Chernobyl toll disputed

last updated 8 January 2015

Kiev, Ukraine

More than 90,000 people eventually will die of cancer caused by radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Greenpeace said this week. That figure is many times higher than the 4,000 deaths predicted by a U.N. report released last year. The earlier report, by the International Atomic Energy Agency and other U.N. bodies, said that so far, only 56 deaths were directly attributable to the nuclear reactor meltdown. But Greenpeace said its report is based on newer health studies and more detailed demographic data. “It is appalling that the IAEA is whitewashing the impacts of the most serious nuclear accident in human history,” said Ivan Blokov of Russian Greenpeace.