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Now or never

“We lost Japan,” said Rie Inomata, who works as an interpreter.

“I feel guilty and sorry for the children. They did not choose nuclear power plants, they did not choose to be born; but it is them that have to suffer in the future.”

“By not protesting against nuclear power I allowed this accident to happen. If we go in the same direction, I don’t see any future.”

“If we [are to] make a difference, we must decide now, it is now or never.”

Potential future of Fukushima children written in Chernobyl

The potential future for the Fukushima children victims is written starkly in the government birth and death registries of the heavily contaminated regions in the Chernobyl fallout; dedicated doctors, scientists, and ordinary citizens are bearing witness to the humanitarian disaster still unfolding.

There have been at least close to a million excess deaths, with general mortality rates doubled or tripled (Chernobyl Deaths Top a Million Based on Real Evidence, SiS 55). A diversity of illnesses continue to claim lives including those of children: birth abnormalities, cancers, cardiovascular malfunction, premature aging, defects affecting practically every organ system, often multiple illnesses in the same individual, all associated with exposure to radioactivity in the body either inhaled or ingested in contaminated food. The number of children in Belarus has fallen by more than 27% since 2000, despite increasing birth rates. The horrific health impacts of the nuclear accident are still emerging more than 26 years later because the land is still contaminated, and the genetic/epigenetic legacy is just as long lasting.