Radiation expert: Ukraine war could pose greater nuclear threat than Chernobyl

Dr. Alla Shapiro was a first responder at Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear disaster. The accident at one of the reactors at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in 1986 put 400 times more radioactive material into the earth’s atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

A pediatric hematologist and expert on the medical effects of nuclear radiation, Shapiro developed medical countermeasures to radiation at the FDA for 20 years. In conversation with The Times of Israel, she warns that the current war in Ukraine could potentially pose a greater threat than Chernobyl. A shelling or missile attack on the core of one or more of the 15 reactors at Ukraine’s four active nuclear power plants could spell wide-scale catastrophe.

“We don’t know how much radiation would actually be released. The destruction of a reactor’s core could be a second Chernobyl, or it could be an exacerbation of the Chernobyl scenario,” Shapiro said.

“We wouldn’t just see acute radiation syndrome and radiation burns. If a reactor is hit, people will suffer from radiation and thermal burns,” Shapiro said.

On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine and seized the defunct Chernobyl plant. On Wednesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi stated “that remote data transmission from safeguards monitoring systems installed at the Chernobyl NPP had been lost,” according to an AFP report. READ MORE