Chornobyl Disaster Remembered

In 1986 the Ukrainian poet Ivan Drach came up with a stunning metaphor — “the nuclear lightning of Chornobyl has struck right into the genotype of the Ukrainian nation.” Back in 1986, we in Ukraine, could not grasp the full extent of the disastrous consequences of the Chornobyl "nuclear lightning." The Chornobyl disaster was to become a moral category.

Like a chain reaction, it spread through our society, it delivered a devastating blow to the traditional Soviet principles and values, it exposed brazen, monstrous lies and barefaced cynicism of the Soviet system, and, eventually, Chornobyl turned out to be one of the causes that led to the ruination of the evil empire, and paradoxically, to making us free.

April of 1986 stands in my memory for its unprecedented early warmth, pale, hot spots of sunlight on the ground near the building of my university, and poignancy of the first, unrequited love.

It was an exceptionally warm spring, with everything in bloom. April 26 was a Saturday, and a great many people took advantage of the sunshine. Children were let out of homes to play outdoors; PT classes at schools were conducted at open-air sports grounds; farmers went out into the fields; peasants dug in their vegetable gardens; young people went to the sandy beaches; mothers rolled out their infants onto the alleys of the parks; the old sat on the park benches enjoying the warmth…

The first official information in Ukraine about the accident at Chornobyl was published in the communist party newspaper Radyanska Ukrayina (Soviet Ukraine). It was a tiny piece, at the bottom of the page, saying that there was an accident at the Chornobyl nuclear power station and that the work to put things back to normal was underway; those who were injured in the accident were being given medical help; a government commission was set up to investigate the matter. Just a little problem that will be easily dealt with — and not a hint of warning.

The next morning I was woken up by strange sounds that were coming from the street — trucks, or rather water tanks, were moving along the street aiming powerful jets of water at the boles of the trees, washing sidewalks and the road. A vague sense of unease began to creep in. Later, there appeared columns of huge military trucks, their platforms covered with tarpaulin, with signs PEOPLE attached to them. These trucks rolled through the streets heading north.

It was only much later that we were to learn that the “PEOPLE” riding in the platforms of these trucks were young army conscripts, boys of around twenty years of age, who were sent to “deal with the consequences of the accident.” Many of them were to die, saving the country from “the consequences.” But on those days, right after the accident we just saw the trucks and heard their heavy rumble.

There were also many cars that were heading in an opposite direction, and they made very little noise — children and relatives of the communist party bosses and top Soviet apparatchiks were being taken to safe places in the south of Ukraine. A friend of my mother’s who had “some connections in high places” called her on the phone and told her, “Shut all the windows, use only bottled mineral water, and take your daughter out of town as soon as possible.” But he provided no explanation, letting us do panicky guesswork on our own.

On April 30, a well-known pediatrician appeared in one of the prime-time television programmes, and answering “an unexpected question” posed by a journalist present, said without any hesitation and very confidently that there was absolutely no danger for the health of Kyiv children. “Dear Kyivans, do not let yourselves become victims of unreasonable radiophobia [fear of radiation]! It’s ridiculous to fear something which poses no danger at all! The radiation background is now lower than it was before the accident at Chornobyl!”

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Concerning the measures being taken in assisting the population during the work being done to deal with the consequences of the accident at the ChNPS (Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station)

The Ministry of Health Protection of the Ukrainian SSR is carrying out dosimetric control:

data available on April 30 1986 shows that in the city of Kyiv there has been a sharp increase in the gamma-radiation background from 50 micro-roentgen an hour in the days preceding the accident up to 1,100- 3,000 micro-roentgen an hour.

Besides, there has been observed [radioactive] contamination of samples taken from the open water reservoirs, [samples] of drinking water, of the soil, of the leaves, and of the animal fur in Chornobyl, Polissya and Ivankiv [administrative] Raions.

The highest level of [radioactive] contamination of upwards of 10,000 to 20,000 micro-roentgen an hour has been discovered in the samples of the soil, leaves and needles of conifers. [in the original, this document is in Russian]

* Comments in square brackets [..] belong to the translator; in translating the official Soviet documents and quotations from the Soviet publications, the translator bent over backwards trying to render the peculiar Soviet style of writing as close to the original as possible but it is hard — nay, impossible — to adequately reproduce it in English.

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In order to make it clearer to the reader what 1,100–3,000 micro-roentgen an hour registered in Kyiv in April 1986 actually means, I supply a quote from the newspaper Atomnik Ukraine which describes a radiation leak that occurred at one of the Ukrainian nuclear power stations two years ago:

“On February 16 2002 in the territory of the Khmelnytska NPS there occurred a leak of radioactive water from a crack in the pipe that connects the reactor section with the special water purification unit; 30 square meters of the ground were contaminated, with the level of gamma radiation being 240 MICRO-ROENTGEN AN HOUR… (that is, so many times lower than in Kyiv! — M.B.) The contaminated soil that totalled 10 cubic meters was removed and TAKEN TO A SPECIAL RADIOACTIVE WASTE REPOSITORY. (bold itallics are mine — M.B.).

It took the then secretary general of the communist party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, the supreme ruler of the country in everything but in name, eighteen days to summon up courage and address the nation and the world with a message about the Chornobyl disaster.

