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REMEMBERING AND REVISITING CHORNOBYL by Irene Zabytko The Past and the Present At 1:36 a.m. on April 26, 1986, the world changed. Due to Soviet mismanagement, basic human negligence, and the unforgiveable flaws of a badly constructed apparatus, Nuclear Reactor No. 4 exploded at Ukraine’s Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, causing the horrific release of deadly radionuclides and a ten-day fire that contaminated 82,000 square kilometers of Ukraine, Belorus, and Russia. The nuclear catastrophe was (and still is) the worst of its kind on the planet. To put it into perspective, the release of the radioactive fallout from that one damaged reactor was the equivalent of 400 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Twenty-five years later, Ukraine and the world are still vulnerable to the deadly toxins that are seeping from the shoddy “sarcophagus,” the makeshift carapace that was hastily placed over the gaping hole when the reactor’s roof blew off. It was never meant to last this long—it should have been a temporary band aid and upgraded well before now. But because the price in repairs will exceed $2 billion dollars—a sum that is hard to negotiate with the G8 countries who pledged to help—it is still in place. And certainly the Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs don’t seem to feel obliged to contribute a fraction of the wealth they daily extract from Ukraine to replace it with something better. As a result of this radioactive behemoth leaking its poison on Ukrainian soil and beyond, Ukrainians have suffered and witnessed the following in the past twenty-five years: an increase in congenital birth defects and thyroid cancer in children; the contamination of 35,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian land with well over 2 million Ukrainians exposed to radiation; and, according to the Ukrainian Health Ministry, the deaths of 125,000 people—well over the Soviet official death count of 31 souls. It’s true that human errors are often responsible for monumental catastrophes from nuclear meltdowns to space shuttle explosions to leaking oil tankards, but what was especially pernicious about Chornobyl was the Soviet government’s conspiracy of forced silence in denying to the world and its own people that anything was wrong. The reactor burned while children marched in Kyiv’s May Day parade under a radioactive haze (of course the Soviet officials had their children farmed out to safer locations). Residents in the surrounding villages near the power plant were not evacuated until ten after the explosion—and then lied to that they would only be gone for a weekend at most. President Gorbachev himself did not officially acknowledge the accident until two weeks later in a guarded televised speech, and with typical Soviet hubris, would not accept humanitarian aid offered by the West. Chornobyl and the UNWLA If the Soviets were the villains, then there must be heroes and heroines in this legacy: the first responders who risked their lives to put out the fires; the scientists who continue to monitor the aftereffects; the medical volunteers who are treating Chornobyl victims and their families to this day; and certainly the many humanitarian organizations who sought out the victims and responded to them as people in need when most of the world wasn’t aware of their existence. An example of such humanitarian compassion and outreach was exhibited by representatives of the UNWLA towards the women of Opachychi, one of the irradiated villages within the 30-kilometer Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Mrs. Czernyk, who was Chairwoman of the UNWLA’s Social Welfare Committee at the time, discovered these survivors and, along with other intrepid UNWLA members and members of other organizations, such as Rukh, ventured to that woeful place twice to meet and aid those elderly women who defied the government and returned to their contaminated homes rather than live in forced exile. 8 XXIX Конвенція СУ A www.unwla.org
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