April 26, 1986: Nuclear Nightmare

They carried red carnations and candles as bells tolled and sirens sounded around them. At 1:23 AM today Ukraine marked the 20-year anniversary of the explosion of Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear station. For the facts, go here or here, but today I think I want to talk about the feelings.

At the time of the explosion, Mykola Malyshev was working in Reactor No. 1's control room. When the explosion happened, the lights flickered, the room shook and he and his co-workers were told to go to Reaction No. 4. When they reached the destroyed reactor, however, the workers there told them to leave:

"They told us, 'We are already dead. Go away,"'

And, for the most part, it was the truth. Konstantyn Sokolov, who now suffers from throat and lip cancer, said, "My friends were dying in front of my eyes."

Twenty years later, the victims of Chernobyl - the hundreds of thousands who lost family, friends, land, livestock....everything - are told that they need to stop considering themselves victims. They're told that they need to stop being so "fatalistic" and "radiophobic." Mothers who knowingly feed their children radioactive food are told not to give up, that they need to stop waiting to be rescued. Perhaps this is the truth, but how? When you have nothing left how do you help yourself? And does it really help if the government that told you not to worry, that you counted on to help you out is gone? And the new government is telling you that your problem isn't physical, it's psychological?

As global citizens we need to recognize that this accident could have happened anywhere. I know there are different types of reactors, different people running them and different governments who would have to deal with consequences in different ways. But the basic truth is that nuclear power has the potential to quickly make our entire planet unliveable. How can we possibly call ourselves an advanced society when we rely on such an unstable form of energy? I will leave you with a prayer from Valentyna Mashina, 55:

"Let God not allow this to be repeated. Let God not make our grandsons relive this."

Remembering Chernobyl

As we speak, Victor Yushchenko is attending a candlelight vigil marking the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. Around the web, there are several interesting stories. Try CNN.com and BBC.com for starters.

Chernobyl Voices

Oh God, how they tricked us! They said they were taking us away for three days and they took us to the end of the earth. We handed over everything to the authorities, cows, calves, pigs. We left everything behind. We took nothing with us but our souls.

The BBC is running a series of articles online under the theme Chernobyl Voices. The excerpt above is from the piece about Hanna Semenenko, a 78-year-old resident of the Exclusion Zone. Hanna was evacuated to Yahotin, but returned to her home in the village of Ilyintsi the following Winter. Her story, and the others in the series, are definitely worth taking a look at.

Chernobyl Victims Hunger Strike

I read this blurb at Interfax this morning:

ST. PETERSBURG. April 20 (Interfax) - Six people have joined hunger striker Sergei Kulish, a Chernobyl first-responder who is now disabled. They are demanding changes in the mechanism and amount of compensation Kulish and his peers receive. The strike is in its third week.

Kulish told Interfax on Thursday that the strike is being held in the apartment of one of the hunger-strikers.

Money is not the only reason for the hunger strike. Kulish wants the media to stop insulting the honor and dignity of Chernobyl cleanup veterans and demands a correction of the inscription on the Chernobyl monument near his house.

Der Chernobyl Flashback: May 1986

Der Spiegel is running a great series of articles leading up to next weeks' anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Go here for a reprint of an article published May 26, 1986, one month after the accident. The article discusses the confusion, fears and many possible consequences. The thing I find most interesting about the article is that it doesn't really give any less information about the consequences than we know today. The casualty count, radioactivity levels and the length of time that the affects may last are just as vague as they are now, 20 years later.

The article begins by explaining that currently (remember, currently is May 1986) there are some 400 workers digging a tunnel under Chernobyl that will end under reactor no. 4. It seems there’s quite a timeline of this tunnel-building available online if you do a little … um … digging. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to discuss the tunnel, one of the few things that actually helped.

The Der Spiegel article states that the underground tunnel was only one of two ways (the other being helicopter) by which the reactor could be approached at that point. This particular article does not mention the liquidators who had already been sacrificed in attempts to clean debris from the roof of reactor no. 4 and put out the fire. They tried many ways to put the fire out. One of these efforts involved pumping water into the core itself. The problem was, the piping in the reactor was destroyed so the water just seeped underneath the floor and began to heat up, acting as a furnace with the many substances dropped onto the reactor from helicopters in other attempts to put out the fire and cool down the core. At this point, if the floor were to give, a thermal reaction, possibly worse than the initial explosion, would take place. Two men were chosen to dive beneath the reactor and open the valves to release the water. These men successfully saved many lives, but lost their own before they ever reached the surface again.
So the new idea was to completely encase the reactor in concrete to avoid further irradiation of the air and groundwater while still allowing some sort of coolant to be applied to the reactor when necessary. The sarcophagus, now full of holes and crumbling to pieces, would take care of the above-ground encasement. It’s not possible that the groundwater was completely unaffected by this disaster, it would have been unthinkably worse if the concrete had not been poured underneath the reactor.

I’ll leave you with this blurb from the New York Times published June 2, 1986:

A Soviet Army team has blasted a tunnel through to the Chernobyl nuclear plant's No. 4 reactor, carefully setting explosive charges so as not to shake the ruined block and working quickly to avoid long exposure to radiation, a newspaper reported today.
The newspaper, the Defense Ministry daily Krasnaya Zvezda, said the reactor, which was destroyed by an explosion and fire on April 26, will be entombed in cement to seal off radiation.
The tunnel has been fitted with pipes through which the cement will be poured beneath and around the reactor, the paper said. Officials have said the reactor will remain entombed for centuries until the fuel element decays.

Greenpeace counters IAEA on Chernobyl Statistics

Greenpeace has released their own report detailing the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. They consider the UN's report published last Fall to be a "whitewash" of the facts. Their lengthy report is available at the link above.