Among the things he said were these words: “…We have come across veritable mountains of lies, lies of the most dishonest and vicious kind [promulgated in the West about Chornobyl]… As far as the alleged lack of information [about the disaster] is concerned, it’s not true that informationvhas been suppressed on purpose. There’s been an actual political campaign launched [in the West] to accuse us of deliberate suppression of information …”

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From a 27 June 1986 order of the head of the 3rd Main Board of the Ministry of Health Protection of the USSR Yevhen Shulzhenko on “Tightening secrecy around the measures being taken to deal with the consequences of the accident at the ChNPS”:

Classify as secret the information about the accident. Classify as secret the information about the treatment [of those who have been affected] and its results.

Classify as secret the extent and state of radioactive injury suffered by the people who have taken part in dealing with the consequences of the accident at the ChNPS.

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From a 4 January 1987 telegram sent by the means of a special high- frequency communication service from the head of the 3rd Main Board of the Ministry of Health Protection of the USSR Yevhen Shulzhenko

“The diagnoses connected with the injurious effects of the ionizing radiation include:

… acute case of radiation sickness… chronic radiation sickness… body organs and tissues affected by radiation… health hazards resulting from being exposed to radiation, such as leukaemia or leucosis which develop 5 to 10 years after the exposure to radiation of over 50 rads; skin cancer developing as a result of radiation exposure…; adenoma of the thyroid gland that develops as a result of radiation exposure of more than 1,000 rads…

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April in the Soviet Ukraine was a special month — the time of preparing for “fittingly celebrating the great holidays of May 1, the International Day of Solidarity of the Working People of the World, and May 9, Victory Day” [victory over Germany in WWII]. Floors in schools and offices were polished; employees and engineers were engaged in washing the office windows, cleaning the yards, removing yesteryear leaves from the parks.

Flower beds sported portraits of “the beloved leader Lenin” slogans like “Peace-Labour-May,” or “Long Live Communist Party!” Red-blue banners (the colours of the Soviet Ukraine).

Artificial blossoms of cherry trees and big flowers of garish colours were made in thousands to be distributed among the participants of the May Day civil parade that was to file through the main street of Kyiv Khreshchatyk, past the viewing stand with the communist party and Soviet bosses greeting them.

These artificial cherry blossoms affixed by thin wire to freshly cut twigs and branches were made mostly in schools, and before they were loaded into the trucks and taken away to be distributed among “the demonstrators,” they clogged the corridors, lay in piles in gyms and in the teacher’s common rooms.

On May 1 1986, when the direction of the wind had changed and the radioactive particles were carried out by the air currents to Kyiv, the civil parade was to take place as always. We, students of the University, “privileged,” to take part in the civil parade were to gather at the university at 7 o’clock in the morning.

Three hours of waiting — and then together with “the celebratory masses,” we were to march through Khreshchatyk singing patriotic songs, chanting even more patriotic and cheerful slogans, and waving the artificial flowers.

The morning was chilly and windy. We were not aware of the radiation (three days earlier on April 28 Swedish monitoring stations reported abnormally high level of wind-transported radioactivity and pressed the Soviet government for an explanation) that was carried by the winds from the north to Kyiv, passing through our homes, our bodies and our hearts — and then further to Europe — to Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, Germany and even Great Britain. But we felt there was something wrong, a vague menace hung over the crowds.

The city, bright-green, young leaves, the rising sun, the banners fluttering and rustling in the wind — everything seemed unfriendly, alienated, even hostile. The coloured-paper “blossoms,” all these slogans and posters looked incongruous, out of place. We shared whatever information we had gleaned from various sources — Voice of America, BBC and Radio Liberty broadcasts (at that time jamming of these broadcasts was particularly relentless and ferocious); hearsay; rumours.

Somebody said that those students who would leave the city, “succumbing to panic and fail to turn up at the exams will be expelled,” no matter what the explanations of their absence would be; others said it was advisable to drink red wine, introduce iodine into the diet and avoid drinking milk…

We marched through the main street, through the waves of loud music and cheering and hurrahing; people were waving little flags, dancing Ukrainian dances, greeting the communist bosses on the viewing stand …

The previous night, on April 1986, these people from the top echelons of power had been fully apprised of the radioactive situation in Kyiv (see document 1). Years later a German doctor who had treated Ukrainian children suffering from the cancer of the thyroid gland in the 1990s, told me that if the authorities had alerted the people right after the Chornobyl accident to the dangers of exposure to radiation and advised them to introduce the iodine homoeopathically into their diet, the number of cancer cases could have been reduced by at least half — small quantities of “normal” iodine saturating the thyroid gland would have prevented the radioactive iodine from penetrating into this gland.

But the Ukrainian leaders feared Moscow’s reaction to their “unauthorized” humanitarian action and not wanting to lose their posts and jobs they had kept mum and did not cancel the civil parade. And then they stood on the viewing stand, smiling and waving back, greeting to the unsuspecting people who carried small children piggy-back marching past them. As it turned out later, many children on that day were exposed to radiation much above the safety level.

