April 26, 2004
18 years after
Some articles
Chernobyl:
18 years of silence
As the 18th anniversary of this
global disaster nears, Elena, a scientist living in the Chernobyl area -- Kiev,
Ukraine -- takes us with her on a motorcycle trip through the region. She tells
us the story of what happened and, in photographs, what is there today.
On the Friday evening of April 25, 1986, the
reactor crew at Chernobyl-4, prepared to run a test the next day to see how
long the turbines would keep spinning and producing power if the electrical
power supply went off line. This was a dangerous test, but it had been done
before. As a part of the preparation, they disabled some critical control
systems - including the automatic shutdown safety mechanisms.
The flow of coolant water dropped and the power
began to increase.
When the operator moved to shut down the
reactor in its low power mode, a domino effect of previous errors caused a
sharp power surge that triggered a tremendous steam explosion, which blew the
1000 ton cap on the nuclear containment vessel to smithereens.
Some of the 211 control rods melted and then a
second explosion, the cause of which is still the subject of disagreement among
experts, threw out fragments of the burning radioactive fuel core and allowed
air to rush in -- igniting the tons of graphite insulating blocks.
Once graphite starts to burn, its almost
impossible to extinguish. It took 9 days and 5000 tons of sand, boron,
dolomite, clay and lead dropped from helicopters to put it out. The radiation
was so intense that all of those brave pilots died.
It was this graphite fire that released most of
the radiation into the atmosphere and troubling spikes in atmospheric radiation
were measured as far away as Sweden - thousands of miles away.
The causes of the accident are described as a
fateful combination of human error and imperfect technology.
In keeping with a long tradition of Soviet
justice, they imprisoned all the people who worked on that shift -- regardless
of their guilt. A man who tried to stop the chain reaction in a last desperate
attempt to avoid the meltdown was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He died 3
weeks later.
Radiation will stay in the Chernobyl area for
the next 48,000 years, but, humans may begin repopulating the area in about 600
years -- give or take three centuries. The experts predict that, by then, the
most dangerous elements will have disappeared -- or will have been sufficiently
diluted into the rest of the world`s air, soil, and water. If our government
can somehow find the money and political will power to finance the necessary
scientific research, perhaps a way will be discovered to neutralize or clean up
the contamination sooner. Otherwise, our distant ancestors will have to wait
until the radiation diminishes to a tolerable level. If we use the lowest
scientific estimate, that will be 300 years from now. Some scientists say it
may be as long as 900 years.
I think it will be 300, but people often accuse
me of being an optimist
I
Remember...
In Ukrainian language (here we don`t like to
say "the") Chernobyl is the name of a grass, wormwood (absinth).
Here, this 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 - which
foretells the end of the world:
REV 8:10 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;
REV 8:11 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.
If I tell someone that I am going to take a
relaxing spin through the "dead zone," the best case response is --
"Are you nuts?"
My dad used to say that people are afraid of a
deadly thing which they can not see, can not feel, and can not smell. Maybe
that is because those words are a good description of death itself.
Dad is a nuclear physicist and he has educated
me about many things. He is much more worried about the speed my bike travels
than about the direction I point it. My trips to Chernobyl are not like a walk
in the park, but the risk can be managed. It is similar to walking on a high
wire with a balancing pole. One end of the pole is the gamma ray emission
intensity and the other end of the pole is the exposure time. But the wire is
also covered with a slippery dust -- and this is the major risk. Inhaling the
radioactive dust that is kicked up by a vehicle or a herd of horses can
severely poison your lungs.
My bike trips to Chernobyl require a working
understanding of biology and physics, also knowing geography and ecology of a
zone.
Dad and their team have worked in the
"dead zone" for last 18 years doing research about the day it all
happened. The rest of the team is comprised of microbiologists, doctors,
botanists and other professions with long names and many syllables.
I was a schoolgirl back in 1986 and within a
few hours of the accident , dad put all of us on the train to grandma`s house.
Granny lives 800 kms from here and dad wasn`t sure if it was far enough away to
keep us out of reach of the big bad wolf of a nuclear meltdown.
Time to go for a ride.
