I still keep a copy of the Radianska Ukraina of April 29, 1986, carrying a brief notice by the Council of Ministers of the USSR: “An incident at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant has led to damage to one of the nuclear reactors. Relief efforts are under way. The victims are getting help. A government commission has been created.”
Just a few short lines – and what a boundless scope of drama.
Chornobyl has turned into a world of its own, with its endlessness, mystery, and incomprehensibility.
The Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the US on March 28, 1979, became the first threatening omen in the peaceful nuclear energy sector. The consequences involved huge material damages, psychological shock, and the decommissioning of the damaged unit.
The Chornobyl disaster of April 26, 1986, became the second omen. What are the consequences for Ukraine? Permanent evacuation of 129,000 residents from the contaminated 30-kilometer zone, 2,200 square kilometers of arable land banned from agricultural use, colossal material and human losses, and a psychological blow so powerful that it expedited the collapse of the USSR.
The irreversible disintegration of the USSR started exactly after the nuclear catastrophe at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.
And now, the third omen: the nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011, at Fukushima, Japan. The plant is located in Honshu Island. The very word fukushima means “the island of happiness” in Japanese.
The damages and expenses have not yet been reckoned, as there is no end to them so far.
While the disasters of Three Mile Island and Chornobyl were caused by the mistakes of the maintenance personnel, as well as drawbacks in the design of the nuclear reactors, the Japanese catastrophe came in the wake of a powerful earthquake and a devastating tsunami.
It is the first time that nature and the elements have radically changed the ideas of the Earth’s nuclear safety.
To prove that our planet is indeed a globe, a sea expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan started on a circumnavigation which lasted from September 20, 1519 to September 6, 1522. Thus, it took him 1,081 days, or nearly three years.
The first astronaut Yuri Gagarin circled the Earth on his spacecraft Vostok on April 12, 1961, in a matter of 108 minutes — the development of transportation has made the Earth much smaller.
Nowadays, 441 nuclear reactors operate in 30 countries around the world to produce electricity. Out of these, 15 nuclear power blocks are located in Ukraine.
Operator errors, design flaws, natural disasters, or acts of terror could all result in new nuclear catastrophes. With such a number of reactors, the planet has become tiny and extremely vulnerable. Where shall the people from contaminated areas move, when there homes become uninhabitable after nuclear crises? Japan is made up of just a handful of islands, all of whose inhabitants might need to be evacuated after new quakes and nuclear power accidents. However, all the dry land of the planet is but islands in the World Ocean. Where shall people go, if the “peaceful” nuclear reactors start exploding?
The main actors during the Chornobyl disaster were the cleanup workers: soldiers, who used spades to clean away chunks of radioactive graphite on the roof of Reactor Four, and pilots, who dumped lead, boron, dolomite, and sand from helicopters into the crater of the wrecked reactor. By the way, the shelter was built by courageous construction workers at the cost of their own health and lives.
I asked Yurii Andreiev, president of a Ukraine-wide public organization of the disabled, Chornobyl of Ukraine Union, what the implications are, and how the heroism of those brave people has been honored. This is what he said:
“After the Chornobyl disaster, 356,000 disaster fighters from Ukraine alone have passed through the Chornobyl Zone. Out of these, 137,000 are already dead. Governmental support for Chornobyl disaster fighters is getting scarcer and scarcer with each passing year. And only the verbal tsunamis of our officials keep gaining impetus. This is what we saw under Yushchenko, and the same continues under Yanukovych.
At a recent reunion in Krasnoyarsk I got the following entry in my special guestbook from a member of a rescue team, a survivor now living in Siberia:
“My friends are leaving, going nowhere…
Like leaves in the fall
They go away once and for good,
As if this were how it should be…
They depart abruptly, like in
battle,
Without as much as waving a hand,
Sparing their friends and family
The sight of their last agony…
Chornobyl disaster fighters are true men. Good, kind, gentle fellows. These men won’t betray you and won’t forsake you in need. They don’t follow a deeply rooted principle our society lives by: Grab and Run! We feel that people need us like a tool in these troubled times. And if this is so, it is way too early for us to die. We don’t want to!!! We must overcome the resistance of life and of our homemade pencil-pushers.
We’re gonna live, fellas!
Kindest regards
To all Chornobyl disaster fighters of Ukraine
President of the Krasnoyarsk Krai public organization
of the disabled
Union “Chornobyl”
