Chernobyl
A
Continuing Catastrophe
Secretary-General
of the United Nations Kofi A Annan:
Chernobyl is a word we would all like to
erase from our memory. It recalls an event – the explosion of a nuclear reactor
– which happened in April 1986, opening a Pandora’s box of invisible enemies
and nameless anxieties in people’s minds, but which most of us probably now
think of as safely relegated to the past.
Yet
there are two compelling reasons why this tragedy must not be forgotten.
First,
if we forget Chernobyl we increase the risk of more such technological and
environmental disasters in the future. Alas, errors of this kind cannot be
remedied. But their recurrence can be prevented.
Secondly,
more than seven million of our fellow human beings do not have the luxury of
forgetting. They are still suffering, every day, as a result of what happened
fourteen years ago. Indeed, the legacy of Chernobyl will be with us, and with
our descendants for generations to come.
This
booklet (Chernobyl – a Continuing Catastrophe/authors note) illustrates the
health, economic, environmental, psychological and social effects of the
catastrophe, and the heroic but desperate efforts at rehabilitation made by
local communities. It depicts a gloomy situation where the victims often feel
unwanted, without the means to recover and sustain themselves.
In
1997 the United Nations launched a Chernobyl humanitarian programme. Unhappily,
funding for this programme has fallen far short of what is needed. The original
list of 60 projects has had to be shortened to only nine, selected as the
absolute priorities for funding through the United Nations Appeal for
International Cooperation on Chernobyl.
These
nine projects could, if implemented, make a vital difference to the lives of
many people. Indeed they may fairly be described as the minimum of the
international community should do, not only for the victims of Chernobyl
themselves but also to ensure that future generations throughout the world can
learn some lessons, and reap some benefits, from their ordeal. I appeal to
Governments and to institutions – both intergovernmental and non-governmental –
to give these projects their most serious and urgent consideration.
I
also appeal to the international community as a whole to rethink its response
to nuclear accidents, bearing in mind our humanitarian obligation to help those
whose lives have been shattered or disrupted, as well as the prudential need to
prevent future catastrophes. In the case of Chernobyl, the victims live in
three countries: Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The exact number
of them may never be known. But three million children require physical
treatment, and not until 2016, at the earliest will we know the full number of those likely to
develop serious medical conditions. The most vulnerable victims were, in fact,
young children or babies unborn at the moment when the reactor exploded. Their
adulthood – now fast approaching – is likely to be blighted by that moment, as
their childhood has been. Many will die prematurely. Are we to let them live,
and die, believing the world indifferent to their plight?
Kofi
A Annan
Secretary-General
of the United Nations
Foreword
to the OCHA-report “Chernobyl a Continuing Catastrophe”
published by United Nations, New York and
Geneva 2000.
OCHA
United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Human Affairs
The Holy Bible:
“And the third angel sounded,
and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
And the name of the star is called Wormwood:
and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters,
because they were made bitter.”
In Ukrainian language Chernobyl is the name of
a grass, wormwood (absinth). The word
scares the holy bejesus out of people. Maybe part of the reason for this, among
religious people, is because the Bible mentions wormwood in the book of the
Revelations (8:10-11) which foretells the end of the world.
The church of Chernobyl April 26, 2001
The Chernobyl Catastrophe
The story
The explode reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant 26 April
1986.
Forty
seconds after 01.23 hours on 26 April 1986 during a safety experiment at the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the north of the Ukraine, an operator pressed
a button. Owing to a design fault, the reactor went into meltdown and released
a cloud of radiation that spread across the entire Northern Hemisphere. Over
the next few weeks, the operator lay dying in hospital alongside his
colleagues, his radiation tanned skin turning darker each day until it was
completely charred. Over and over again, he asked himself what had gone wrong.
Whatever conclusion he reached, he could never have understood the full
magnitude of the catastrophe, the consequences of which would continue to
devastate the region for decades. An area of 155,000 km2, home to 7,1 million
people including more than 3 million children, was contaminated with hazardous
levels of radiation. At least 100 times as much radiation was released by this
accident as by the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined
This is how
the UN describe the accident. And one thing is certain. They are not overdoing
it. In fact, the operator in charge, Valenj Chodemtjuk, never succeed to come
out. He remained inside the reactor and was berried in the melt-down. The
UN-report says, that he was too highly contaminated to be moved. The truth is,
that he was never found. His colleague Vladimir Sjisjnok succeed to come out,
but he was heavily burned and died after just a few hours.
