Frank Pallone: “This Saturday I will be appearing at a dinner sponsored by members of the Belorussian community in my district in New…”

“This Saturday I will be appearing at a dinner sponsored by members of the Belorussian community in my district in New Jersey. They will be raising money for the victims of Chernobyl, of the Chernobyl nuclear accident which took place about 10 years ago now. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to detail, if I could, for about 5 minutes some of the problems that resulted from the Chernobyl disaster in the country of Belarus and also talk about some of the problems that that nation now faces to its very independence. On April 26, 1986, reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant caught fire and caused an explosion of epic proportions. This explosion measured 7 on the 7-level scale of nuclear accidents in comparison to the Three Mile Island accident, which measured 5. Although one decade has passed since this explosion, the aftermath and truth remain very clouded about what happened. Even though this explosion spewed highly radioactive elements into the atmosphere, the Soviet Union, or the government of the then-Soviet Union, remained largely silent.”