Chernobyl, twenty years on ...........................................
Anya Ardayeva, Lisa McAdams Wednesday 26th April, 2006
Twenty years ago on April 26, 1986, a massive blast at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant sent a cloud of radioactivity across Europe, affecting millions of people.
The Soviet government waited for nearly three days before admitting that the catastrophe took place and only after radiation alarms went off at a nuclear plant in Sweden.
The destroyed reactor is still extremely radioactive, covered by the so-called sarcophagus, built to protect the environment from radiation, but it was only designed to last 15 years and now scientists and environmentalist say it is falling apart.
This was the worst nuclear accident the world has ever seen.
A massive explosion blew off the lid of the Reactor Number Four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant. One hundred and ten tons of uranium and nine hundred tons of radioactive graphite blasted into the atmosphere. For about ten days, the reactor kept releasing radioactive materials into the air, as the Soviets did not know how to put out the deadly fire.
The cleanup operation involved some 350,000 people, many of whom received extremely high doses of radiation: The Soviet Union's one proven resource for that kind of job was human labor.
What is certain is that the area around the reactor, which was home to hundreds of thousands of people, will never be the same.
Anatoli Zakharov and his family were among those who used to live in Pripyat. A firefighting brigade commander, he was on shift on the night of the accident, and arrived at the plant minutes after the explosion. He says his colleagues were unaware of the scale of the catastrophe, all they knew was that the fire needed to be put out.
'I could feel high radiation. Metal taste in my mouth, my skin was aching as if it was burned by the sun, I was sweating, feeling dizzy,' he recalls. 'That night, we were waiting. Waiting to see what happens to us later, tomorrow, the day after, what news was to come. And it was in May we learned that the first two fire fighters died and then the other four.'
Only sixteen of that night's shift of 28 men are still alive. Anatoli was lucky, he received less radiation than his colleagues and survived. He ran away from the hospital to tell his wife and children about the accident at the plant. They were evacuated two days later, after officials acknowledged the catastrophe had occurred.
'They later said that they didn't tell the truth because they wanted to avoid panic,' says Anatoli. 'But I think it would have been better if they told the truth, people would have left earlier and they would have been exposed to (less) radiation. Kids, everyone, they were there for two to three days, exposed to it. My family too.'
Over 336,000 people have been relocated from the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone around the Chernobyl Plant to cleaner areas.
Some villages were so contaminated they had to be flattened and buried. A move also designed to ensure that no one could ever occupy them again.
But there are people still living in the Zone for whom the walls of their home matter more than any nuclear accident. Eighty two-year-old Mikhailo Radkevich was evacuated from his village a week after the accident and moved into a new home a few months later. But he didn't like the new house and decided to go back.
'If I was 20, I would have probably gone away from here. But I am 81, where can I go? Where? I have two sons and a daughter in Kiev, and they are asking me to come live with them, but I don't want to. My home is here,' says Mikhailo.
He and his wife eat home-grown vegetables and meat and seem to worry little about radioactive contamination.
'When the explosion happened, everyone started talking about radiation. But it was here before. The wind blew it all to Belarus. Here, its clean,' he says.
And strangely enough, 20 years after the accident, wildlife is booming in the Zone. Some scientists say this is further proof that the biggest danger to nature is not radiation but the activities of human beings.
Trees and bushes are slowly taking over the once-flourishing Pripyat. Built from scratch in 1970, this was a model town housing the staff of the nuclear plant. It was regarded as one of the finest places to live in the Soviet Union -- filled with roses and children, the average age of the town's population was 26.
On the day of the deadly explosion, 16 weddings took place in Pripyat. The town was fully evacuated only four days later. Some 50,000 people were told that there was a fire at the plant and that they would be back in a few days.
None of them will ever return.
In the tiny village of Gornostipol, just 30 kilometers from the power plant, the resulting panic and chaos was immediately apparent, even if, as surviving villagers say, the hard, cold facts were not.
Alexei Fiyodorich, 74, is a pensioner from Chernobyl who not only survived the accident's initial fallout, but the resulting cancer he suffered, most likely from remaining in the zone for nine days after the explosion. During that time, he served as a first-responder, helping to pack sand bags that were eventually dropped over the burning reactor by helicopter.
Scientific research has since shown that eight to 16 days after such an explosion, during Alexei's service, radioactive toxins are at their highest and most dangerous levels.
Alexei reveals he has had to receive treatment for thyroid cancer ever since. But he says it is not the cancer that haunts him these days, but the memories. They are still raw and fresh.
He laughs bitterly when he recalls being handed wine and iodine pills before going further into the zone to serve as a so-called liquidator. He was one of nearly 600,000 men eventually called to help in the cleanup and aftermath at Chernobyl.
Many of the liquidators died immediately, or in the first years that followed the disaster. Others, like Alexei, live haunted lives.
'Of course I still live with this stress,' he says. 'I re-live it every day. All the men lost. All the relatives lost.'
But what does he remember most? He remembers the traffic. Alexei says the traffic leaving the zone in the first days after the explosion was unprecedented, jammed with dazed villagers fleeing the scene on one side, while hundreds of huge, concrete trucks, ambulances and fire trucks rumbled toward the disaster. Alongside the road, he adds, animals were seen fleeing. He suddenly stops to compose himself, saying simply, it is difficult to speak about it even now.