Reactor
number 4 was completely destroyed by explosions that blew the roof off the
reactor building. Of the first emergency workers to arrive on the scene, 134
were diagnosed with acute radiation syndrome. Of these 28 died within the first
tree months. They were taken to hospital no 6
in Moscow
for treatment, research and above all to be hide. They are all berried at the
Mittini cemetery in Moscow in lead coffins under 50 cm of concrete as
radioactive waste. Their families were refused to take their bodies back to
Ukraine. April 26 every year the families are aloud to come to Mitini cemetery
to honour their loved once. After the Chernobyl victims had died hospital no 6
had to be cleaned and restored, since the staff and the patients at floors over
and under their department also became sick from radiation. But that was just
the beginning.
The Mitini cemetery in Moscow
April 26, 1997.
Officially 237 persons got acute radiation
sickness working with the accident. They were all treated
at hospital no 6 in
Moscow, where some American doctors worked at the time. That is probably the
reason that those 237 are known. Today it is known – thanks to the former SS
Alla Yaroshinskaya,
how made copies from KGB:s secret documents - that all other hospitals were full of
Chernobyl
victims too. Totally they were 100 000 persons or more. No one knows
for sure.
After the explosion and the fire, about 50
millions curie radio nuclides were thrown out into the air.
The cloud with
radio nuclides went away with the winds as seen below. Most of it fell down in
the Chernobyl area and 70 per cent fell in Belarus. At least 23 per cent of the
country was poisoned by
among other radio nuclides Cesium-137 that can give
leukaemia. The country lost 485 villages - 70
of them are berried in the soil
for ever. That was of course a national catastrophe for a country with
10
million inhabitants and no nuclear power plants of its own. Today at least 2,1
million people
where of 700 000 children lives on radioactive contaminated
territory. In some areas the mortality
is 20 per cent higher than the nativity.
The radioactive fallout
The radioactive
cloud from Chernobyl blow away and nuclides fell to the ground where
it happened to
rain.
Radioactive fallout was registrated not only in
Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation. It was discovered in large parts
of the whole Northern Hemisphere of the planet. The northern part of Ukraine,
the South-East of Russia and the territory of Belarus was contaminated to the
greatest extent. The level of the radioactive fallout on the territory of
Belarus, a non-nuclear state, was two times as high as that of Ukraine and
Russia together. At least 4,8 per cent of much larger Ukraine and 0,5 per cent
of the huge Russian Federation was contaminated.
At least 2,4 million hectare agricultural soil
is no longer possible to use. At least 18 million hectare agricultural soil is
contaminated with 1 curie Cesium-137 per square meter or more. About 500 000
hectare agricultural soil is contaminated with
of Strontium-90 (that can give bone cancer) in a concentration of 0,3 curie per
square meter or more. Belarus is a land of forests, but 26 per cent of the
forests and half of its meadows are, due to
professor Michel Fernex, to find in the flood area to the rivers Pripyat, Dnepr
and Sozjs in the forbidden exclusion zone.
April 26: The Chernobyl accident occurred at
01.23.58.
April 28: The radioactive cloud reached Sweden
and the accident became official.
April 29: High background radiation was
registrated in Polen, Germany, Osterreich and Rumania.
April 30: Schweizerland and North Italy
May 1-2: France, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Great Britain, north of Greece and Japan
May 3: Israel, Kuwait, Turkey
May 4: China
May 5: India
May 5-6: USA and Canada
In Sweden a fallout
of about 1,5-2 Ci/km2 was enough to
slaughter thousands and
thousands of reindeers. Still we do not pick berries and
mushrooms in the affected
forests. In Russia, Belarus and Ukraine 15 Ci/km2 is seen as normal.
The radioactive fallout from Chernobyl affected
the whole northern hemisphere.
