Césium 137
    De même, il faudra attendre 2004 pour obtenir les «bonnes» cartes des dépôts de Césium 137 sur la France en mai 1986. Celles-ci sont publiées, non sans mal, dans la revue Radioprotection, par l'IRSN (Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire), qui a succédé aux SCPRI. Elles font apparaître une contamination au Césium de 4 000 à 40 000 bq/m2 sur toute la partie est de la France. Les zones les plus touchées - entre 20 000 et 40 000 bq/m2-, se trouvant dans l'est de la Corse, les Vosges, l'Alsace ou la région Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur.
    A ce jour, seul le professeur Pellerin devrait être mis en examen. Comme si son service n'avait jamais transmis les informations aux plus hautes sphères de l'Etat. Ce qui paraît bien peu probable.

    Russia's Moskovskiy Komsomolets says "Chernobyl is our anguish, our grief, our national shame".
    "We missed the warning signs, we allowed this to happen, we were hiding dangerous information until the very last moment", the paper says.
    But Chernobyl is "also our moment of pride as a nation", it adds, because "we risked our lives to put out the fires, to clean up the land, to build the sarcophagus".
    In an editorial, "Chernobyl is not forgotten"; Rossiyskaya Gazeta says: "Twenty year ago, on 26 April 1986, history was split into before and after the Chernobyl disaster."
    "There are anniversaries which you wish were not there to be marked, but which have to be marked", it says.
    Novyye Izvestiya, meanwhile, laments that the causes of the Chernobyl disaster "are still not entirely clear".
    The trial of "the accused", the daily says, rather than clarifying the causes, "turned into a farce whose purpose was to hide the truth."

Fallout
    Chernobyl delivered once-and-for-ever proof that the monstrous risks of this technology are uncontrollable (Berliner Zeitung)

    France's Le Monde also questions the official response to the disaster both at home and internationally.
    According to the paper, recent official assessments of the radioactive fallout over parts of Europe, including France, are sharply at odds with the "soothing" figures provided in 1986.
     It hopes that a lawsuit brought in 2001 by a French cancer patients' association will shed light on the question of whether the authorities were guilty of "incompetence" or "lying".
    "The ongoing judicial investigation may make it possible to determine whether the authorities deliberately concealed the magnitude of Chernobyl's impact on the French, while their neighbours were invited to protect themselves," the paper says.

    Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also finds the figures and statistics relating to the consequences of the catastrophe "questionable".
    The daily says instead of a measured response the disaster is always seen in the context of "the downfall of a technology which has little regard for mankind".

No more nukes
    The longest dictatorship in history could not relinquish its infallibility (El Pais)

    "Nuclear Energy? No, thanks!" runs the headline of a commentary in Germany's Berliner Zeitung.
    "Chernobyl delivered once-and-for-ever proof that the monstrous risks of this technology are uncontrollable," the paper says.
    The daily argues that those promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy "should admit that in doing so, they inevitably also promote the danger of the production and spread of nuclear weapons".
    The paper points out that "nowadays, unlimited and renewable energy sources such as the sun, wind and water can be used with such efficiency that they can soon completely replace nuclear energy."
    Germany's Der Tagesspiegel brings the nuclear debate fully up to date in a commentary entitled: "Atomic bombs on our doorsteps".
    The daily argues that the potential threat of suicide bombers attacking nuclear plants makes a mockery of reports stating nuclear energy is safe.
    "Nuclear energy, therefore, makes any country extremely vulnerable and for this reason alone, there can be no secure precautions", the paper feels.
    Moreover, the case of Iran proves that "every state with nuclear energy is potentially a state in possession of nuclear weapons", the paper says.

"Demise of a failed system"
    Spanish daily El Pais says a crumbling Soviet system made the disaster worse by denying the incident.
    "The longest dictatorship in history could not relinquish its infallibility", the daily says
    Instead it tried to hush up "a huge tragedy that reportedly cost dozens of thousands of lives, caused millions of personal dramas and created a general nightmare for large areas of Eastern Europe".
    Ironically, the daily says, it was "the war in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster, which accelerated the demise of a failed system".