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Fukushima nuclear power plant; radioactive contamination, ecological impact, global implications

Доброе утро, мои уважаемые подписчики. Вас приветствует постоянный ведущий крупнейшей в мире политической рассылки на русском языке Национальная и государственная безопасность кандидат политических наук, научный сотрудник Института мировой экономики и международных отношений Российской академии наук Игорь Игоревич Хохлов.

Российский эксперт по безопасности Игорь Игоревич Хохлов комментирует возможные последствия ядерной катастрофы в Японии на телеканале Russia Today.

Days after the Fukushima plant's first explosion, Japan's leaders implore everyone to stay calm. Helicopters and water cannon were deployed to cool the reactors, and yet the situation remains critical.

"Of course I do not think it will require as much manpower. There has been a lot of technological progress made over the last 30 years," said Vladislav Shurygin, a military expert for Zavtra newspaper. "Still, it is important to understand that the number of people who will have to operate in the affected area and who will be affected by radiation will be very large. That's because some things can only be done manually."

In 1986, the Soviet Union mobilized thousands of people to battle the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

Japan now has the "Faceless 50" -- anonymous workers, putting themselves up against radiation, to keep the reactors from nuclear meltdown -- and the fate of millions now rests in the hands of a few dozen.

"Certainly their lives are immediately at stake and clearly they have sacrificed any kind of long life. This is clearly an exposure that jeopardizes their immediate health," said Paul Gunter, Director of Beyond Nuclear's Reactor Oversight Project.

The Soviet Union essentially ordered its citizens to sacrifice their lives when battling radiation in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.

But Japan is a democratic state, and the workers who remain at the Fukushima plant are doing that willingly.

The main question, however, is whether their efforts will be enough to keep the situation from taking a turn for worse.

"The amount of radiation being released now and the amount of radiation that will be released in the coming future is so great that actually the whole globe will be affected," Igor Khokhlov from the Institute of World Economics and International Relations said.

"In Chernobyl, when only one power unit was affected, the radiation covered the whole globe. So the magnitude of the looming disaster cannot be predicted now, but definitely it is going to be one of the worst nuclear disasters in world history."

Technology has a nasty habit of turning against humans, and when that happens, the equipment does not yet exist to send machines in to put things right.

In the end, it takes human risk and sacrifice to prevent a technological tragedy from becoming a large-scale catastrophe.

Посмотреть интервью Игоря Хохлова в прямом эфире телеканала Russia Today

Научный сотрудник Института мировой экономики и международных отношений Российской академии наук Игорь Хохлов дает эксклюзивное интервью на телеканале Russia Today.