An
abandoned amusement park in Pripyat, a ghost town too close to the
reactor to
be safe for former residents to return. April 26, 2004
New
Life Trickles Back to Chernobyl
By Simon Ostrovsky
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine -- Maria Dika remembers the
flash of flames and a collapsing wall as Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 exploded in
the world's worst nuclear disaster 18 years ago Monday.
Although she took an extremely high dose of
radiation on that day, Dika, who was working as a security guard at the power
plant, again lives in the glum town of Chernobyl, just 10 kilometers from the
reactor.
"The radiation got used to us," said
Dika, a jolly 42-year-old who now manages a hostel for maintenance workers in
the contaminated zone. "I was born and spent my life here. It's my
home."
Life is returning to the 30-kilometer-radius
exclusion zone around Chernobyl, as many former residents have taken part-time
maintenance jobs at the plant or returned to their native villages nestled in
pine forests.
Once the area had a population of close to
120,000 people, who were evacuated in the aftermath of the disaster.
Undeterred by radiation levels that in places
are dozens of times higher than acceptable norms, some 500 former residents
like Dika have since returned, while 4,000 others are shuttled into the zone to
work on the gradual powering down of the plant.
The area has also become a bonanza for
scientists studying the effects of radiation on plant and animal life that has
reclaimed much of the area.
But even as scientists work to minimize
radiation levels, the danger of a new tragedy lingers, this time in the form of
a radioactive dust cloud.
Experts warn that the collapse of an unstable
wall in reactor No. 4 could release some of the 200 tons of nuclear fuel
encased inside the unit by a protective shell of concrete and steel that was
hastily thrown up in the aftermath of the disaster.
The reactor exploded in the early hours of
April 26, 1986, when technicians failed to power down its core after a series
of poorly timed tests, killing 30 people immediately and exposing more than 8
million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia to radiation.
Victims blame Soviet authorities for informing
locals of the accident too late, after they had already been exposed to
enormous amounts of radiation.
On Saturday, some 5,000 people marched in Kiev
to commemorate the disaster and call attention to the plight of Chernobyl's
late victims.
Thousands have died, but the total number of
victims may never be known because of the difficulty in determining whether
ailments are related to radiation.
It is known that the frequency of thyroid
cancer in contaminated areas has jumped since the accident, though this
consequence is becoming evident only today.
Radiation-induced thyroid cancer usually takes
more than 15 years to set in. It will peak in the next few years, said
Volodymyr Sert, a doctor who runs a Red Cross mobile diagnostic unit that
screens residents in contaminated areas.
The organization registered 68 cases in the
Zhytomyr region last year compared to just 15 in 1986.
In Laski, a half-deserted town 90 kilometers
west of Chernobyl, background radiation levels are 30 times higher than in
Kiev, 200 kilometers to the south of the reactor site.
Thyroid cancer cases are particularly high
there because iodine deficiency caused the thyroids of locals to absorb the
radioactive iodine released when Chernobyl exploded, Sert said.
And these people are still at risk of receiving
a new dose of radiation.
Nuclear fuel trapped in the remains of reactor
No. 4 are causing the structure to deteriorate, said Yulia Marusych, a
spokeswoman for the plant.
"God knows how long it will hold,"
she said, pointing to a meter-tall model of reactor No. 4. The real reactor
loomed outside the plant's observation deck.
The aging gray shell of the sarcophagus
encasing unit No. 4 leaks radiation through some 100 square meters of cracks
and holes on its surface, Marusych said. A dosimeter gave a reading of 1,600
roentgens per hour, or 90 times background radiation levels in Kiev.
There are plans to construct a 100-meter-high
metal shell to cover units No. 3 and No. 4. The project, funded by
international donors and lenders, as well as by the Ukrainian government, comes
at a $768 million price tag and is scheduled to be finished by 2008.
"I hope it will be in time," Marusych
said.
The power plant stands at the center of the
10-kilometer-radius dead zone. In Chernobyl town, which stands on the perimeter
of the dead zone, a skeleton firefighting crew monitors forest fires to prevent
radiation from spreading. The occasional bus trundles down the main street
ferrying workers from the reactor.
