Environmental consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe touched millions of people in Ukraine, Belarus, and other European countries. Dozens of people died in the weeks immediately following the reactor’s explosion, and hundreds – even thousands – died throughout the course of several years.
The level of radioactivity in the Chernobyl zone following the fallout was 400 times higher than what Hiroshima experienced in 1945. The 35-acre area surrounding the nuclear power plant became heavily contaminated. The blaze from the explosion of the reactor persisted for ten days. The temperature of the burning core did not fall below 1000 Centigrade. The people that were trying to put down the nuclear fire were called bio-robots – they were working under impossible conditions, where even the most durable machines failed. Thirty workers died at the site. Numerous others succumbed to cancer in the months and years that followed. Altogether, in the two decades after the Chernobyl accident, about 18 thousand people, many of them children, died of its consequences.
Belarus and Ukraine took the hardest blow from Chernobyl; Russia was only slightly touched. As the catastrophe directly threatened Moscow – the wind carried radiation towards the Soviet capital – planes were sent up into the sky to shoot down the radioactive clouds. According to the International Atomic Agency, on April 28-29, 1986, most of the fallout settled over the southwestern area of the Bryansk region. The people in the contaminated region still suffer from Chernobyl sickness. While the inhabitants of Belarus and Ukraine, who lived in afflicted region, were immediately evacuated, thousands of citizens of Vishkov, Novozibkov, and Zlinka remain in the area to this day.
Officially, the town of Zlinka has long ago been evacuated. The town is not even listed in the documents that allocate aid to the victims of the Chernobyl accident. According to government papers, the unlivable area has been completely abandoned. Zlinka’s residents, who come to Bryansk or to Moscow to ask for assistance, are denied their claims. “You’re lying. Your town no longer exists” – they are told.
“We only want for the country to know about us” – said Zinaida Kozlova, a high school administrator from Zlinka. Recently, one of her former students came to visit from Moscow, where she attends a university, and said that all her relief applications were denied.
The government promised to resettle these people long ago. At town-wide meetings, officials showed scale models of a new city to be called Novaya Zlinka (New Zlinka). Looking at engineers’ charts, people wondered where they were going to work in the new city. Several years later it became clear that a new town would never be built. Even in Zlinka there is nowhere to find a job.
About four thousand people live in Zlinka; fourteen thousand in Novozibkov. Many tried to leave the “dead zone,” but soon chose to come back. The lightening bugs (as the people from the contaminated zone are derogatorily called) cannot secure employment or receive admission to schools. (It must also be said that the children’s folk music band from Novozibkov is called The Lightning Bug.)
Those who were exposed to radiation right after the accident are less prone to illnesses. For the people that came later the situation is much worse. They body, unused to large doses of radiation suddenly absorbs it in extremely large amounts. In the summer, the people wear slippers outside, as it is unbearable for them to wear normal shoes. Even today, infant mortality in the area is over 30%. Almost all newborns have birth defects.
In order to prevent radiation sickness, the people should have taken large doses of iodine immediately after the fallout settled. The residents, however, did not know what had happened to them until it was almost too late. Nobody was hurrying to bring extra iodine to the cities. Officials did not want to worsen the panic. The residents panicked and in their attempts to withdraw their savings to leave the area, they bankrupted the local bank.
Today, the people go to the forest to pick radioactive mushrooms and berries. They pickle the mushrooms and cook home-made jam with the berries.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, we’re used to it,” they say. Meanwhile, doctors warn that as much as 80% of the people’s exposure to radiation comes from these walks in the woods. There, radiation levels are extremely high. The half-life of cesium is 30 years.
Secret CPSU Central Committee documents
The causes for the Chernobyl accident are not entirely understood, as even the court proceedings against the allegedly guilty soon turned into a farce that was designed to hide the truth. The government tried to conceal the truth from the first day of the tragedy. On Labor Day May 1, 1986, the citizens of Kiev marched through the city with large socialist banners, holding their children in their hands. The people walked, danced, and shouted communist slogans as the winds carried radiation to the city. In Kiev, radiation levels rose from 50 micro roentgens per hour to 30 thousand.
It was not until several days later that all official establishments in the city received instructions to keep their doors and windows tightly closed at all times and to wash the floor every hour. Even these simple measures offered considerable protection against radiation.
“There were only speculations – no one knew anything. In those first days after the accident, I aged 10 years,” complains Vasiliy Gorbetskiy, a driver of the Chernobyl transportation union, who helped in the rescue work. “We decided to remain here and respond to the disaster. We should not be lied to.”
