Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-26-Speech-3-037"
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"en.20060426.9.3-037"2
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".
Mr President, in speaking today it is very difficult to know what words can fully express the horrors which still befall the people of Chernobyl, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other parts of Europe because of the results of this accident. I was particularly moved by what Commissioner Piebalgs said in his opening statement about the people who went in immediately after the accident to do the clean-up work, to try to put concrete into the sarcophagus, and to try to protect the rest of the population. Those people are forgotten today in our discussions. They gave their lives knowing that it was a suicide mission but, for fellow mankind and for the greater good of their countrymen and countrywomen, they took that action and took that dangerous task on board.
Today when we speak about Chernobyl and the nuclear industry, the two go hand in hand. Despite what people may say about advances in technology or the new safety measures that have been put in place, the risks associated with nuclear energy are so vast and so great. The waste product has an active life of thousands of years that we can neither control nor manage.
Before World War II, a famous American general made this comment about possible atomic weapons: ‘Atomic weapons are to an army what an elephant is to a mouse. If we can control them and use them for our good, it is a great thing; but by scale and virtue of size it is impossible for a mouse to control what an elephant will do’. Likewise, I believe it is impossible for mankind to control what nuclear energy will do. The best option we have is to forego the nuclear option and look at alternatives, as other people have mentioned.
To move away from that argument back to today: when we think of the lessons of 20 years, in Ukraine and Belarus and in other parts of Europe there are still children being born with birth defects. There is a cardiac condition known as Chernobyl heart, where young children who should be full of health and full of life suffer severe heart attacks and strokes because of the impact of radiation and the fallout they have in their own systems.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s a voluntary group called the Chernobyl Children’s Project was set up in Ireland by one woman who saw the horrors of Chernobyl. Since then, every summer, 14 000 children have been brought from Chernobyl to Ireland for a three-week break in a clean environment, to get fresh air, to live with host families, to know what it is like to live in a proper family environment, and to get medical and dental treatment. Over that period of time, that voluntary group has raised over EUR 60 million for humanitarian and medical aid for Chernobyl and Belarus. There are many other small projects like that, which are run by individuals who saw the need.
I shall end with this short quote. Dostoyevsky said: ‘No world event is worth the shedding of one child’s tear’. Just think of all the tears that have been shed by children and by families because of Chernobyl. It is our responsibility to ensure that it cannot happen again."@en1
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