In contrast to the lush green fields outside
Kiev, agricultural lands in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone have been abandoned
-- brown plots dotted with stunted trees. Deserted houses with broken windows
line the road, and only the rare farmer passes by on a horse-drawn cart.
Unlike the areas surrounding the exclusion
zone, scientists say, the dead zone will remain uninhabitable.
Too heavy to be carried by the winds that blew
lighter radioactive elements as far away as Austria and Scandinavia, plutonium
-- with a half-life of 24,000 years -- settled around the reactor, said Valery
Kashparov, who directs the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology.
But with the proper funding, less radioactive
areas, including parts of the exclusion zone, could be made safe for human life
in less than a year, said Kashparov, a chain-smoker who said tobacco use is
much more hazardous than radiation exposure.
His institute has developed a number of
techniques to make produce safe enough to consume and sell outside the
contaminated areas.
"Most of the radiation absorbed by people
doesn't come from being in a radioactive area, it comes form eating produce
grown there," Kashparov said.
Research by the institute -- which was founded
a month after the disaster to study and fight its effects -- shows that only 5
percent to 25 percent of radiation absorbed by the body comes from background
radiation and contaminated air and water.
"Eighty to 95 percent comes from eating
contaminated food, especially milk and mushrooms," Kashparov said.
Just by tilling and fertilizing pastures,
radiation intake would drop by eight times, Kashparov said.
"Tilling the pasture means cows will eat
clean grass; the cows' meat and milk will in turn be clean, yielding cleaner
manure used to fertilize potatoes, which in turn are fed to pigs," he
said.
"Unfortunately the government is not doing
enough to inform people and to help finance the purchase of fertilizers."
Almost 20 years after the disaster, little is
known about the long-term effects of radiation.
"People think that smaller doses of
radiation over a long period of time are less dangerous than a large dose all
at once," said Dmitry Grodzinsky, a radiobiologist at the Ukrainian
Academy of Sciences.
Sitting in his dark Kiev office, Grodzinsky
warned that the effects are not smaller, just different.
"An organism which is in an area of higher
radiation is constantly agitated as the radiation destroys its cells. To
adjust, the organism destabilizes its own genome so that it can adapt,
resulting in more mutations in its offspring," he said.
Grodzinsky gave pine trees with extraordinarily
long needles as an example.
He said as far as effects of radiation exposure
go, cancer is a bigger danger than genetic instability.
"Radiation is like a lottery. Particles
may shoot through your body and just destroy some cells. But in 600 cases out
of 1 million, it causes cancer."
Radioactivity certainly spawns myths.
When the 50,000 residents of Pripyat, a town
just two kilometers from the reactor, were evacuated, they were not allowed to
take their pets. Within a few months rumors spread of giant mutant dogs roaming
the zone.
"What really happened was that the dogs
got hungry and ate all the little dogs until none where left. Natural selection
reclaimed Chernobyl," Grodzinsky said.
Ukraine-nuclear-Chernobyl-ecology,
sched-feature
Ecologists not a force in Ukraine 18 years after Chernobyl
by Anya Tsukanova
KIEV, April 26 (AFP) - Eighteen years after Ukraine was struck by the world's
worst nuclear accident -- the Chernobyl disaster -- ecological movements remain
almost non-existent in the former Soviet republic still reliant on nuclear
energy.
Radioactivity spewed by the April 26, 1986 explosion of Chernobyl's
fourth reactor contaminated most of Europe, where it sparked a debate on the
problems and dangers of nuclear development.
For Ukrainians, however, the tragedy's
consequences had more of a political resonance than an ecological one -- five
years before the downfall of the Soviet Union, Chernobyl exposed the lies and
irresponsibility of the Soviet authorities charged with dealing with the
crisis.
But although cases of cancer of the thyroid multiplied tenfold
since 1986, Ukraine's population, a quarter of which lives below poverty level,
is more concerned about daily survival than "ecology which is an abstract
notion," said Olga Honcharenko, expert in Kiev's international sociology
institute (KMIS).
According to a poll by KMIS, environmental problems place only
12th on the population's list of priorities.