A ramshackle truck appears and elderly women come scrambling out into the snow-strewn streets to shop for vegetables, milk, and eggs. Food delivery is still routine in villages lying within the so-called Chernobyl zone. Agricultural production was severely hampered after the accident and in many places has never fully recovered.
But every villager who spoke admitted to growing their own food out of necessity, villagers like Irina Ivanovo. She is 72 now and says she has long since given up on the hope of being rescued, or offered a way out of the zone.
'Besides, I have lost my husband and my health, where would I go now?' she asks.
Irina says she suffers from a severe nervous disorder and psychological depression. She says she needs hospital treatment every half year. For a time, she says, she will feel better. Then six months later, she explains that she will need treatment again. But she tries to stay optimistic, adding that people get sick everywhere. Moments later, she is in tears, when I inquire about her husband. He was a forest worker at Chernobyl, she says, and he died in the first year after the accident.
A lady standing nearby tries to comfort Irina. She too became a widow in the first year after the accident. But her tale of trouble is quickly drowned out by another old woman who cries out, nobody ever comes here. We have been forgotten.
The other woman then asks a question of her own.
'Why do we even need nuclear energy after such a huge tragedy as this?' she asks, looking over her shoulder toward the ruin of a plant. So many people dead, so many lives lost, so many questions ... it is not possible to forget.
Then she visibly brightens and says, please ask the world to remember us, and help us if they can.
Twenty years on, radiation levels are still extreme, says Yulia Marusich, Chernobyl's information officer. She says the sarcophagus does not completely seal off the radiation and it is not structurally sound. 'The existing shelter is not stable, it is not reliable. It [sarcophagus] was constructed remotely. On one hand, it reduced the personnel exposure. On the other hand, it didn't provide the accuracy of a shelter structures installation.'
Outside experts confirm the sarcophagus is falling apart and could collapse.
Francis O'Donnell, head of the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine, says there is also a problem with what's inside. 'They still haven't figured the way to deal with 180 tons of nuclear fuel-containing mass which is at the core of the reactor, there's no nuclear waste disposal strategy, and 20 years on we can do better than this.'
The sarcophagus, and the tons of nuclear fuel inside of it, are not the only problem.
There are three other reactors, which were put back on line shortly after the sarcophagus was built. The reactor was not turned off until 2000 and only following international pressure.
And Chernobyl has not been decommissioned completely: Ukraine does not have the facilities for the long-term storage of the plants' nuclear fuel.
Oleg Ryazanov is an engineer at the Chernobyl Plants reactor Number One, who monitors the condition of the disabled reactor. He says money is the real issue. 'We have the technology, the people, the knowledge, the desire but we don't have the money.
If the sarcophagus covering the Fourth Reactor collapses, another explosion, though less powerful, is likely to occur. To prevent that, some 28 countries pledged to chip in more than $800 million for the construction of a new steel coffin.
The project is scheduled to be finished by the year 2010.
But even with the new shelter in place, it is estimated it will take from 30 to 100 years to safely get rid of the fuel and debris inside the plant.
Despite Chernobyl's controversy, a number of European countries are forging ahead in nuclear power. Foremost among them is France, where about 80 percent of the country's electricity is generated by 58 nuclear plants. The country is considering building a 59th plant.
Finland and Poland are also building new nuclear power stations. The British government is launching an energy debate this year that might result in building new nuclear plants, and Lithuania and the Netherlands have delayed phasing out their nuclear generators.
Steve Kidd is director of strategy and research at the World Nuclear Association - a London-based trade association supporting nuclear power. He says many European countries are worried about relying on oil and gas supplies from unstable countries.
'This energy security aspect in Europe has suddenly become more pressing with the increasing dependence on particularly gas from Russia and also from North Africa,' Kidd says. 'And that is something that over the last year or so has encouraged some people to look into nuclear where they were formerly not looking.'
As oil prices soar, nuclear energy is increasingly looking attractive economically as well.
The environment is also a factor. Nuclear plants do not emit carbon dioxide, which most scientists say is a major cause of global warming. Under the Kyoto protocol, European countries must sizably cut their carbon-dioxide emissions.
Goulven Graillat, heads economics and industrial strategy at France's E.D.F. electricity company. E.D.F. runs the country's nuclear power plants.
'More and more people are moving, as we did, in the direction not to oppose any form of energy. But to have a mix starting with energy efficiency,' Graillat says. 'Renewables of course, but it is not really sufficient. I think that more and more people, when they think deeply on all the different factors, the Kyoto protocol and also the greenhouse case, and the price of fossil fuels - the coal, but mainly oil and gas - they begin to think that nuclear has a role to play.'
But not all of Europe is embracing nuclear energy. Sweden and Germany have banned building new plants, and largely phased out existing ones - although Germany's ruling Christian Democrats have suggested they might try to overturn the ban. Other countries are also skeptical about nuclear energy.
Twenty years after Chernobyl, nuclear critics like Marillier of Greenpeace argue that nuclear energy remains unsafe.
Marillier says experts once argued the risk of a nuclear accident was almost non-existent. But that was before Chernobyl. Even today, he notes, the risk of another explosion remains. And he believes that fear is one reason why nuclear energy will continue to be problematic in Europe. |
