Death of an Exceptional Resister: Vassili B. Nesterenko

The late nuclear physicist Vassili B. Nesterenko (2 December 1934--25 August 2008) was hounded and persecuted by the KGB because he published inconvenient truths: research about the consequences of Chernobyl. Here is a short article about his achievements and here is his Wikipedia entry.

Today, dedicated climate scientists like Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Phil Jones are being hounded and persecuted by well-financed global warming denialist politicians and their media mouthpieces because the scientists are telling us about the consequences of global warming.

When I watch the live-feed of the BP oil billowing out of the well, I remember watching Chernobyl burn in 1986. Check out "The Chernobyl Disaster Incident" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8. Mikhail Gorbachev narrates part of the film.

Brave men worked desperately to contain the radiation in Chernobyl's nuclear reactor just like the oil engineers are trying to plug up the BP oil well. The very complicated and heroic operation to seal the reactor finally succeeded; but the Chernobyl catastrophe would have been much, much worse if it hadn't been for the sacrifices of hundreds of doomed heroes. One of these heroes was Dr. Nestorenko, who "suffered massive damage to internal organs through irradiation received at the site of the burning reactor."

In Part 2 of the film, the famous nuclear physicist Vassili Nesterenko explains that the nuclear core might have exploded like a giant atomic bomb. Minsk would have been obliterated and Europe rendered uninhabitable. Many lives were sacrificed so that this would not happen.

India's Daily Latest News (4-27-10) reports:

A report by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko which appeared in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences [See "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment"] showed that by 2004, there were 985,000 additional deaths worldwide caused by the nuclear disaster, including 212,000 of them within Western Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

According to a press statement released by the New York Academy of Sciences (4-28-10):

[T]he 327-page volume is an English translation of a 2007 publication by the same authors. The earlier volume, “Chernobyl,” published in Russian, presented an analysis of the scientific literature, including more than 1,000 titles and more than 5,000 printed and Internet publications mainly in Slavic languages, on the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster.

For more information about the life and work of Dr. Vassili Nesterenko read "Death of an exceptional resister: Vassili B. Nesterenko."

"Denialists" in the the Belarus State Security reportedly did not like all this research being published about the consequences of Chernobyl. According to "Death of an exceptional resister" and as noted below in Dr. Vassili Nesterenko's Wikipedia:

Because of his activities, [Vassili Nesterenko] lost his job and got problems with the State Security Agency of Belarus, which threatened him with internment in a psychiatric asylum. Later, however, the Belarusian government tried to soften him proposing him to get back a job in a state institute, "at the condition that he would not work on Chernobyl anymore." He escaped two assassination attempts.

As the world runs out of oil, I think that more of these energy-related catastrophies are probably inevitable. Well-financed global warming denialists such as Oklahoma Senator Inhofe, his mouthpiece Marc Morano, and Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli are persecuting heroic global warming scientists such as the American Michael Mann and the Englishman Phil Jones. These brilliant scientists can offer our children and grandchildren solutions to our addiction to fossil fuels instead of only the poisonous lies of greedly denialists.