Chernobyl Disaster

The Chernobyl disaster occured on April 26, 1986 when a series of explosions in Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Soviet Ukraine resulted in a core meltdown that spread radioactivity over a wide area, including contaminating about a quarter of the country of Belarus. One plant worker was killed immediately, and about fifty firemen and workers died in the next few weeks of acute radiation poisoning from firefighting and cleanup activities. Tens of thousands of people were subjected to high doses of radiation. The nearby city of Pripyat was evacuated and closed off. Initially the accident was attributed to operator error, but subsequent investigations revealed major design and construction flaws. The thirty-kilometer Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl remains off limits.

Emergency Response

The Soviet government immediately dispatched policemen, firemen, soldiers, and workers ("liquidators") to the affected area, ultimately throwing 340,000 untrained, unequipped, and unprotected personnel into action following the meltdown.

Volunteer divers swam into radioactive water to unblock potentially explosive connections. Miners worked around the clock to blast a tunnel under the reactor to pour in liquid nitrogen to try cooling the reactor. Helicopter pilots flew multiple missions directly into heated radioactive air to drop sand into the burning crater. Teams of frantically racing workers (liquidators) shoveled smoldering graphite fragments into wheelbarrows in two-minute hot-zone-exposure workshifts atop the smoldering ruins.

Radiation Poisoning

Acute radiation poisoning takes about two weeks to kill. Symptoms include --

• skin lesions, sores, and burns
• vomiting, diarrhea, and suppuration
• loss of hair, teeth, and nails
• pulmonary edema and tissue swelling
• massive internal organ failure

Belarus Damage

One quarter of Belarus land was radioactively contaminated. The totalitarian government of Aleksandr Lukashenko declared it a criminal offense against the state (with a penalty of three years imprisonment) to join any protest group or demonstrate publicly against the Soviet government.

Accident Cause

While the meltdown was initially attributed to operator error, subsequent investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) blamed design flaws and shoddy construction of the nuclear power plant itself.

Human Casualties

While only one worker was killed in the steam explosion that triggered the reactor failure, about fifty emergency responders died of acute radiation poisoning in the weeks after the accident, with many tens of thousands more suffering long-term after-effects, such as malignant cancers and birth defects. Most deeply affected were the workers, called "liquidators" who performed subsequent clean-up and entombment of radioactive material.

Animal Casualties

Soldiers were given shoot-on-sight orders for cats, dogs, and livestock to prevent the spread of epidemic disease and radioactive particles beyond the thirty-kilometer Forbidden Zone. The nearby city of Pripyat was evacuated, with many animals being left behind on the pretext that residents would be returning soon.

Robot Casualties

German-designed heavy equipment, Soviet-designed Mars exploration robots, and Japanese-designed industrial robots were used in attempts to contain the twenty tons of nuclear fuel in a lead, steel, and concrete sarcophagus. All failed rapidly due to radiation damage to electronic circuitry. They remain in place, too radioactive to remove.

Survivor Quotes

• "At the reactor the firefighters were stomping on burning fuel [graphite], and it was glowing, but they didn't know what it was."
• "Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There's nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air."
• "No, they weren't a gang of criminals. It was more like a conspiracy of ignorance and obedience. The principle of their lives, the one thing the Party machine had taught them [the apparatchiks] was never to stick their necks out. Better to keep everyone happy."
• "Tell everyone about my daughter. Write it down... She doesn't play 'store' or 'school' -- she plays 'hospital'. She gives her dolls shots, takes their temperature, puts them on IV. If a doll dies, she covers it with a white sheet."

Potassium Iodide

Take pre-prescribed potassium iodide tablets or mix drops of potassium iodide (chemical formula KI, in the correct physician-prescribed concentration) in half a glass of water (from a sealed supply) to prevent radioactive material from accumulating in the thyroid, and then get at least fifty miles (80 kilometers) away as rapidly as possible, abandoning all possessions, shaving, showering, and scrubbing hard in uncontaminated water as soon as possible, burying affected clothing, but above groundwater level. (Note that tincture of iodine used for treating wounds is a poison, and is not potassium iodide.)

Reference Source

Interviews with survivors are documented in the book "Voices From Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich, 2006, Picador St. Martin's Press $14 ISBN 0312425848.