French Activists Recognize Chernobyl Victims, Protests New Nuclear Plants

Several thousand French activists marched in silence Saturday to honor victims of the Chernobyl disaster 20 years ago, part of a larger protest denouncing France's plans to build more nuclear reactors.

Green Gorbachev

The Daily Times from Pakistan is currently running an article written by Mikhail Gorbachev about his views on the Chernobyl accident. He blames Chernobyl for the fall of the Soviet Union, but denies that it had anything to do with Russia stepping out of the arms race. He also defends the USSR, saying that they did not try to hide the accident, they merely underestimated it. He also appears to have take a decidedly green stance in - what he refers to as - this "post-Chernobyl" world:

The 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe reminds us that we should not forget the horrible lesson taught to the world in 1986. We should do everything in our power to make all nuclear facilities safe and secure. We should also start seriously working on the production of the alternative sources of energy.

Nuclear Nightmares

Pixel Press has a very disturbing and informative multimedia presentation available at their site right now. I recommend that anyone who thinks that the effects of the Chernobyl accident are exaggerated go take a look at it.

USSR Nuclear Testing Ground

The Daily Record from Scotland has a fantastic article about a small village near the Polygon in Kazakhstan. The Polygon was the USSR's main nuclear weaponry testing ground from 1949 to 1990, the site for 607 nuclear detonations during that time. I haven't read much about the Polygon, but according to this article, the Soviets would wait until the wind was blowing toward small villages in the east to detonate the weapons for testing. Consequently, the villages in eastern Kazakhstan are highly irradiated.

This particular article discusses European Parliament Member Struan Stevenson's many visits to the area. He first went to visit Kazakhstan when he heard about the Polygon and has become very charitably involved with the villages affected by the nuclear testing ground. Along with actress Kimberley Joseph (Lost), who photographed the villages, he has written a book entitled Crying Forever: A Nuclear Diary. All the profits from the book will go to the Children’s Hospital in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

Fatalism

The Baltimore Sun has yet another article blaming residents of contaminated areas of Belarus for their own health problems. This article sites last fall's U.N. study underestimating the number of victims of the Chernobyl accident. According to The Sun, residents of Belarus have given up on their health and environment.

The United Nations has begun projects designed to encourage economic development of the affected areas. These projects include classes in beekeeping, a new sheep farm and helping residents to plant flower beds and build greenhouses. The coordinator of this effort, Zoya I. Trafimchik says that "If we continue to treat them like victims, they feel like victims."

I am stunned by the heartlessness of this new movement. Basically, the Belarussian government and the U.N. are telling these people whose lives were complete devastated that they should stop feeling sorry for themselves. Dear Ms. Yushenko, if your two children are dying of cancer and you're coughing up blood on a daily basis, maybe you should quit your whining and it will all go away. What?! They are victims. They deserve help. And sympathy. This sort of abandonment and lack of responsibility from the government is shameful. Sure, the people should want to improve their lives, but a little bit of sympathy and understanding from the people who ruined them isn't too much to ask for.

67,000

Moscow, Russia (AHN) - New reports from Moscow reports at least 67,000 people are believed to have perished in Russia alone from the after-effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster...

Radioactive Refuge?

Wormwood Forest, a recently published natural history of Chernobyl written by Mary Mycio discusses the impact that the 1986 accident had on the flora and fauna of the area. Mycio has visited the exclusion zone two dozen times in the last several years and believes that the adaptation of animals to their nuclear surroundings was to be expected. Mutations, whether unattributable or genetic, are phased out. According to Mycio, the only significant genetic mutations found are in the fertility levels of small animals like barn swallows. There were some "partly-albino" swallows that appeared a few years after the accident, but their genetic line was not carried on because they were "not considered attractive and found it hard to mate." Apparently the exclusion zone is survival of the fittest in action.

I thought this excerpt from The Independent Online was quite interesting:

In the village of Illintsi, Maria Shaparenko, 82, one of the stubborn resettlers, claims Chernobyl was always a beautiful area and that nothing has really changed. "It's very nice here in summer, everything blooms. In fact nothing is wrong here, it's just that people have been scared off by the radiation." Outside in her yard a cockerel crows, and for a minute, it seems like Chernobyl really is like anywhere else.

What's even more interesting is that her neighbor down the street is "is turning black beside a chamber pot of his own blood-red urine." My point is, it's all very interesting and wonderful that nature thrives in a nuclear wasteland, but I hardly think we should be celebrating the merits of radioactive fall-out. The article in the Independent, in my opinion, spends a little too much time lost in wonderment and a not enough time focusing on the terrors of the accident.

Chernobyl Coverage

With the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl accident looming (22 days), there is a ton of coverage right now. Some of it is just basic re-hashing of the many different sets of facts (and non-facts) regarding the incident. However, there are some really well done and interesting pieces out there as well. BBC reporter Stephen Mulvey and photographer Phil Coomes are spending several weeks in the exclusion zone interviewing people and taking pictures for a big report to be on the anniversary date. While on their journey, though, they're keeping a diary. It's very interesting to follow them around and here their initial impressions of Chernobyl, Pripyat and other areas of the zone. You can read the diary here.

I'm particulary interested in hearing about the Chernobyl museum in Kiev:

There is also footage recording the heroic efforts of miners to tunnel under the reactor so that a heat exchanger could be built to halt the progress of the molten reactor core, if it burned its way through the plant's lower depths.

I think that, for the magnitude of its impact, Chernobyl is terribly undercovered by the media. Hopefully the anniversary will allow more people to see how dangerous nuclear energy really is.