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Gorbachev: Chernobyl Offers Many Lessons For Future Of Nuclear Power

By David Dalton
2 March 2011

2 Mar (NucNet): The nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Russia in 1986 offers many lessons for preventing, managing, and recovering from such an event, as well as specific lessons for the further development of nuclear power, Mikhail Gorbachev has said.

Mr Gorbachev, who was general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the time of the accident and went on to serve as the country’s last president, said Chernobyl still serves as “a warning sign” that extreme care must be taken when constructing and operating nuclear power plants around the globe today.

In an article written for ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’, Mr Gorbachev said access to affordable and safe energy is vital for economic development and poverty eradication and “we cannot therefore simply reject nuclear energy today with many countries hugely dependent on this energy resource”.

In the article Mr Gorbachev says he first heard of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor breakdown on the morning of 26 April 1986, when the Soviet Ministry of Medium Machine Building, responsible for nuclear reactors, reported it to the Kremlin.

“Though the seriousness of the incident remained unclear during our emergency Politburo meeting, a government commission… was established and immediately dispatched to Chernobyl,” Mr Gorbachev says. “This commission included scientists from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, nuclear reactor specialists, physicians, and radiologists. They met that evening with their counterparts from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.”

Mr Gorbachev says: “Initial reports were cautious in tone, and only on the following day, 27 April, did we learn that an explosion had taken place at the nuclear power station, at least two people had been killed, and radioactive material had been released downwind.”

The full article is online: http://bos.sagepub.com/content/67/2/77.full

>>Related reports in the NucNet database (available to subscribers)

Chernobyl Shelter Construction ‘Seven Years Behind Schedule’ (News in Brief No. 18, 30 July 2007)

Ukraine Signs EBRD Agreements For Major Chernobyl Projects (News No. 184, 8 August 2007)

UN General Assembly Praises IAEA For Chernobyl Work (World Nuclear Review No. 48, 30 November 2007)

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