Ukraine still has 13 nuclear reactors in four power stations,
which produce nearly 45 percent of the national energy output.
Meanwhile the government has met
little resistance in its plans to soon complete the construction of two VVER
nuclear reactors -- a Russian design whose safety has been questioned in the
West -- and its plans to build a third thereafter.
The political party who could logically raise such concerns on a
national level -- Ukraine's Green party -- has lost electoral trust because
voters see it as having colluded with industrial bosses, analysts say.
With 30,000 officially registered members, the Greens are the
largest ecology party in Ukraine. They won 5.43 percent of the vote during the
1998 legislative elections -- but four years later failed to even enter
parliament, scraping a meager 1.3 percent.
While the Greens explain this setback by a poor electoral
strategy, others see it as a well-deserved punishment for inaction and accuse
the party of colluding with industrial bosses who own heavily-polluting
factories.
The Greens' electoral list of 2002 in fact included Vasyl
Khmelnitsky, who controls the important steel producer Zaporizhstal, and
Olexander Koval, former chief of the iron alloy factory of Nikopol.
"They have discredited the Greens' ideology by selling places
on their list," said Yuri Shzherbak, who had created the party in 1990 and
headed it until 1992.
Vitaly Kononov, current leader of the Greens, dismisses such
charges, saying that all party members "behaved properly and voted like
the party asked them to."
The long-haired Kononov said that the party's current priorities
were fighting against genetically-modified products and boosting the quality of
drinking water -- nuclear energy did not figure on the list.
ant-sb-cal/yad/bm
Ukraine-nuclear-Chernobyl,
sched-feature
Plans to build new shell over Chernobyl reactor stir debate
by Sylvie Briand
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine, April 26 (AFP) - The construction of a giant
shell over the cracked sarcophagus at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has
stirred controversy 18 years after an explosion at one of its reactors spewed
200 tonnes of radioactive magma into the air in the former Soviet republic.
"All it would take is a good earthquake" for the
sarcophagus, a mass of concrete slapped together over the fourth reactor in the
days after the April 26, 1986 explosion to collapse, said Olexander Antropov,
an engineer and President Leonid Kuchma's advisor in Chernobyl.
To avoid a new catastrophe, the international community donated
over 700 million euros to construct a shell of 20,000 tonnes of steel -- enough
to cover the statue of Liberty -- over the unstable reactor.
Kiev estimated that construction of the shell, due to be launched
later this year and completed in 2008, would cost over a billion dollars.
"There is no such thing as a 100-percent hermetic shell. But this one
would keep the wind from blowing off radioactive ash," Antropov said. But
the giant project has prompted mixed feelings with Ukraine's scientists and
engineers, who argue that the reactor's radioactive waste should be extracted
and stored before the shell is built.
During a recent public seminar, held
in the town of Slavutich where Chernobyl employees live, many experts also
voiced fears that the project did not "take into account climatic changes
that may take place in the future" and that the shell was not conceived to
resist earthquakes topping 7.0 on the Richter scale, as it should.
Antropov in his turn argued that "technology is not
sufficiently advanced for robots or radio-controlled machinery to extract the
reactor's waste" whose radioactive intensity equals dozens of bombs the
scale of Hiroshima.
"Within 30 or 50 years, radioactive emanations from certain
elements, such as cesium 137, would decrease. But ideally we should wait 150
years before touching this magma," he said.
Ukrainian authorities, however, do not have this much time at
their disposal, most importantly due to fears of ground water being
contaminated.
"There is actually a meager
contamination of subterranean waters which does not represent any danger.
Ground water acts like a filter and prevents radioactivity from leaking,
particularly into the Pripyat river" which passes the station on its way
to Dniepr, Antropov assured.
The shell's concept would allow the waste to be removed when
possible as
well as reinforce the concrete sarcophagus and the wall dividing the third and
fourth reactors, engineer Vasyl Rybakov said.
The closing of Chernobyl in December 2000 had also resolved the
problem of tackling the used fuel of its four reactors.
The treatment and storage centers
for the used fuel and liquid and solid waste, as well as a sorting system, are
due to be constructed in Chernobyl by 2005 thanks to funding from the European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Union.
