Keep your Distance

On and after the 26th April 1986 the nuclear monitoring equipment in Sweden began to show a spike in radiation levels.

It was of enough concern to the Swedish authorities to order the shutting down of one of their own power plants for an investigation. This proved not to be the source.

It was three days later that the State Controlled Media in the Soviet Union gave brief mention of a fire at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Complex ,Reactor number 4.

This was followed by other small announcements in print, on radio and television in a matter of fact way alluding to an accident.

The Soviet propaganda machine was in full swing defending the exceptional safety record of the home grown Nuclear Industry compared with "many accidents abroad".

Nuclear Power was regarded as being clean and low risk. No one seemed alarmed or perturbed even though the incident had been violent and had resulted in 31 deaths in the immediate aftermath.

The residents of that part of Ukraine were given no cause for any concern to their everyday activities and certainly not to their health or futures.

Gradually a realisation dawned amongst the authorities that the fire and explosion at Reactor 4 was a major threat to life. The emissions released to the soil and into the atmosphere were many hundreds of times greater than the fallout from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. The compounds of Caesium 137, Plutonium, Iodine 131 and Strontium 90 were a potent cocktail which analysts now believe has contributed to up to 1 million related deaths from cancer on a global scale, and counting.

There were, from the initial radiation cloud as it passed over neighbouring Belarus, a cluster of child deaths from thyroid cancer.

The fire at the reactor continued to rage well into May.

Upon imposing a 10km critical zone the Soviet military began a ruthless programme of evacuations. Over a 36 hour period 40,000 residents of the nearest town, Pripyat were told to leave without pets and non-essential belongings. By the end of that week a further 30,000 were forced to abandon their homes.

To encourage co-operation and avert panic or unrest there were promises made of a return within 3 days. Most of the population never saw their homes again.

President Gorbachev felt compelled to address the nation and by way of reassuring neighbouring countries all through northern and western Europe that effective measures had been implemented although a clean up operation to mitigate the damage was still under way in the July.

Thousands of military personnel and civilian volunteers embarked on a huge operation. Contaminated soil was dug up and re-buried under concrete. Helicopters sprayed water to suppress airborne dust. Soldiers washed down dust covered pavements , roads and buildings.

Dogs and cats were shot on sight.

In the 30km zone more forcible evacuations were made and evacuees saw their homes demolished and the rubble buried. Many peasant farmers had to abandon livestock and crops and were then housed in the austere apartment blocks which typified many Soviet settlements of the era. Former residents were often caught in the exclusion zone in subversive actions to tend to what remained standing of their vegetable plots or to fish as they had always been used to.

The radioactive cloud spread with the wind during 1986 with contamination as far apart as the United States and India recorded.

Spread of contamination from April 1986 ***

The 30km zone remains in place to this day although the radioactive elements will take up to 200,000 years to decay to safe levels.

Abandoned cities, towns and villages have become overgrown and there has been a long running discussion about designating the area as a National Park. Some concessions have been made for tourists to visit the zone even though there is ongoing scientific monitoring of the environment. This is ironic as many animals and plants have suffered from the radiation with low life expectancy and mutations as side effects.

Reactor 4 was encased in a concrete sarcophagus in the years following the accident but even this is now in need of replacement and the world's largest moveable structure, a huge dome is being constructed to be put in position to give up to a century of protection from the all pervading radiation.

The lobbyists for nuclear power still find it difficult to secure support for this form of energy generation because of the Chernobyl disaster.

The implications for ongoing generations may not yet be fully appreciated.

(***source; upload of original graphic by Alex Svensson of Gothenburg)