On the way home from the parade, I saw a column of buses packed with people — dozens upon dozens of buses with people glumly staring out the windows, their faces blurred by the bluish-grey exhaust gases. When the gust of wind carried away the smoke I saw despair in their eyes as the buses rumbled past me.

I wanted to ask them what was going on but who would answer my questions? A couple of hours ago they had said farewell to their homes, never to get back… The mournful column of these buses, with the Chornobyl black radioactive dust in their wake, preceded and followed by police cars, their sirens and lights on, roared past.

In the evening of “the Solidarity Day” a friend of my parents, Arthur, paid us a visit. He was a physicist, specializing in nuclear physics. He said that dosimeters available at research centres were ordered to be surrendered to the authorities, and that those who failed to do so, and used the dosimeters “in an unauthorized way” were threatened with severe “administrative punishment.” But he did bring a radiation meter with him.

18 years have passed since that evening of May 1 but even now when I hear or read the words “radioactivity” or “radiation” I can’t help recalling the dry, chirping sound of Arthur’s radiation-measuring instrument. It became louder when he brought it closer to the upholstered pieces of furniture, curtains, and corners of the rooms. And the rattling noise grew menacingly loud when he checked the clothes we wore outdoors.

Earlier in April, I had a pair of very nice Lee blue jeans brought to me from Paris. I had been sporting them in public during the last week of April and during the parade — they fit excellently and it felt so good not only to be wearing them but also to be catching envious and admiring glances.

Arthur brought the dosimeter close to a leg of my Lee jeans and the instrument went wild — the noise it made was deafening! “These pants of your must be thrown away, or better burned.” What? To burn my Lee jeans brought to me from Paris? It was a shock the brutality of which can hardly be understood by anyone who had not lived in the Soviet Ukraine as a young person.

I rushed to the bathroom and began washing them in the great amounts of washing powder, I used the special soap, I kneaded the jeans in the suds, I rinsed them many times — but the merciless dosimeter continued to announce a great danger, particularly around the seems, pockets and the zipper… It looked I had to abandon them after all and consign them to the flames.

And then my mother began to urge me to get my things packed - “There’s a train leaving for Lviv at ten,” she kept saying, “the best place for you to go to.” I began screaming, “I won’t go! They’ll kick me out of the university! The day after tomorrow I have an important seminar! I’ll find no books that I need in Lviv!”

I wept and begged but my mother was adamant. “You’re young, you’ll want children some day. You must go, pleaaaaase!” And I did. But I felt right there and then that the happy, carefree childhood had come to an abrupt end — I had momentarily graduated to adulthood.

When I arrived at the railroad station the scenes I saw there shocked me even further — crowds at the booking offices; crowds surging in; people offering the carriage attendants money to help them get on the trains; people begging to let their children come on board; some were trying to climb into the carriages through the open windows; others were passing the children through the carriage windows to those who were lucky to get on board.

I saw desperate mothers entrusting their very small children to complete strangers, and asking them, “In Poltava, give them to…”; “In Lutsk, call two oh three…please and tell them…”; “In Lviv, …” Grown-ups and children crying and weeping bitterly on the platforms, in the trains — total confusion, cacophony, and stupefaction. Never before had I seen anything like this — thousands of people wailing good-byes…

“The town was called Prypyat after a beautiful river whose deep current connects the Belarus and Ukrainian parts of the land of Polissya, and then rolls on until it empties into the mighty and timeless Dnipro River. The town emerged as the construction of a nuclear power station began in the vicinity — the Chornobyl NPS named after Vladimir Illich Lenin.

The opening pages in the working biography of Prypyat were filled when on February 1970 the construction workers hammered the first pile into the ground preparing it for the foundation of a first building, and when the first excavator bucket was filled with soil. The proximity of a railroad station, a highway and a river determined the choice of the site for the new town.

A palace of culture [community centre], a house of books [bookstore], a cinema house, a hotel, four libraries, a school of the arts with a concert hall, secondary schools of general education, a technical school as well as a wide network of service centres, cafeterias, cafes and stores were built in Prypyat. Over ten kindergartens were opened, with a special attention being paid to the construction of various pre-school and sports establishments.

No wonder — the median age of the inhabitants of this infant town is 26 years. Every year over a thousand babies are born there! It is only in Prypyat that one can see such a parade of proud mothers and fathers gently rolling baby carriages with tiny tots along the streets and through park alleys…

Prypyat is striding into the future with confidence. The town’s industrial enterprises continue to increase their production capacity… The master plan of the town’s development envisages the population expansion to reach 80,000 inhabitants. This seat of the harnessed atom will become one of the handsomest towns in Ukraine!”

From the book Istoriya mist i sil Ukrayiny (History of Cities and Villages of Ukraine)

“Chornobyl — a town in Kyiv Oblast; a regional centre situated at the Prypyat river (one of the Dnipro tributaries; a river port. The first written mention of Chornobyl dates from 1193. In 1362 [Chornobyl] was captured by the feudal state of Lithuania. After the Union of Lublin in 1569 [the town] came under domination of Poland. The population of Chornobyl took part in the war of Liberation of the Ukrainian people (1648–1654). After the second partition of Poland (1793) Chornobyl came under the protectorate of Russia. The Soviet power was established [in Chornobyl] in February 1918. Starting from 1941, Chornobyl is a town [that is: it was given the status of a town].

The town boasts: an iron foundry; a cheese-making factory; a provender mill; an industrial complex; two technical schools; four secondary schools; a music school; a hospital; an outpatient clinic; a library. Population — 20,000 people. ChNPS began to be built in 1970, 12 km to north-west from Chornobyl, at the same time when Prypyat, the town of power engineers [began to be built].”

The idea to build a nuclear power station in Chornobyl emerged in the mid-sixties of the twentieth century. On September 29 1966 the Council of Ministers of the USSR approved a plan of building several nuclear power stations in the period from 1966 to 1977; some of the new nuclear stations were to be equipped with reactors of a new type, PAaa-1000. And Ukraine was to provide sites for some of these nuclear power stations. One of the sites was chosen in the land of Polissya, about 110 kilometres to the north of Kyiv.

Reactor No. 1 commissioned in 1977, followed by No. 2 in 1978, No. 3 in 1981, and No. 4 in 1983. Each reactor had an electricity-generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts, and the four together produced about 10 percent of Ukraine’s electricity at the time of the accident.

Some of the Ukrainian scientists who were appalled by this idea, argued that it was insane to build a nuclear power station equipped with highly unreliable PAaa-1000 reactors in an area so densely populated and at such a close distance from the capital. A letter signed by over 6,000 leading scientists, prominent cultural figures and journalists was sent to the 19th All-Union Communist Party Conference with a request to make changes in “the programme of the development of electric power generation in Ukraine” [it was the communist party that took the final decisions in the Soviet Union].

The Soviet leaders and the Ministry of Energy Production reacted in a typically Soviet supercilious and dismissing manner — “It’s your Ukrainian syndrome of radiation phobia!” The letter was made fun of. Moscow leaders and specialists insisted that the PAaa-1000 reactors were “so safe they could be installed under the beds of the newlyweds!” And went ahead with building nuclear power stations in Ukraine — one in Rivne Oblast that stood on the karst land — a limestone landscape, characterized by caves, fissures, and underground streams totally unsuitable for a nuclear power station to stand on, and one in the Crimea, at the place of a tectonic fault and excess of underground water.

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From “A 23 July 1981 Report to the Government of the Ukrainian SSR from Ukrainian scientists” (marked: Strictly confidential)

“…nowhere else in the world nuclear power stations are built at the upper reaches of big rivers; the River Prypyat which empties into the Dnipro does not have enough water resources [for a nuclear power station]… The main concern is a possible contamination of the environment with radionuclides which are produced in all the cycles of the nuclear power energy production complex. Carbon-14, krypton-85 and iodine-129 are particularly dangerous. Consequences of an accident at the Chornobyl NPS, can be very grave and can result in wide-spread ruination and radioactive contamination of Kyiv.”

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From “A Report to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine from the KGB of Ukrainian SSR about systematic violations of technological standards during the building-and-erection work done at some sections of the ChNPS which is currently under construction.”

According to information recently received, at certain sections of the construction of Reactor Unit 2 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station (ChNPS) there have been observed digressions from the approved projects and designs and violations of technological standards in carrying out building and erection work which [these digressions and violations] can result in accidents and injuries.

The supports of the control room have been installed with [considerable] misalignments… panels installed with [considerable] misalignments… vertical hydro-insulation damaged; [the latter damage] can result i subterranean waters seeping into the building and subsequent contamination of the environment…

The quality of concrete used was low and the placing of it in the foundation faulty…

Neglect and disregard of safety precautions led to 170 workers having been injured in the nine months of 1978…

Fires broke out in September and October 1978 in the ventilation shaft… of the main building and in the control room because of negligence…

The present report has been compiled in order to inform… V.V. Fedorchuk, Chairman of the Committee for State Security [KGB] of Ukraine [in the original, this document is in Russian]

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A special report of the KGB Board of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast to the 6th Board of KGB of Ukrainian SSR about faults discovered in the construction of Reactor Units 3 and 4 of the Chornobyl NPS

According to the experts [who have investigated the problem] there are cracks in the plates that form the floor in Reactor Unit 3 of the Chernobyl NPS … and in the supporting frame… which constitutes a danger for Reactor Unit 3.

…A similar situation has been discovered at Reactor Unit 4. [in the original, this document is in Russian]

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The nuclear power station at Chornobyl was built in a typical Soviet manner — “shock work done at an accelerated tempo.” And desirably to be completed before a particularly important Soviet holiday, like an anniversary of Lenin’s birthday, or of October 1917 Revolution. In her book about Chornobyl, the Ukrainian journalist Lyubov Kovalevska quotes the testimony of Oleg Mastynsky, a television cameraman whose job was to shoot the commissioning of Reactor Unit 4: “Nobody paid any attention to me and wandered about the building. Everywhere I saw piles of construction waste.

When I walked into the control room, the first thing I saw was the ALARM sign. When I asked what’s going on, I was told that it was all right, just checking things. When I saw that the control rods were about to be lowered into the reactor, I asked where I could find a chair to stand on so that I could shoot the procedure from a more advantageous angle. One of the operators told to climb right on to the control panel.

I was quite taken aback — to stand on the control panel of a nuclear reactor! ‘It’s all right,’ said the operator nonchalantly. ‘There’s nothing inside yet. And he opened a sort of a flap on the panel so that I could look inside. I did — and indeed, there was nothing inside! And the reactor was about to be pronounced ‘ready for action’!”

The official report about “the accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station named after V.I. Lenin” enumerated the technical sequences that led to the explosion. But what did actually cause the reactor to explode? The official statement, prepared for the International Agency Atomic Energy said that the primary cause “was a series of violations of an exceptionally unlikely nature of the safety procedures by the plant personnel.”

The accident occurred at night on April 25– 26, 1986, when technicians at reactor Unit 4 attempted a poorly designed experiment. The instructions said: “Turn off the reactor cooling emergency system” during a planned shutdown. Following the instructions, plant personnel intended to monitor the performance of turbine generators, which supplied electric power for the plant’s own operation, during a changeover from standard to a backup source of power. The reactor’s design made it unstable at low power, and the operators were careless about safety precautions during the test.

Workers shut down the reactor’s power-regulating system and its emergency safety systems, and they withdrew most of the control rods from its core, while allowing the reactor to continue running at 7 percent power — with the reactor’s cooling emergency safety systems turned off for 11 hours! At 1:23 a.m. on April 26 the chain reaction in the core went out of control. Several explosions triggered a large fireball and blew off the heavy steel and concrete lid of the reactor.

This and the ensuing fire in the graphite reactor core released large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere, where it was carried great distances by air currents. A partial meltdown of the core also occurred. It was the worst nuclear power accident in history — in fact, the most terrible man-made disaster as far as its consequences are concerned.

An estimated 100 to 150 million curies of radiation (primarily radioactive isotopes of iodine and caesium) escaped into the atmosphere before the cleanup crews were able to bring the fires under control and stabilize the situation. Initially, prevailing winds carried the radioactivity northwest from the plant across Belorus and into Poland and Sweden. Between 50 and 185 million curies of radionuclides escaped into the atmosphere — many times more radioactivity than that created by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This radioactivity was spread by the wind over Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine and soon reached as far west as France and Italy. Almost 20 percent of Ukraine’s farmland was removed from production during the years immediately after the accident. 27,850-sq km (10,750-sq mi) area was described as being “seriously contaminated” by radiation (part of this area is in Belarus). A territory roughly equal in size to that of Denmark or Holland was made no good for farming — or for living.

Three and a half million people were affected, one million of them — children, four thousand of whom were physically or mentally handicapped at the time of the accident. 600,000 to 800,000 thousand people worked at the cleanup and containment — cleanup crews were called likvidatory, or “liquidators”.

According to the International Society Chornobyl, about 7,000 “liquidators” have died of the diseases caused by radiation. According to the official statistics of the Ministry of Health Protection of Ukraine, only 10.3 percent of the “liquidators” can be considered “healthy”; the number of “healthy children” (who are grown-ups now) among those who have been affected by the consequences of the accident is down to 2 percent; the number of handicapped among them is four times higher than the average figure of the handicapped to be found in a similar number of people elsewhere in Ukraine.

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The last letter written to his family by Viktor Dehtyarenko, an operator at Reactor Unit 4 who died of radiation sickness in early May 1986 in Moscow’s Clinical Hospital No 1:

the moment they brought us envelopes I got down to writing you a letter. I can’t write myself [the letter was dictated to a nurse who wrote it down] because of the burns on my hand. We flew into Moscow quite fine. We found accommodation [sic!] at a good hospital, they [medically] treat us well, only professors and doctors [meaning: among the physicians were only professors and doctors of medical science]. So don’t you worry about me there. Everything’ll be all right! Write how kids are doing. Don’t delay —

write back as soon as possible! [bold is mine — M.B.] Love you and kiss you, Yours, Vitya”

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Every radionuclide has its own time in which it loses its radioactivity; half-time of some are several seconds; of others — million of years. Among the radionuclides that were hurled into the atmosphere during the accident at Chornobyl and polluted the environment with radioactive isotopes of strontium and caesium have a half-life of 30 years. Ecologists say that the ecological situation in Ukraine will return to what it was before the Chornobyl accident in ten half-times — and the biologists say that the genetic balance is regained in seven generations.

But of no less damaging is the effect the disaster had on people’s minds and hearts. The remarkable Ukrainian poetess Lina Kostenko once said, “A radiation meter is no good for measuring the doses of the devastation of the soul.” The exploded reactor at Chornobyl made thousands upon thousands of people leave their homes for good. Human, ethnographic and cultural continuity was brutally broken.

Hundreds of villages, small human communities with their unique local traditions, customs and beliefs, ceased to exist. Houses remained standing and growing derelict but the people who had lived in them are gone — people who had been living there for hundreds of years. The nuclear flame burned out folk music, folk art, the style of peasants’ life that had been developing for generations.

“A voice was heard…, wailing and loud laments; it was Rachel weeping for her children and refusing all consolation, because they were no more.” Matthew, 2: 18

It was Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), Alsatian-German philosopher, and mission doctor, who put forward an ethical moral principle of “reverence for life.”

The Chornobyl disaster swept all the moral imperatives aside and brought in new ones, political and economic. In order to conceal the individual doses of radiation exposure, “a safe collective radiation exposure dose” was introduced. Thus, 200,000 conscripts (the actual figure may have been different but the Ministry of Defence of the Soviet Union had never been known for the accuracy of the data it provided) who were brought in to do the clean-up, were pronounced as being out of danger since their “collective cumulative dose” was estimated to be well within the established “safe margin.”

The newspaper Pravda, the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union wrote on May 19 1986, “There is one unwritten law in ‘the zone’ that is always adhered to — Take care of the people!” [“zone” — a fenced 40-mile-wide circle, cleared of its residents, was called the Zone of Estrangement]

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16 May 1986. Secret To: Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

“From May 4 through May 9 I stayed in the region of the ChNPS. I consider it important to share some of my observations.

1. Evacuation of Prypyat. An hour after [the accident] it was clear what the radiation situation was [meaning: it was high] but no emergency measures were taken. The residents did not know what to do.

2. Clean-up work at the dangerous places was done by soldiers who were not wearing any individual protection (some worked as close as 800 meters away from the [ruined] reactor)… The helicopter pilots were also exposed [to strong radiation]. All of them are young people and consequently it will affect [their reproductive system and their] progeny.

3. The entire system of civil defence was completely paralyzed; no dosimeters in a working condition were available [which the local ‘civil defence’ bodies were supposed to have among all other things, like gas masks, etc.]

4. I was struck by the complete lack of initiative on the part of the local authorities — they did not have any footwear, clothes and other necessities to issue to those who had been affected by the accident — they were just waiting for instructions from Moscow.

5. There were many reasons that caused panic in Kyiv, but the main factor [that provoked panicky feelings] was the absence of reliable information… When it became known that children and families of the managing workers [Soviet term for communist party bosses and top executives] were being taken out of town, a wave of panic rolled through the city. Even at the booking offices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine about a thousand people stood in lines…” [the original is in Russian]

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“To take care of the people” meant to have them working in “the zone” as long as possible, regardless of the doses of radiation they were exposed to. Several operators died in the control room; twenty firefighters died of radiation exposure fighting the fire on the roof of Reactor Unit 4 — when they arrived at the scene they were wearing their usual firefighters’ thermal suits but nothing to protect them against the fierce radiation of 1,000 roentgen. They were putting the fire out with no electric light, in the noxious vapours for over an hour, and the radiation they were exposed to was lethal many times over.

Later, a group of firefighters released — wearing no special protective suits either — the radioactive water from under the ruined reactor, thus preventing a potential explosion of nightmarish consequences. The young conscripts brought in to do the cleanup, were removing the radioactive debris and pieces of radioactive graphite from the territory of the power station and from the roofs with their bare hands, and the personnel of the three remaining reactors were working round the clock to prevent any further accidents.

Helicopters were unloading concrete, lead, sand and other materials into the gaping hole on the roof of Reactor Unit 4 to smother the nuclear monster and prevent the chain reaction. The pilots performed over 1,800 flights over the reactor. Every time they flew over the reactor on April 27, they received a dose of 80 roentgen.

A possible nuclear conflagration was prevented — the chain reaction did not progress, no further and no nuclear explosion occurred. But on May 3, a great upsurge of radioactivity coming from under a huge mound of concrete and lead piled up on top of the reactor was observed, and on May 9 several tons of sand and clay suddenly sagged into the void formed by the burned out graphite. The menacing black cloud that escaped from the bowels of the ruined building covered the sky.

When all this was happening, the newspaper Pravda wrote on May 8: “The working collectives in Polleskoye and Ivankiv Raions which neighbour Chornobyl Raion, have never before worked with such enthusiasm and determination. All in all, the spring wheat was sowed on 650,000 hectares of land — a hundred thousand hectares more than last year! — and the quality of work done was much higher than last year.”

Spring wheat sown on the radioactively contaminated fields? — plans had to be fulfilled, Soviet style, no matter what. The radioactive situation in the area was closely monitored, it was perfectly well known in high places how catastrophic the situation was — and yet the uninformed farmers, oblivious of the radioactive dangers, were given a go-ahead with the sowing. And the gruesome facts were kept secret from the general public.

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From “Report No 12 about the content of radionuclides in samples of agricultural products on August 13 1986”:

“…The content of radioactivity in agricultural products [fruit and vegetables] is from 58 to 85 percent [above the safety level], and in the grains it is 58 times higher than the safety level…”

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Many of “the liquidators” suffering from various diseases that developed as a result of radiation exposure, were left without adequate medical or financial support; many of the servicemen who were used in the cleanup, were refused the status of “the liquidators” because they could not prove they had participated in the cleanup effort in 1986 — they did not have the necessary documents certifying their participation — these documents were allegedly burned “because they were radioactively contaminated.”

Monthly allowances for those living in the contaminated Chornobyl Zones: • Zone Two — 2.6 Hr • Zone Three — 2.1 Hr • Zone Four — 1.6 Hr

Monthly allowances for those working in the contaminated Chornobyl Zones: • Zone Two — 13.26 Hr • Zone Three — 10 Hr • Zone Four — 5.2 Hr

At the current rate of exchange, one Ukrainian hryvnya is about 20 US cents; 5 hryvnyas buy two loaves of bread, or two littres of milk, or a half pound of cheese, or a half-pound of meat, or six pounds of potatoes, or two pounds of oranges, or 5 hr pay for about one thirtieth of a monthly rent (these average figures differ from region to region).

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From “Instruction of the Central Military-Medical Commission of the Ministry of Defence No 24 of 8 July 1987”

“…When medical certificates are issued to persons who were engaged in [cleanup] work at the ChNPS but have not contracted acute radiation sickness… the fact of their participation in the said work is not to be mentioned in the certificate; neither must the cumulative dose below radiation sickness be written in.”

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“Sarcophagus” is the popular nickname given to “an enormous concrete-and-steel protective shell over the damaged reactor to prevent radioactive materials, including gases and dust, from escaping.” It took 400,000 cubic meters of concrete and 7,000 tons of steelwork to build it. The “Sarcophagus” is 61 meters high, and its walls at the thickest places are 18 meters thick. Almost a hundred thousand people were involved, at one stage or another, in its erection.

It was hoped that the Sarcophagus would prevent radioactive materials from getting out and water from getting in for at least fifty years. But ten years later, it was discovered that the shell was leaking both ways. Experts said that it was bad news that water was finding its way into the sarcophagus — no one can tell what exactly is going on inside the ruined reactor. In fact, no one knows where the remaining 70 tons of nuclear fuel are. 70 tons — it is only one of the estimates.

According to the official version of the events, only 3 percent of the nuclear fuel went into the atmosphere during the fire; some of the scientists are of the opinion that only 3 or 4 percent of the nuclear fuel remained trapped inside, with the rest having been thrown into the atmosphere by the explosion and the fire. It is extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, to come to any definite conclusion — a great many tons of sand, lead, concrete and other materials were dropped onto the reactor through the gaping hole in the roof. All these materials must have melted into an inextricable and inseparable mass. It cannot be even stated with full confidence that no chain reaction is possible any more.

The sarcophagus is not only leaky — another major concern of the engineers and physicists watching it is its structural unsoundness. It was erected too hastily and conceivably it could topple in an earthquake or in extreme winds. The reactor building walls which were damaged in the explosion are unstable too. Still another concern is radioactive dust trapped inside — tons and tons of it.

Paradoxically, the nuclear power station was not shut down until 15 December 2000, after many delays. Back in 1997, a project to build a new shell was agreed upon between Ukraine and the G7 countries; it was also planned to turn the whole zone into an ecologically safe area. According to the Shelter Implementation Plan (SIP) which was worked out, all the radioactive waste and rubble were to be removed and safely buried but because of lack of funding no work will begin earlier than 2005. In the meanwhile the sarcophagus whose official name is Obyekt Ukryttya (“Object Shelter”) is being continuously monitored and reinforced.

Est dolendi modus, non est timendi — There is a measure in sadness, but there is no limit to anxiety. I saw this Latin phrase inscribed over the entrance to the National Museum of Chornobyl. The museum that was opened 12 years ago, has become a symbol of a national tragedy and of a reminder of the calamity preserved in the national memory.

From the lobby of the museum you ascend the steps, the symbolic road to Chornobyl, with an uprooted apple tree on the way and its red apples rolling down the stairs right under your feet. The tree of good and evil?

As you continue your ascent, you see the road signs with the names of 76 towns and villages of Ukraine whose population was evacuated — 160,000 people of the land of Polissya, uprooted and scattered over the world like those red apples. The dead human settlements killed by the radiation unleashed by human negligence and indifference.

“Our aim was not just to show relics from Chornobyl — incidentally, most of them were very badly contaminated and we exhibit only those things which it was safe to exhibit — an iconostasis from an old church, old window shutters from peasant houses, embroidered wedding shirts, embroidered decorative towels and old photographs.

We wanted to show the way the tragedy affected people emotionally and psychologically. We do not put any blame for what happened on any one, we do not point the accusing finger at the culprits…We want the visitors to get at least a general idea how it felt to be there after the explosion…

The museum’s interior and exhibition were designed by Anatoly Haydamaka, one of the best Ukrainian painters of today. His approach was that of a philosopher of great insight and of an artist of great compassion. He did manage to make us feel anguish and pain. We do get the message, we realize that Chornobyl concerns all of us.

A friend of mine told me that on one of the memorials in Hiroshima he saw an inscription that said: “Sleep peacefully — the mistake will not be repeated.” Will such an inscription ever appear in Chornobyl or in Prypyat?

Chornobyl is our common destiny. Its consequences are irreversible and eternal — for all of us. The truth is — the world is one and indivisible, any attempt to crack up the world’s indivisibleness leads to the crack-up of the world itself, of its very foundation and of its most profound values.

What John Donne said almost four hundred years ago holds very much true today: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less…; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” [Edits by The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]

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Acknowledgement: I want to express my sincere gratitude to the National Museum of Chornobyl, and to Anna Korolivska in particular, for help that was given me in my work on this essay. Myroslava Barchuk

National Museum of Chornobyl 1 Khorevy Provulok, Kyiv, Ukraine Tel.: + 380 (44) 417-5422

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NOTE: To see the photos of exhibits at the Museum of Chornobyl click on: http://www.wumag.kiev.ua/index2.php?param=pgs20041/58

Interesting experience by some of the people working at the Chornobyl rescue as related to me by one survivor, who lives now in NJ. They realized that they are exposed to the radiation and would eventually die. One way of sweetening the rest of the days is to get plastered on alcohol, that was actually condemned (irradiated). So they got drunk every day while there - what they got to lose? They will be dead anyway. To their big surprise, they did not get the symptoms of radiation poisoning and he is still fine and healthy today.

BTW Chornobyl is the proper Ukrainian name as transliterated to English. Chernobyl is the Russian language version.

From The Chernobyl Poems of Lyubov Sirota:

They did not register us
and our deaths
were not linked to the accident.
No processions laid wreaths,
no brass bands melted with grief.
They wrote us off as
lingering stress,
cunning genetic disorders . . .
But we--we are the payment for rapid progress,
mere victim (of someone else's sated afternoons.
It wouldn't have been so annoying for us to die
had we known
our death would help
to avoid more "fatal mistakes"
and halt replication of "reckless deeds"!
But thousands of "competent" functionaries
count our "souls" in percentages,
their own honesty, souls, long gone--
so we suffocate with despair.
They wrote us off.
They keep trying to write off
our ailing truths
with their sanctimonious lies.
But nothing will silence us!
Even after death,
from our graves
we will appeal to your Conscience
not to transform the Earth
into a sarcophagus!

Another interesting article in this vein, Soldiers of the Chelyabinsk Chernobyl:

As a result of the accident (near Chelyabinsk), more than 124,000 people received lethal overdoses of radiation, dying over an extended period ranging from days to years. In the spring of 1963, as if to punish mankind even further, the region suffered a severe drought. Shallow, boggy Lake Karachai completely dried out and a duststorm blew particles from the lake's highly contaminated bottom all over the area, adding to the eastern Ural radioactive catastrophy another 40,000 victims. These disasters were later known collectively as the Khyshtym tragedy, and caused more casualties than even Chernobyl.

I believe that the word translated into English is "wormwood". Significantly Biblical.

Chernobyl = place name. Does not translate to Wormwood, which is Gorkaya Polyn' in Russian, Girka polyn' in Ukrainian.

From Otkrovenie Svyatogo Ionna Bogoslova (Revelations of St. John the devine), Chapter 8:

10 Tretiy Angel vostrubil, i upala s neba bol'shaya zvezda, goryashchaya podobno svetil'niku, i pala na tret'yu chast' rek i na istochniki vod. (The Third Angel blew his trumpet, and from heaven fell a great star, burning like a lamp, and it fell onto a third of the rivers and sources of water.)
11 Imya sey zvezde polyn'; i tret'ya chast' vod sdelalas' polyn'yu, i mnogie iz lyudey umerli ot vod, potomu chto oni stali gor'ki. (The name of that star was Wormwood, and a third part of the waters became as wormwood, and many of the people died from the waters, because they became bitter.)

Another Internet myth put to rest ;-)

Chernobyl = place name. Does not translate to Wormwood, which is Gorkaya Polyn' in Russian, Girka polyn' in Ukrainian.
...snip

Another Internet myth put to rest ;-)

Not so fast tovarishch:

If you look in Ukrainian Dictionary (not Russian), you will find that Chornobyl' is the NAME for plant called Artemisia (Artemesia Quassia) WORMWOOD.

CHORNOBYL' = WORMWOOD !!!!!

You do not translate name as bunch of words, you translate their actual meaning.

Another attempt at misleading the Internet put to eternal rest (I hope :-)

FreeeePeee Eh?

Take a deep breath, Leo. Click on this link to an online Ukrainian Bible: http://murtonsys.com/bibledatabase/htmlc/ukrainian/66_008.htm.

Note the fifth word in the text of Rev 8:11 below:

transliterates to 'polin'. 'Polin' is the Ukrainian word for wormwood. 'Polin' is the word found in the Bible, not chernobyl/chornobil, which would look like this:

Regardless of how attractive the internet myth may be, the word 'Chernobyl/Chornobil' does not appear in the Ukrainian Bible. If we want to talk similes, metaphores, synonyms, then any word can be found anywhere.

If you look in Ukrainian Dictionary (not Russian), you will find that Chornobyl' is the NAME for plant called Artemisia (Artemesia Quassia) WORMWOOD.

Here is an online Ukrainian dictionary: http://lingresua.tripod.com/cgi-bin/olenuapro.pl

And the results of my query:

Shucks, I guess the entire Ukrainian language and the Holy Bible are in on the conspiracy ;-)

Shucks, I guess the entire Ukrainian language and the Holy Bible are in on the conspiracy ;-)

Translations are not as simple as looking up things in a dictionary. I have done my share of translating (speak 7 languages) and would caution on changes creeping in due to time (dictionaries, bible) and influences of the other languages and "administrations". You try to use computer translation and it is a great source of entertainment for those who speak the involved languages. As far as Bible translations, there are few of those like the one you reference (Christian = Baptist).

I believe I am right with my translations and you might be right with yours :-)

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