However, work on this project "is proceeding more slowly than
expected due
to Ukrainian bureaucracy," Italian engineer Arnoldo Simonassi said.
sb-cal/yad/bm
Ukraine-Chernobyl-commemorate
One hundred people mark anniversary of Chernobyl disaster in Kiev
KIEV, April 26 (AFP) - Some 100 people attended an overnight religious service
in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, commemorating the victims of the worst nuclear
accident in history, in Chernobyl in the north of the country, 18 years ago.
Under a thin rain, men and women laid wreaths
at the foot of a monument to the firemen who died of radiation poisoning after
they were sent to clean up the site of the disaster.
"Each year, there are fewer of us to
attend this service," said 40-year-old Tetyana Lazarenko, who, along with
her family, was evacuated from the town of Pripyat, where Chernobyl employees
used to live next to the nuclear power plant, 36 hours after its fourth reactor
exploded in April 1986.
"I lost a town, friends, people who were
close to me. We all had health problems because of radiation," she added.
"You cannot forget such a tragedy," said Lazarenko, who now lives in
Kiev with her husband and three children.
Another overnight service was held at Slavutich, a town in northern Ukraine
housing employees who worked at Chernobyl until it was closed down in December
2000.
A radioactive cloud was spewed high into the
atmosphere when Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded, burning for 10 days and
spreading radioactive material over three-quarters of Europe.
Officially, 31 people were immediately killed
by radiation following the blast on April 26, 1986, but unofficial estimates
hold that as many as 25,000 of the workers that were sent to clean up the site
have since died.
Tens of thousands were crippled from their
exposure to high radiation doses and now say their government allowances are
not enough to live on.
Over 130,000 people were evacuated from the
disaster area and nearly six million continue to live in contaminated zones, in
northern Ukraine, as well as stretches of Belarus and Russia.
Ukraine closed down the fourth and last reactor
of the Chernobyl power
plant in December 2000.
sb/eh/bm
Ukraine-nuclear-Chernobyl
Flowers and sorrow as Ukraine marks Chernobyl disaster anniversary
KIEV, April 26 (AFP) - More than a thousand people throughout
Ukraine Monday attended commemoration ceremonies to mark the 18th anniversary
of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident.
In the early hours of April 26, 1986, the core of Chernobyl's
fourth reactor exploded and for 10 days the station spewed radioactive material
equivalent to more than 200 Hiroshima bombs into the air, contaminating a large
part of Europe.
In the capital Kiev on Monday a hundred people, many of them
former Chernobyl employees or relatives of people who died in the tragedy, laid
flowers at a memorial to firefighters dispatched to the accident site and who
died soon afterwards.
According to a Soviet estimate at the time, 31 people died as a
result of the accident. But since 1986 an estimated 25,000 people from all over
the Soviet Union who came to clean up after the accident have lost their lives.
"Every year there are less of us to take part in the ceremonies,"
said Tetiana Lazarenko, who was evacuated with her family from the town of
Pripiat, three kilometers (two miles) from Chernobyl, 36 hours after the
accident. "I've lost a town, friends, relatives. All of us have problems
as a result
of the radiation. We cannot forget this tragedy," said Lazarenko, who
today lives in Kiev with her husband and three children.
Some 2.3 million Ukrainians, including 450,000 children, today
suffer from radiation-related illnesses, including many with thyroid cancer,
according to the Ukrainian health ministry.
Each year on April 26 an open-air service is held at the Orthodox
church in Kiev, where a memorial pays hommage to Chernobyl's victims.
Early Monday President Leonid Kuchma placed flowers at the base of
the monument and later in the day about 1,000 people gathered there.
Another religious service was held overnight in the northern town of Slavutich,
where many of Chernobyl's employees live.
Mykola Fessik, originally from the Ukrainian city of Poltava, was
rushed to Chernobyl to help build the sarcophagus over the damaged reactor. He
was 22 at the time.
"I ingested a huge dose of radiation and today I can no
longer work. My legs no longer carryme. But I am a nobody and am worth nothing
to my government," said Fessik, who receives about 40 dollars a month as a
victim of the disaster.
