Sarcophagus

AP:

With every cough and sore throat, every ache and pain, Valentyna Stanyuk feels Chernobyl stalking her.

"It's only a matter of time," she said as she waited for a thyroid test at a mobile Red Cross clinic in her village of Bystrichy, 150 miles west of Chernobyl.

The tests came back clean, but that's little reassurance to this 54-year-old or to millions of others who live in parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia that were heavily irradiated when the nuclear reactor exploded 20 years ago, spewing radioactive clouds over Ukraine and much of Europe for 10 days.

The April 26, 1986, disaster forced the evacuation of large swaths of some of the Soviet Union's best farmland and forests. The radiation spread far enough to be detected in reindeer meat in Norway and rainfall in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. It shocked most European countries into a generation-long freeze on building nuclear plants. In so starkly exposing the failings of the communist system, the world's worst nuclear accident may even have hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later.

And the effect on the health of the people exposed to its invisible poisons? That is the most heatedly debated legacy of Chernobyl.

I was in high school when the world learned of the accident.  I recall vividly talking to my friend B in German class (as an odd aside, he'd chosen Etwas as his German name--mine was the more traditional Hans) about the reactor's design, geographic reach and health effects of the fallout, whether it would impact my very first trip to the Soviet Union, etc.

I went on my trip anyway, though not without some concern.  After three weeks in Scandanavia, my  group sponsored by Putney Student Travel boarded a train in Helsinki, bound for Leningrad.  Our journeys eventually brought us to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where we stayed at a Komsomol facility.  Lots of young Commies all over the place, including folks from all the Soviet Republics, East Germany and other vassal states. 

At one point we had a sort of ice cream social with a couple dozen Ukrainian evacuees from the area around Chernobyl.  I sat in kind of a No Man's Land between our group and the other people, and really enjoyed myself despite a significant language barrier--I didn't speak Russian at the time but some of the folks spoke German, which only helped a little since my German was limited after only a year of HS-level instruction. 

Sometime in the middle of the event we had a cross-national trivia contest where each group would have to answer questions about the other's country.   One early question we got was "name as many famous places in the Soviet Union as you can."  I answered with a long list of cities, places like Red Square, etc, and when I was running out of steam I said "Chernobyl."  Everybody laughed in an unforced, good natured way and it actually helped break the ice quite a bit. 

I often wonder how those kids (and the adults with them) are today, given how much radiation they must've been exposed to in the first days of the accident. The whole response was a mess, as Pravda's science editor noted to the Central Committee a few weeks after the explosion:

From May 4 through May 9 I stayed in the region of the ChNPS. I consider it important to share some of my observations.

1. Evacuation of Prypyat. An hour after [the accident] it was clear what the radiation situation was [meaning: it was high] but no emergency measures were taken. The residents did not know what to do.

2. Clean-up work at the dangerous places was done by soldiers who were not wearing any individual protection (some worked as close as 800 meters away from the [ruined] reactor)… The helicopter pilots were also exposed [to strong radiation]. All of them are young people and consequently it will affect [their reproductive system and their] progeny.

3. The entire system of civil defence was completely paralyzed; no dosimeters in a working condition were available [which the local ‘civil defence’ bodies were supposed to have among all other things, like gas masks, etc.]

4. I was struck by the complete lack of initiative on the part of the local authorities — they did not have any footwear, clothes and other necessities to issue to those who had been affected by the accident — they were just waiting for instructions from Moscow.

5. There were many reasons that caused panic in Kyiv, but the main factor [that provoked panicky feelings] was the absence of reliable information… When it became known that children and families of the managing workers [Soviet term for communist party bosses and top executives] were being taken out of town, a wave of panic rolled through the city. Even at the booking offices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine about a thousand people stood in line...

The reporter, Vladimir Gubarev, later wrote Саркофаг (Sarcophagus, named after the concrete tomb poured over the plant).  I saw a production of the play, starring a few friends of mine, when I was at Colby and it was very moving and troubling.

I should note that Chernobyl had more impact on my consciousness than Three Mile Island did.  I was just a little too young to fully appreciate the China Syndrome stuff in the 70s, though I was suitably scared even then.  I s'pose the magnitude of the disaster had something to do with it, but I think also it was my level of awareness.

I went back to the Soviet Union in 1990.  Except for a week's jaunt to Lithuania, however, I spent all my time in Moscow and really didn't give much thought to the accident.  I was too focused on trying to learn Russian so I could survive, or at least find beer.

I don't have any larger point here--nothing about the dangers of nuclear power or the folly of corrupt empires or whatever.  I don't even really view this through the filter of our current sabre-rattling over Iran's nuclear ambitions.  It was just a significant Cold War incident that happened when I was growing up, and 20 years on I've just gotta waltz down Amnesia Lane for a little while.

The S2BX and I often talked about going back to the fUSSR someday, but over time I've kind of lost interest in a general tour of all the places I've been before.  I would, however, love to finally follow through on my long-time notion of visiting Ukraine to dig up some of my ancestral history, and a sidetrip to the Chernobyl area would be fascinating from a personal and photographic perspective.  Maybe on a motorcycle?

ntodd

[Update: Wampum links to a WHO report that puts the mortality at 4000.  A kind of slow-motion 9/11, which puts a lot of things into perspective.]