Mr Monbiot has a point in that there has been exaggeration of the effects of the Chernobyl accident (The unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby has misled us all, 5 April). But equally he should acknowledge that there has been unwarranted dismissal of potential effects for which there has been no objective investigation. He is also wrong to describe the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (Unscear) as the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Unscear document he refers to was prepared by a single lead consultant with a handful of supporting individuals and the document was approved by nominees of the states which are subscribing members of Unscear – mostly those countries with an investment in nuclear power. The document does not represent any consensus across the relevant scientific community.

In fact, recently a group of experts, under the auspices of a European commission project (arch.iarc.fr), has completed an in-depth review of the health-related research on the sequelae of the Chernobyl accident to date and found that, apart from research on the thyroid cancer outbreak, the international coverage is "unco-ordinated ... forming a patchwork ... rather than a comprehensive, structured attempt to delineate the overall health consequences of the accident". The truth is we, as the international scientific community, don't know the true impact of the accident on health because the funds have not been available to thoroughly investigate it. More in-depth reading of the Unscear document will reveal several instances where Unscear draws attention to this lack of vital knowledge.

The Chernobyl accident has been a political football fought over by the pro- and anti-nuclear lobbies for 25 years at the expense of obtaining the best information on which to base our judgments, which Mr Monbiot rightly calls for.

Keith Baverstock

Department of environmental sciences, University of Eastern Finland

• Your report (Loophole in bill could allow nuclear bailouts, 5 April) explains how the government is planning to water down its already transparently false assurances that citizens will not have to pay any of the cost of nuclear power. Already, we know that accident liability is limited to a derisory £140m.

All this is a tribute to the inordinate power of the nuclear power industry's lobby and to the craving of politicians to centralise power in all its aspects. It is bizarre that this is happening as the Japanese government is discharging over 11,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific, as independent analysts are saying it could take years to get the disaster at Fukushima under control and, concurrently, the nuclear industry is assuring us, yet again, that the next generation of nuclear power stations will be much safer than previous ones.

Jim McCluskey

Author of The Nuclear Threat