He is one of an estimated 600,000 people who were sent to
Chernobyl between 1986 and 1990 to help with the clean-up after the accident.
Some 130,000 residents had to be evacuated from around the station in the days
following the disaster.
The Chernobyl station was closed in December 2000 in return for international
financial aid. But the station, with its sarcophagus covering about 200 tons of
radioactive magma, remains a concern.
Kiev is due later this year to begin construction of a giant shell
over the sarcophagus, which is due to be completed in 2008 at a cost of more
than a billion dollars.
sb-yad/zak/jfs
Russia-Ukraine-nuclear-Chernobyl-UN
UN urges continued international help to Chernobyl victims
MOSCOW, April 26 (AFP) - The United Nations urged the
international community on Monday -- the 18th anniversary of the world's worst
nuclear accident -- to remember people still affected by the Chernobyl
disaster.
"The international community must renew its efforts to help
the people of the affected regions take control of their lives again," Jan
Egeland, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said in a
statement received by AFP in Moscow.
"The aftermath of the Chernobyl accident is simply too much
for people in the contaminated areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation and
Ukraine to cope with alone."
"We simply cannot turn our backs," said Egeland, who is
also the UN coordinator of international cooperation on Chernobyl. "We can
and must do more to help bring development and hope to the affected
people."
In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, the core of
Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded and for 10 days the station spewed
radioactive materials into the air that were equivalent to more than 200 bombs
exploded over Hiroshima and contaminated a large part of Europe.
Nearly 8.4 million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were
exposed to radiation and 150,000 square kilometers (60,000 square miles) were
contaminated and today some six million people continue to live in affected
areas, the UN said in its statement.
Some 2.3 million Ukrainians, including 450,000 children, suffer
today from radiation-related illnesses, including many with the cancer of the
thyroid, according to the Ukrainian health ministry.
yad/zak/gk
Anna
Ivanovna has returned to her radioactive house and garden in Chernobyl.
It is
better to die from radiation than from starving, she says.
Belarus-Chernobyl-politics
Demonstrators mark Chernobyl anniversary in Belarus capital
Demonstrators mark Chernobyl anniversary in Belarus capital
MINSK, April 27 (AFP) - Some 3,000 people demonstrated in the
Belarus capital Minsk late Monday to mark the eighteenth anniversary of the
Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident, that occurred in
northern Ukraine but affected large areas of Belarus.
The demonstrators demanded that the government halt production of food in
contaminated areas and increase allowances for people living in those areas and
for those who were sent to clean up the site of the disaster 18 years ago and
have severe health problems today.
The authorities had not allowed Monday's meeting, and riot police
tried to prevent it from taking place, beating up three young men in the
process.
A reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine
exploded in April 1986, contaminating large areas in the north of the country
along with stretches of Belarus and Russia.
Some 25,000 people died since the disaster in 1986 and nearly six
million people continue to live in contaminated zones, many crippled by the
effect of the radiation.
Twenty three percent of Belarus territory, on which some 1.5
million people live, is still contaminated.
Ukraine closed down the fourth and last reactor of the Chernobyl
power plant in December 2000. But the station, with its sarcophagus covering
about 200 tonnes of radioactive magma, remains a concern.
Ukraine is due later this year to begin construction of a giant
shell over the sarcophagus, which is due to be completed in 2008 at a cost of
more than a billion dollars.
vk-eh/bm
Tuesday, Apr. 27, 2004. Page 4
Candles,
Flowers and Rallies for Chernobyl
By Anna Melnichuk
The Associated Press – The Moscow Times
The Associated Press – The Moscow Times
Vasily
Vaschyuk, right, toasting his firefighter son Monday at Mitinskoye Cemetery.
KIEV -- Across the former Soviet Union, people
lit candles, laid flowers and held demonstrations Monday to remember the 18th
anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Hundreds of Ukrainians filled the small
Chernobyl victims' chapel in Kiev at 1:23 a.m. Monday, the exact time of the
explosion. Later, they laid flowers and lit candles at a small hill wheremarble
plates are inscribed with the names of hundreds of victims.
