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me to a black Volga car, which at once headed north ward at breakneck speed. Yuri was aware of my books, and plied me with questions. The countryside was heav ily wooded. Often livestock would occupy the entire road so that our impatient driver would honk his horn or drive into the ditch to bypass them. About twenty miles from the nuclear plant, we reached a sort of crossroads. To the right, a sign indicated the route to Green Cape, the settlement for cleanup workers. To the left, the sign was unmistakable. Chernobyl. Another black Volga with a blue police light awaited us. Our speed increased even further. At the entrance to the 30-kilometer zone, which was cordoned off after the diaster, both cars were simply waved through. To the sides were signs bearing the words “Danger: Radia tion.” The unfinished fifth and sixth reactors of the Chernobyl station were already visible. We arrived in a small town and turned quickly into the drive of a large wooden building: this was the headquarters of the clea nup crews, then called Kombinat, but today known as the Pripyat Research and Industrial Association. The town was Chernobyl itself, half-empty, but with plenty of activity. There were numerous young reservists a- round clad in brown overalls,who were taking part in decontamination work. We entered the office of Pavel Pokutnyi, chairman of the International Department of Kombinat. He in formed me that the Soviet anti-nuclear movement was inspired partly by the sensational journalists. In particu lar, he condemned the Belorussian writer and Soviet Deputy, Ales Adamovich, who has criticized the han dling of the radioactive fallout, but had never visited Chernobyl. Pokutnyi is a big man, built like an American football player. He acknowledged that there was no end in sight to the clean up operation, that it would go on for decades. He then described my agenda for the time in the zone, after which we got into a coach that smelled of workers’ overalls and were taken to the Chernobyl plant itself. I was surprised by the normality of the situation. At the station, workers were strolling around without pro tective clothing, yet the geiger counter which I had been given by Pokutnyi was already registering readings about 160 times normal. I was taken to the office of the station director, Mikhail Umanets, a small, courteous man, but one with a very businesslike attitude. He described the changes that had been made to the reactor type that exploded (called the RBMK). Operators had been re trained, the shutdown time of the reactor had been reduced from twenty seconds to twelve, though it was to be curtailed to just two seconds in the near future. Umanets reminded me of a medieval baron with a castle under seige. He was obliged to be on the defen sive because logically, his whole situation made no sense. To digress, I discovered subsequently that com parisons undertaken by Kiev scientists had revealed that in terms of the amount of readioactive products released into the atmosphere, Chernobyl’s explosion was the equivalent of ninety Hiroshimas. The US nuclear plant of Three Mile Island was still shut down from an acci dent in 1979. But at Chernobyl, merely in terms of the amount of radioactive iodine released, the disaster exceeded that in Pennsylvania by three million times. Here, nonetheless, three reactors were in full-time oper ation, two of which had been restarted within six months of the accident. Regardless of one’s view on nuclear power, I wondered, what was the sense in subjecting these workers to high levels of radiation background? I had a tour of the station, which is connected by one lenghty, extremely narrow corridor, at the end of which is the damaged reactor, covered by a concrete sarcophagus. Both Pokutnyi and Umanets noted that no final solution has been found for this structure, but it is not regarded as permanent. Indeed, is it said to require stabilization underneath the damaged reactor — still hot and extremely radioactive — because it is gradually pushing the entire structure downward. An international center to study the situation, under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is being estab lished in Chernobyl town. Clearly this problem has been shelved by the concrete covering, not resolved. Yuri and I traveled next to Pripyat, the former city of 50,000 that was home to the Chernobyl plant workers and their famileis, but is now almost deserted. On the bridge crossing the city, I was informed that on the day of the accident, radiation levels there were up to 80 rems per hour, potentially fatal in three-four hours. I was astonished. Why then, I asked, did Dr. Leonid Ilyin, the Vice-President of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, and the chief doctor concerned with Cher nobyl, declare that Pripyat need never have been evac uated. Even worse, young children were outdoors in Pripyat that day. There was a wedding party, a soccer match, all while lethal radiation soaked up the air around them. In Pripyat, there is an experimental hothouse. Along side normal pine trees have been grown seeds taken from the forest adjacent to the Chernobyl station — now chopped down — which suffered radiation levels of around 600 rems per hour. The irradiated seeds are some three or four times larger than the normal variety, with shoots growing off at odd angles. Fruit and vegeta bles are also growing in the hothouse. I discussed with the director the film, I had seen at Shcherbak’s apart ment on the deformities among livestock. ’’Nonsense,” was the reply. “All the livestock are healthy. There are no abnormalities.” No amount of questioning could sway his opinion. This in fact was my first real example of the intransigence of the various rival interpretations on the effects of Chernobyl. Pripyat is nightmarish. Yuri said it was akin to a city hit by a neutron bomb. There was something very eerie about the deserted ferris wheel, the empty apartments and the waist-high grass. Radiation levels there were still high. A truck was taking irradiated cars to the dump which , I discovered, was a burial ground at a nearby НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, КВІТЕНЬ 1990 23
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