21 April 2006 - We’ll never know exactly how many people were killed as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which took place in Ukraine 20 years ago this week, a Euro-MP warned today.

Caroline Lucas, a Green Party MEP and the Party’s Principal Speaker, said: “The world’s worst nuclear disaster took place twenty years ago – but we are still suffering the fallout, literally, today.

“Estimates of numbers killed are as high as almost two million in Europe alone – the truth is we’ll never know how many died, and are dying, often in extreme pain, even today.

“But we mustn’t stop thinking about them when we discuss building new nuclear power stations.”

Dr Lucas made her comments as the group of Green MEPs in the European Parliament – the fourth-largest at Brussels – demanded answers from the traditionally-secretive European Commission on the long-term effects of the disaster.

Green MEPs have tabled some 13 parliamentary questions calling on the Commission to release information on the numbers of deaths and cancers caused by the disaster, the ongoing risks from long-term contamination, the safety and storage of radioactive waste at the site, the role of nuclear power in EU energy policy and the assistance being offered communities in Ukraine and Belarus most affected.

The world’s worst nuclear disaster took place twenty years ago this week, on April 26th 1986 when the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl , Ukraine , was destroyed by fire after an explosion in a nuclear reactor.

Twenty years on, experts disagree about the full extent of the catastrophe, but it is clear the official versions – often compiled behind the Iron Curtain and some still untranslated – significantly under-report the scale of the devastation.

Just this week at least three publications have argued that official estimates of the number of people killed are gross underestimates.

Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident , edited by Dr Chris Busby of European Committee on Radiation Risk , says the total number killed will never be known, but cites an estimate of 1.8 million cancer deaths associated with the explosion in Europe alone.

In The Other Report on Chernobyl (TORCH), a report commissioned by the Greens in the European Parliament, Consultant in Environmental Radiation Ian Fairlie and David Sumner argue that the disaster contaminated 40 per cent of Europe’s surface with radioactive material, including more than a third of the UK .

A report by environmental organisation Greenpeace International, The Chernobyl Catastrophe: Consequences on Human Health argues that the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) deliberately understated the figures as part of a campaign to promote nuclear power as a solution to climate change and the exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves.

Dr Lucas, who represents South-East England and is a member of the European Parliament’s influential Environment Committee, added: “The terrible legacy of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has killed, and continues to kill, many thousands of people across Europe- and we should not even be thinking about building new nuclear power stations here in the UK with the potential to kill millions more.

“The truth is nuclear energy is dirty and dangerous – not to mention prohibitively expensive. As we remember the terrible events of 26 April 1986 we must re-affirm our commitment to a nuclear free future.”

ENDS

Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident