www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1469597,00.html?=rss
Timothy Garton Ash: Ukraine is the right way to spread freedom Chernobyl Land of the dead On April 26 1986, the No 4 reactor at the Chernobyl power station blew ap art. Facing nuclear disaster on an unprecedented scale, Soviet authoriti es tried to contain the situation by sending thousands of ill-equipped m en into a radioactive maelstrom.
The Guardian When a routine test went catastrophically wrong, a chain reaction went ou t of control in No 4 reactor of Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukrai ne, creating a fireball that blew off the reactor's 1,000-tonne steel-an d-concrete lid. Burning graphite and hot reactor-core material ejected b y the explosions started numerous other fires, including some on the com bustible tar roof of the adjacent reactor unit. There were 31 fatalities as an immediate result of the explosion and acute radiation exposure in fighting the fires, and more than 200 cases of severe radiation sicknes s in the days that followed.
Advertisement Evacuation of residents under the plume was delayed by the Soviet authori ties' unwillingness to admit the gravity of the incident. Eventually, mo re than 100,000 people were evacuated from the surrounding area in Ukrai ne and Belarus. In the week after the accident the Soviets poured thousands of untrained, inadequately protected men into the breach. Bags of sand were dropped o n to the reactor fire from the open doors of helicopters (analysts now t hink this did more harm than good). When the fire finally stopped, men c limbed on to the roof to clear the radioactive debris. The machines brou ght in broke down because of the radiation. The men barely lasted more t han a few weeks, suffering lingering, painful deaths. But had this effort not been made, the disaster might have been much wors e The sarcophagus, designed by engineers from Leningrad, was manufactur ed in absentia - the plates assembled with the aid of robots and helicop ters - and as a result there are fissures. Now known as the Cover, react or No 4 still holds approximately 20 tonnes of nuclear fuel in its lead- and-metal core. For neighbouring Belarus, with a population of just 10 million, the nucle ar explosion was a national disaster: 70% of the radionucleides released in the accident fell on Belarus. During the second world war, the Nazis destroyed 619 Belarussian villages, along with their inhabitants. As a result of fallout from Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and sett lements. Of these, 70 have been buried underground by clean-up teams kno wn as "liquidators". Today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. Tha t is 21 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Because of the vi rtually permanent presence of small doses of radiation around the "Zone" , the number of people with cancer, neurological disorders and genetic m utations increases with each year. Lyudmilla Ignatenko Wife of fireman Vasily Ignatenko We were newlyweds. We still walked around holding hands, even if we were just going to the store. We lived in the dormitory of the fire station where he worked. On the ground floor they kept the trucks, the red fire trucks. The smoke was from the burning bitumen, which had covere d the roof. They kicked at the burning graphite w ith their feet ... They went off just as they were, in their shirt sleeves. At seven in the morning I was told he was in the hospital. I ran there bu t the police had already encircled it, and they weren't letting anyone t hrough, only ambulances. The policemen shouted: "The ambulances are radi oactive stay away!" Many of the doctors and nurses in that hospital and especially the orderl ies, would get sick themselves and die. The doctor came out and sa id, yes, they were flying to Moscow, but we needed to bring them their c lothes. The buse s had stopped running already and we ran across the city. We came runnin g back with their bags, but the plane was already gone. It was a special hospital, for radiology, and you couldn't get in without a pass. I gave some money to the woman at the door, and she said, "Go a head." Finally I'm sitting in the o ffice of the head radiologist. I can see already that I need to hide that I'm pregnant. All right, listen: his central nervo us system is completely compromised, his skull is completely compromised ." "And listen: if you start crying, I'll kick you out right away. He looks so funny, he's got pyjamas on for a size 48, and he's a size 52. On the very first day in the dormitory they measured me with a dosimeter. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks - at first there were little lesions, and then they grew. there wasn't any ti me to think, there wasn't any time to cry. It was a hospital for people with serious radiation poisoning. In 14 days a person die s He was producing stools 25 to 30 times a day, with blood and mucous. When he turned his head, there'd be a clump of hair left on the pillow . I tried joking: "It's convenient, you don't need a comb." When he died, they dressed him up in forma l wear, with his service cap. They couldn't get shoes on him because his feet had swollen up. Sergei Vasilyevich Sobolev Deputy head of the executive committee of the Shield of Chernobyl Associa tion There was a moment when there was the danger of a nuclear explosion, and they had to get the water out from under the reactor, so that a mixture of uranium and graphite wouldn't get into it - with the water, they woul d have formed a critical mass. The explosion would have been between thr ee and five megatons. This would have meant that not only Kiev and Minsk , but a large part of Europe would have been uninhabitable. So here was the task: who would dive in there and open the bolt on the sa fety valve? They promised them a car, an apartment, a dacha, aid for the ir families until the end of time. The boys dived, many times, and they opened that bolt, and the unit was given 7,000 roubles. They forgot about the cars and apartm ents they promised - that's not why they dived. These are people who cam e from a certain culture, the culture of the great achievement. And what about the soldiers who worked on the roof of the reactor? Two hu ndred and ten military units were thrown at the liquidation of the fallo ut of the catastrophe, which equals about 340,000 military personnel. They had lead vests, but the radiation was coming from below, and they weren't protected there. They were wearing ordinary, cheap imitation-leather boots. They spent about a minute and a half, two minutes on the roof each day, and then they were discharged, given a certificate and an award - 100 roubles. And then th ey disappeared to the vast peripheries of our motherland. On the roof th ey gathered fuel and graphite from the reactor, shards of concrete and m etal. It took about 20-30 seconds to fill a wheelbarrow, and then another 30 se conds to throw the "garbage" off the roof. These special wheelbarrows we ighed 40 kilos just by themselves. So you can picture it: a lead vest, m asks, the wheelbarrows, and insane speed. In the museum in Kiev they have a mould of graphite the size of a soldier 's cap; they say that if it were real it would weigh 16 kilos, that's ho w dense and heavy graphite is. The radio-controlled machines they used o ften failed to carry out commands or did the opposite of what they were supposed to do, because their electronics were disrupted by the high rad iation.
Some 3,600 so ldiers worked on the roof of the ruined reactor. These people don't exist any more, just the documents in our museum, with their names. Eduard Borisovich Korotkov Helicopter pilot I was scared before I went there. I wanted to see the reactor from above, from a helicopter - to see what had really happened in there. On my medical card they wrote that I got 21 roentge n, but I'm not sure that's right. Sometimes at night I'd circle over the reactor for two hours. One told me: "I could lick your helicopter w ith my tongue and nothing would happen to me." We lined the helicopter seats with lead, made ourselves some lead vests, but it turns out those protect you from one set of ray s, but not from another. At night we watched televisio n - the World Cup...
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