Nearly 1,000 mourners gathered Monday afternoon
at Kiev's memorial to Chernobyl victims, a soaring statue of five falling
metallic swans. Some placed flowers and photos of deceased relatives at its
base.
"Nothing can be compared with a mother's
sorrow," said Praskoviya Nezhyvova, an elderly retiree clutching a
black-framed photograph of her son, Viktor. She said he died of
Chernobyl-related stomach cancer in 1990 at age 44.
Volodymyr Diunych, a driver who took members of
the hastily recruited and inadequately equipped cleanup crews to the site,
recalled watching as residents were evacuated "in an awful rush" days
after the disaster.
In all, 7 million people in Belarus, Russia and
Ukraine are estimated to suffer physical or psychological effects of radiation
related to the April 26, 1986, catastrophe, when reactor No. 4 exploded and
caught fire.
An area half the size of Italy was
contaminated, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to be resettled and
ruining some of Europe's most fertile agricultural land, the United Nations
said.
Many people injured or displaced because of the
explosion complain about inadequate government support.
Sergei Shchvetsov, the head of Russia's
Chernobyl Union, said 40,000 people disabled in operations to clean up the
blast live in Russia and the "volume of benefits to which they are
eligible is narrowing every year," Itar-Tass reported.
Greenpeace activists held a small protest
outside the Department for the Inspection of Radiation Security in Moscow,
carrying signs reading "No more Chernobyls."
Meanwhile, in the Ukrainian town of Slavutych
-- built to house Chernobyl workers displaced by the accident -- people held a
solemn memorial meeting early Monday to honor the memory of their relatives,
friends and colleagues.
More than 2.32 million people have been
hospitalized in Ukraine as of early 2004 with illnesses blamed on the disaster,
including 452,000 children, according to Ukraine's Health Ministry. Ukraine has
registered some 4,400 deaths.
The most frequently noted Chernobyl-related diseases
include thyroid and blood cancer, mental disorders and cancerous growths. The
United Nations said in a statement that in some areas of Belarus, thyroid
cancer among children has increased more than 100-fold when compared with the
period before the accident.
April 27, 2004
Somber Ceremonies Recall Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
By Anna Melnichuk
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS – St Petersburg Times
KIEV - Across the former Soviet Union,
people lit candles, laid flowers and held demonstrations Monday to remember the
18th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which spread radiation over
much of northern Europe.
Hundreds of Ukrainians filled the small
Chernobyl victims' chapel in Kiev at 1:23 a.m. Monday, the exact time of the
explosion. Later, they laid flowers and lit candles at a small hill where
marble plates are inscribed with the names of hundreds of victims.
Nearly 1,000 mourners gathered Monday afternoon
at Kiev's memorial to Chernobyl victims, a soaring statue of five falling
metallic swans. Some placed flowers and photos of deceased relatives at its
base.
"Nothing can be compared to a mother's
sorrow," said Praskoviya Nezhyvova, an elderly retiree clutching a
black-framed photograph of her son, Viktor. She said he died of
Chernobyl-related stomach cancer in 1990 aged 44.
Volodymyr Diunych, a driver who took
members of the hastily recruited and inadequately equipped clean-up crews to
the site, recalled watching as residents were evacuated "in an terrible
rush" days after the disaster.
In all, 7 million people in Belarus, Russia and
Ukraine are estimated to suffer from physical or psychological effects of
radiation related to the catastrophe of April 26, 1986 when reactor No. 4
exploded and caught fire.
An area half the size of Italy was contaminated,
forcing hundreds of thousands of people to be resettled and ruining some of
Europe's most fertile agricultural land, the United Nations said.
Many people injured or displaced because of the
explosion complain about inadequate government support.
Sergei Shchvetsov, the head of Russia's
Chernobyl Union, said 40,000 people disabled in operations to clean up the
blast live in Russia and the "volume of benefits to which they are
eligible is narrowing every year," Itar-Tass reported.
Greenpeace activists held a small protest
outside the Department for the Inspection of Radiation Security in Moscow,
carrying signs that read "No more Chernobyls."
