Chernobyl Survivors Tour US

[the.greenbase@green2.greenpeace.org]

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Original-TO:      World Press (Green2:Green2:Gnl:INET)
Original-Cc:      The Greenbase (Green2:Green2:Gnl:Main)
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               GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE
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>>  TEN YEARS LATER, CHERNOBYL SURVIVORS PUT HUMAN FACE ON 
WORLD'S WORST NUCLEAR DISASTER DURING MONTH-LONG U.S. TOUR
 
WASHINGTON, April 11, 1996 (GP) Commemorating the 10th

anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear explosion, two
surviving victims of the world's worst nuclear disaster told a
gathering on Capitol Hill today that "all nuclear reactors are
slow, ticking time bombs," and that all reactors -
- in the United States and elsewhere -- have victims.
 
The Ukrainian Ambassador to the US, Dr. Yuri Shcherbak, and
Consul Valery Kurdyukov of the Belorussian Embassy, welcomed
19 year-old Aleksandr Sirota, and Dr. Sergei Paromchik, as
the two kicked off a month-long tour of the US with a
reception on Capitol Hill, sponsored by Rep. Edward J. Markey
(D-MA).  The tour is being organized by Greenpeace.  
The 12-city tour includes visits to communities in the shadow
of America's most dangerous nuclear facilities, such as
Detroit's Fermi II, Diablo Canyon, California, and Oyster
Creek, New Jersey.  Mr. Sirota and Dr. Paromchik will also
join an ongoing protest encampment in California's Ward
Valley, site of a proposed national radioactive waste dump.  
Mr. Sirota, who suffers from radiation-related illnesses
resulting from the Chernobyl disaster, said, "I never want to
see any more victims of nuclear disasters.  I want to see the
end of nuclear power all over the world."
 
Ambassador Shcherbak told the gathering that tens of thousands
of Ukrainians have died.  Cancers and other illnesses,
especially among children, have risen more than 285 percent in
Belorus, and farmland as far away as Wales and Sweden has been
contaminated.   Dr. Paromchik said all nuclear reactors have
victims.  "We have learned wherever nuclear reactors exist
that they are neither efficient, economical, nor safe.  Even
if there's no explosion, we still have no safe way to dispose
of the tons of deadly waste these reactors produce." 
 
Greenpeace has long advocated that nuclear power reactors be
replaced with renewable energy sources, like wind and solar,
and with energy efficiency.  Currently Greenpeace is working
with safe energy activists and Native Americans to stop
legislation that would allow a national radioactive waste dump
to be built in Ward Valley, California.  Greenpeace has also
condemned a Department of Energy proposal for commercial
utilities to produce nuclear
weapons-usable tritium and to burn plutonium oxide fuel.
 
"We must learn from the Chernobyl catastrophe and ensure that
it never happens again," said
Greenpeace Executive Director Barbara Dudley.  "This solemn
anniversary should remind all Americans of what we have at
stake here in our own country."   
 
CONTACT:  Deborah Rephan, Greenpeace News Desk   202-319-2492 
 

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