Today’s Sprol is from Svetlanda at Humanity for Chernobyl
On April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant performed a routine 20-second shut down of the system that seemed to be just another test of the electrical equipment. Seven seconds later, a surge created a chemical explosion that released dangerous radionuclides into the atmosphere. The force of the explosion spread contamination over large parts of the old Soviet Union, now the territories of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Based on the official reports, nearly 8,400,000 people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were exposed to the resulting radiation. According to official reports, thirty-one people died immediately and 600,000 liquidators, involved in fire fighting and clean-up operations, were exposed to dangerously high doses of radiation. Whilst serving compulsory military service for the USSSR, tens of thousands were sent to the reactor in Chernobyl to try to contain the radioactivity. Tragically, in the case of Chernobyl, time does not heal wounds. News of the disaster and its devastating effects has long ago fallen from the headlines, replaced by new calamities.
Between 23 – 29th of March 2005, Humanity for Chernobyl completed interviews with Chernobyl liquidators in their native city of Donetsk in far eastern Ukraine. Chernobyl victims face not only continuous major health problems, but also the economic and political problems in Ukraine. Together these problems make life for Chernobyl victims almost impossible.
Many of these people are not able to receive the medical attention they desperately require and have a tiny pension, which goes nowhere near the actual cost to buy necessary medical drugs. Most liquidators need surgery, hospitalization, blood tests, medication, and vitamins. Many liquidators need operations, which they can never afford. With their pension of about 100 dollars a month, they are not able to buy food and they can hardly afford to buy the drugs necessary for them to survive. The cost of medication is comparable with prices in the U.S since most medical drugs are not produced within Ukraine. The unique kleptocratic market system there inflates the price of everything, especially medicine.
Soldiers who had injuries before Chernobyl were also sent to work in the plant. Vladimir Filatov was serving in Afghanistan where he suffered 3 injuries and contracted malaria, and 5 years later he was sent to Chernobyl. Another liquidator Alexander Antymonjuk was the only one of 14 people who survived a mining accident and a few years later was sent to Chernobyl. Unfortunately, the pension for these people is not equivalent to their achievements in serving their country.
Chernobyl victims who are able to perform some kind of work are trying to find it, but many are afraid to say that they are Chernobyl victims as Ukrainian companies may not want to employ them.
Konstantin Slav is still trying to work. He doesn’t tell anyone at his workplace that he is a liquidator and he needs serious medical care & observation. It seems to be an extraordinary but recurring theme that employers will fire workers if they realize that they were liquidators.
Chernobyl is a taboo subject in Ukraine and being a Chernobyl victim does not win you any favors. Slav and others like him suffer not only enormous challenges to their health, but they also face being stigmatized by their own communities. In Ukraine it is not easy to find and keep jobs, even for young and healthy people, and there is no place for invalids.
Every Chernobyl liquidator is a hero having served a duty to humanity at large. Some are unable to continue, thousands have already passed away and more and more each day fall prey to their untreated illnesses. For photographs and Chernobyl liquidator stories please look at the Humanity for Chernobyl website.
And the nuclear priesthood wants to push on to “next generation” safe nuclear power.
pebble bed tennis ball sized fuel pebbles coated with the same stuff that helped spread the radiation from Chernobyl, graphite. Compressed coal, what could be better to get another meltdown going?
These multi-national nuclear energy companies are very bad corporate “citizens” of spaceship earth. But they seem to by far more rights under the law by writing and buying their own legislation through corrupt lobbying.
Sadly, the biggest victims of the Chernobyl radiation are the children who have been born & are still being born to the people who live near Chernobyl and cannot relocate. There was an HBO special on the Children of Chernobyl called “Chernobyl Heart” which refers to a common birth defect caused by radiation where there is a hole in the baby’s heart.
There is a team of American heart specialists out there doing operations for free, because these people cannot afford the $300 it would cost to save their babies.
In the cities near by, like Belize, children are abandoned with great frequency when seen to be genetically crippled because of the radiation. An Irish woman is involved in trying to set up centers where these children can be cared for, instead of just dying by the roadside.
The abberations are horrific. Children born with a brain growing outside the skull, and all manner of genetic problems, but still wanting human care and affection. Kept very quiet too.
Compare the lives of these victims with those that picked up and left their homes for good within 48 hours of the release and relocated far away. When you know what’s coming, don’t hang around!
