WASHINGTON, 24 February 2022, (TON): American and Russian physicians representing IPPNW are warning that a war in Ukraine could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe as a result of conventional fighting and the attendant risks to that country’s nuclear power facilities and of escalation to nuclear war.

According to Linda Pentz Gunter, founder of Beyond Nuclear “a war could also lead to another nuclear disaster, similar or worse than the 1986 Chernobyl reactor meltdown, affecting people not only in Ukraine but in all of Europe.

“No matter the genesis, the cause, or who started what, the reality remains that there are 15 operating nuclear reactors in Ukraine that, if conflict breaks out there, could be in peril. If the reactors find themselves amidst a conflict or war, they cannot simply be abandoned by the workforce.”

This makes the prospects of a war in Ukraine all the more alarming, and the imperative to avoid this all the more urgent.

Dr. Ira Helfand, a leading expert on the medical effects of nuclear war and author of Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk Global Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supplies, and Human Nutrition, urged the parties to the dispute, armed with nuclear weapons, to consider the consequences if the conflict escalates to the use of nuclear weapons.