Trump’s Chernobyl
Thirty-four years ago in Moscow I watched the government mishandle a disaster. Why does it feel like it was just yesterday?
An Opinion piece in the New York Times, by , a member of the Editorial Board.
[Comment by Beyond Nuclear's radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps:
While this Opinion piece makes compelling comparisons between the Chernobyl catastrophe and the coronavirus pandemic, many times when radioactive catastrophes like Chernobyl, and nuclear weapons risks, are used as metaphors, or figures of speech, they do so flippantly, while effectively ignorning or downplaying the actual risks of nuclear dangers. As but a few examples: during the Enron "meltdown" two decades ago, its stocks were described as "radioactive," as in the Washington Post; during the 2008 financial collapse, bundled subprime mortgages gone bad were compared to high-level radioactive waste when described as a "Yucca Mountain repository of bad debt," as on NPR; and radical power plays, breaking norms and traditions in Congress to force a bill or nominee through over minority opposition, are described as "going nuclear" or the "nuclear option," like starting a nuclear war. However, the literal risks and radioactive damage of all things nuclear, whether atomic reactors, radioactive waste, contamination, health impacts, nuclear weapons, etc. are rarely if ever reported by the mainstream media, despite all the metaphorical comparisons, for dramatic effect.]
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On NPR's "All Things Considered" on Tuesday, April 7, 2020, at around 7:20pm, NPR reporter Leila Fadel reported a quote from a nurse referred to as "Marie" (her middle name, to conceal her identity, to protect her job, as nurses are under orders to not speak with the news media), that working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic is akin to "Chernobyl," because you know the invisible hazard is all around you.
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On Brian Williams's MSNBC program "The 11th Hour" on the night of Tuesday, April 7th, one of his guests, Charlie Sykes, invoked the powerful HBO mini-series "Chernobyl" to make a point about President Trump's, and his enabling Republicans', Orwellian responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
He quoted a line from the historical drama, based on actual events and characters, of course. The quote comes from the main protaganist featured in the show, a high-ranking Soviet nuclear official put in charge of the emergency response to the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, who dared speak truth to power in real time, at the highest levels of the Soviet government:
Valery Legasov -- "When the truth offends, we lie and lie, until we can no longer remember it is ever there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."
In fact, the main slogan for the entire Chernobyl mini-series is: "What is the cost of lies?"
In the United States in the current covid-19 pandemic emergency, it is already tens of thousands of lives, but could grow to hundreds of thousands.
In Chernobyl, Ukraine beginning on April 26, 1986, it has easily been hundreds of thousands of lives. In Yablokov, Nesterenko, and Nesterenko's book "Chernobyl: The Human Health and Ecological Consequences," published in English in 2004 by the New York Academy of Science (Dr. Janette Sherman, English language editor), the estimate was made that 986,000 premature deaths had been caused by Chernobyl's radioactive fallout, just from 1986 to 2004. Many more premature, radiogenic deaths caused by Chernobyl have undoubtedly occurred since. As about 50% of Chernobyl's fallout landed in the former U.S.S.R., and the remainder fell elsewhere throughout the world (such as all across Europe), the deaths, due to radiogenic diseases, have been that widespread as well.
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As reported by the Washington Post (note that "chain reaction" is yet another nuclear metaphor):
