Chernobyl

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Chernobyl

The topic I have chosen for this term paper is "Ex-Soviet Bloc's
Environmental Crisis, Issue C." #2 Upgrading nuclear reactors to meet international standards. I have chosen this topic because nuclear power is not only an environmental issue but also a severe health issue for the citizens around the nuclear site and also for the rest of the country and world because of food products that could be grown there and used as market items.
Nuclear radiation is in no way healthy to anyone. It is much more easier to develop a life threatening disease if you are currently being effected by the radiation or have already been effected. Becoming sick from high amounts of radiation does not only happen to people in the immediate area of the nuclear accident. Although these people are the most effected, they are by far not the only ones. Radiation can be carried in many products, including food which is the most common and easy way to become sick from radiation poisoning. Cattle in the area of radiation may appear to be healthy but the milk they produce and the meat they give should not be eaten. As you can see, radiation can very easily be transferred from one point to another and ingested by someone without even their knowledge that there is a problem. The government of the Soviet Union was the owner of the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. When there was a problem, the government immediately sent soldiers to surround the plant and only two days later did they evacuate the surrounding town of Pripyat, but by then it was already much too late. The effects of radiation do not take a long time to occur.
In adults, it is severe but not a severe as it is in children. In children, radiation sickness can and will effect the thyroid glands. This can lead to many different kinds of cancer and most likely more than one will effect the body at once.
In adults, the effects of radiation can be cancerous, but the real issue is whether or not it will effect their DNA and thus effect the next generation.
This issue is highly debated. Scientists are not sure whether or not radiation effects a persons DNA and causes mutations in the sperm and egg cells, later on effecting their children and their generation. Before the nuclear reactor in
Chernobyl had a melt down, a joint US and Japanese research team set ...

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...bsp; All of the facts that I have listed above are very true. It is true that people still live and work in radioactive environments. It is true that children are dying because of unnecessary exposure to radiation. Food is grow and cattle is raised in these contaminated area's, only to be distributed for miles around. Why do these people live with these conditions? For only one reason, they are forced to live there. They cannot afford to live anywhere else, they cannot not just quit their jobs at the plant because they will have nowhere else to go. The government cannot help because it does not have the money to shut down these plants and clean up the surrounding area's, not without western help at least. If we do not help these people, it could be years, maybe even decades before anything is resolved. The people living in these areas today are not the only ones effected, but also their unborn children will be effected as well. Is that really fair to these children, to be brought into a world and die only a few months later from a simple illness as a cold.
Radiation will always be in the soil around Chernobyl, but we can prevent it from being in the people and children.

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