A new study released on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster says the death toll is far higher than previously thought. In a book published by the New York Academy of Sciences, a Russian author and a Belarusian author say nearly one million people have died from exposure to radiation released by the Chernobyl reactor. According to the book, the disaster’s radioactive emissions may have been 200 times greater than the initial estimate of 50 million curies, and hundreds of times larger than the radioactivity from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The authors based their findings in part on Slavic sources they say have never been available in English.
Study Claims Chernobyl Disaster Killed Nearly 1 Million
HeadlineApr 27, 2010