territory of the Zaporizhzhia NPP and announced that they were ready to blow it up if such order came.