1986
this is an excellent site about a woman who rides her motorcycle through chernobyl… eerie…
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/
As a part of the genocide of Eastern Europe, Soviets did not even warn anybody about Czernobyl meltdown. Sweden discovered it days after the cloud of killing elements moved over her. Large portions of Poland were also exposed to irradiation and people would have been saved staying indoor and taking cheap medications. Russians built all this kinds of plants in Ukraine and other republics to save their own population. Czernobyl pollution was 90 times as dangerous as Hiroshima, bur UN still does not want to acknowledge that. Some Hosptals in Poland are performing hundreds of times more surgeries on thyroid glands and Czernobyl related cancer cases are still killing thousands of people every year. This is a perfect example how Socialist care for the people, killing 10 million Ukrainians, 3 million Poles and millions of their own people during 70 years of terror.
Again, an interesting view of an horrific event, but the actual extent of human damages is on the order of, ultimately, hundreds of deaths, and thousands of injuries (and not tens of thousands of deaths and humdreds of thousands of injuries.) The UNSCEAR 2000 report gives a fairly cogent analysis of this. We can’t muster our full fury for every disaster, or we’ll run out of bile. Chernobyl was bad, this is true, but bad on the order of, say, Pompei, and pales before the horror of, say, Nagasaki. We should spend our limited worry bankroll on places like Yongbyon — now there a true catastrophe on the horizon, one that could and should be avoidable, but, I worry, wont.
Sprol.com
Unlike conventional sightseeing sites, Sprol focuses on the worst Google Earth has to offer. That’s because Sprol is an environmentally activist site documenting manmade disasters, with eyecandy courtesy of Google Earth. It’s the kind of site that Go…
Thanks for the link, my 10-year old sister just learnt about this event at school and has become distressed by it, maybe she is too young but she did write a letter to our premier urging him to forgot about nuclear power.
This incident should never happen again.
It’s really great that you are posting, as a way to remind people of what happened, because certainly though it may no longer make headlines, it is still a major problem for an awful lot of people.
This was seen even in the United States. Doctor Jay M. Gould and I published a paper in Chem Tech, in January, 1989 showing how the relatively small amounts of radioactivity that reached the United States produced a very significant increase in infant mortality in June and July of that year. Something like thirty percent increase above the previous year’s middle of the summer in the south Atlantic states. And then there was an increase in total mortality over the previous year–between May and August of ’86, right after the Chernobyl accident, compared to May-August, ’85–there was as much as a five percent increase in the total number of individuals that died of all kinds of conditions. Mainly older people, mainly people who were already ill, or very young babies–the ones who have the least resistance or the greatest sensitivity. And it was directly correlated with the amount of iodine-131 that was measured by the EPA in the milk going only up to a maximum of about a hundred picocuries. But these effects were seen down as small as ten, twenty, thirty picocuries per liter in the milk peak value recorded all across the U.S. and yet this led to a clear increase. Something like forty thousand people died, in the United States alone, above normal expectations in the summer of 1986 after Chernobyl.
DTR: What is this publication, Chem Tech?
EJS: Chem Tech, is the journal published by the American Chemical Society, who asked us to write an article about this. This is on page eighteen to twenty-one. It indicates that the people who died, we looked at the causes of death in 1986 compared to the previous years and we found that the greatest increase was in AIDS-related deaths, individuals who were already ill, died much more quickly that summer by about almost ninety to a hundred percent more than over the previous year–not a small amount.
from http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/ejs1192.html
In April, 1986 I was visiting my grandmother in Warszawa. I remember my skin turning to red blisters as I walked along the streets. My parents, who lived in N.Y. tried calling us, but of course, could not get through. Finally, a telagram arrived with the message to “evacuate from Poland”.
Polish citizens and visitors were not informed of the disaster. After having received the telegram, I went to the U. S. Embassy and “evacuated” on the first available flight to London.
My health was destroyed. I was only 36. Within a few months I went into premature menapause and hypothroidism.
I have not found a doctor who can help me, and I know, there are people who have suffered a millionfold more than I, but is there anyone out there who can help me? I can’t help financially, since I am unemployed due to my medical history, but is there any other way I can help? Thank you for having this forum.
Commenting on Timothy Nipul posting I say that Ngasaki was a small event caused by atomic bomb expoding in an air and irradiating people on the ground. Czernobyl melt down and explosion was like a volcano blowing thousands of tonnes of radioactive elements into the atmosphere. Death occurences from all the causes increased significantly even in North and South America in yars after the incident. Surprisingly United Nation is sucking up to the Russians and Chinese and does not want to acknowledge Czernobyl as a largest man made disaster ever.