Page 180 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

politician, is convinced that to save Moscow, the Soviet authorities deliberately
rained down radioactive material on Belarus without notifying local inhabitants.
After issuing this accusation, he feared for his life and decided to live in exile.
Authorities in Moscow denied such allegations, but in 2006, on the twentieth
anniversary of the disaster, Major Alexsei Grushin, a former military pilot who
received an award for cloud-seeding operations during the Chernobyl cleanup,
shared his testimony:

I am proud to say that I took part in the operation back in 1986; my comrades are
proud as well. The area where my crew was actively influencing the clouds was near
Chernobyl, not only in the 30-kilometer zone, but out a distance of 50, 70, even
100 kilometers. The plane was equipped with artillery shells which were filled with
a seeding material, silver iodide, and we were following orders from [Moscow]
regarding which zones we were required to seed. The wind direction was moving
from west to east and the radioactive clouds were threatening to reach highly pop-
ulated areas of Moscow, Voronezh, and Yaroslavl. If the rain had fallen on these
cities it would have meant a catastrophe for millions. 78

During this operation, Grushin, his crew, and his plane were heavily exposed to
radiation. He recalls that after he landed at the airport, he was ordered to park far
from the hangar and his plane was greeted by technicians wearing anti-radiation
suits and carrying sensors. They approached from an upwind direction, but soon
turned around and ran away from the highly contaminated plane. Grushin and
others said they flew seeding missions as early as two days after the explosion and
continued their operations for months.
The decision makers applied a dose of utilitarian ethics in their attempt
to use the technology at their disposal to spare millions from the radioactive
cloud, yet inbred secrecy, ethnic prejudice, and a horrendous and criminal
lapse of judgment prevented them from trying to mitigate the effects of their
actions by warning the population in advance to stay indoors and by distrib-
uting potassium iodide tablets. According to Flowers, “It is quite clear that
these actions did not take place.” The high levels of radiation found in Belarus
have led to the frequent occurrence of leukemia, thyroid cancers, and birth
defects. His informant Pazniak said the area had been devastated, and he
blamed Moscow:

I had lots of friends in the area where the cloud seeding took place. They had to
move away from their homes and their children became ill. Thyroid cancer has
increased among children by fifty times in the area where the cloud seeding took

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