The most intensive radiation contamination took place in the first 15 days. Mikhail Gorbachev did not address the country with the news of the Chernobyl explosion until May 13. In his speech, Gorbachev essentially recognized the country’s impotence in helping people.
“In the Soviet Union, we were always preparing to defend our motherland. We were always preparing for a nuclear war,” afflicted citizens remember.
When the nuclear reactor blew, civil defense preparation proved futile. Dosimeters were not working. There were no potassium iodine pills. Special army detachments for preventing large-scale contamination were formed only after the catastrophe.
Scientists concealed the truth
Scientists partially concealed the truth about reactor construction deficiencies that lead to the most horrifying nuclear accident in the world. Former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Victor Bruhanov talked about that recently.
Bruhanov, who was incarcerated for negligence after the accident, did his recent interview at a time when nuclear power is gaining popularity around the world. Unlike the fossil fuels, nuclear power allows to produce electricity without emitting carbon dioxide.
In his interview that appeared in a Russian publication Profile around the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl, Bruhanov said that it is important to understand the causes of the catastrophe in order to decide how to develop alternative energy sources. Bruhanov regrets that Chernobyl’s lesson is still not understood in that regard.
Reactor no. 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded during a test on April 26, 1986. Many scientists agree that the accident was the result of fateful circumstances, the combination of problematic reactor design and the neglectfulness of the personnel in adhering to safety rules.
Bruhanov recognizes that his subordinates made mistakes. In his view, however, the investigation fell short of revealing the true causes of the disaster in order to save the atomic power industry. Reactors with similar construction models as the one in Chernobyl operate in Eastern Europe to this day. They were somewhat modernized after the accident.
Bruhanov is convinced that not only the Russian government hides the truth about the risks associated with nuclear power. The Americans, the French, the English, and the Japanese do the same, he believes.
At the time of the explosion, Bruhanov was at home, not far away from the power plant. After serving 5 years of his 10-year-jail term, Bruhanov was released. He now lives in Kiev.
Consequences of the disaster were classified as top secret
In the evening of April 26, the Western world was already talking of a large nuclear catastrophe in the Soviet Union. Moscow was silent. The next day, European news agencies reported that nuclear clouds were spreading west, north, and south. On April 29, an eight-line news release from Moscow talked about an accident at the Chernobyl station that caused “an insignificant release of radiation.”
A Ukrainian journalist Alla Yaroshinskaya, who was elected to the U.S.S.R. parliament in 1989 during the first free elections, shed some light on secret Politburo protocols that addressed the Chernobyl disaster. Those documents revealed that the task of concealing the outcomes of the accident was the number one priority for the government. On June 27, 1986, an internal memorandum for the Ministry of Health stated that the results of all medical examinations on Chernobyl victims were classified.
Politicians and scientists frequently argue about the effects of Chernobyl. There are frequent disagreements as to the actual number of victims. Olga Aleinikova, the head of the Children’s Oncology Hospital in Minsk relies only on tangible evidence. In the past 20 years, the number of thyroid cancer cases considerably increased. Moreover, in the past three years, there have been more and more children with myeloid leukemia, a condition that usually afflicts only adults.
The reactor in Chernobyl was of a type particularly vulnerable to escalating nuclear reactions. If such a low-power reactor looses water, the nuclear reaction gets out of control and quickly reaches the threshold, beyond which the reactor explodes. To make matters worse, even a slight increase in pressure in the reactor’s water channels raises the reactor lid, breaking the emergency rods and pipes that go to the core.
On April 26, 1986, poorly-trained reactor operators were conducting an experiment and brought the reactor to a very unstable state. In a fraction of a second, the reactor exceeded its maximum power capacity and its roof blew off. The graphite caught fire and around 3 million TBq of radioactivity was released into the atmosphere.
Today, Chernobyl still impacts social and political agendas around the world. “The international conference 20 Years after Chernobyl. Strategy of Recovery and Sustainable Development of the Affected Region has become a notable international event,” head of the Department for Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said at a press-conference reviewing the results of the three-day forum held in Minsk and Gomel on April 19-21, 2006. NGO’s from EU countries, as well as from the U.S. and Canada offer financial and in-kind assistance. Recently, these groups initiated a campaign for building and reconstructing children hospitals in the afflicted countries. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was permanently shut down on December 14, 2000, during a televised ceremony by Ukraine’s then-President Leonid Kuchma.
Today, the cities around Chernobyl are ghost town. Houses are in a total collapse. The trees grow through the floors and the asphalt. Inside the buildings, the rooms still have furniture and other belongings that people left behind: everyone thought they will be returning home shortly. It truly is still life – frozen in time for twenty years.