Marking the 30th Marking the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine - the worst nuclear catastrophe in history. A one-day CEEL event in partnership with the: • Central and Eastern European London Review • Embassy of Ukraine • Association of Ukrainians in GB • Association of Ukrainian Women • Anglo-Belarusian Society Chornobyl: 30 Years On Foreword by the Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland “ Her Excellency Mrs Natalia Galibarenko In the morning when I woke up, I did not APRIL 1986 Today, the construction know something had happened until I went was the date of a new safe confine- out of my home….As soon as I went down the 26 when the ment at the Chornobyl world learned the name Nuclear Power Plant is stairs of the apartment block and out through of Chornobyl. underway. The confine- ment, due for comple- the door into the street, I was aware at once In the last 30 years it tion next year, will has become a synonym isolate the destroyed that something was wrong. I could feel on both for a terrible power generating unit my face a tingling as though it was raining technological disaster from the surrounding and ecological catas- environment. although it was not. I felt also a taste of metal trophe on a global scale. The imperatives of in my mouth, and my eyes began to water…. strengthening nuclear This tragedy has safety and overcoming taught mankind that the consequences of As I turned the corner which would bring technological progress technology and the the Chornobyl catas- can produce a bitter environment. trophe will encourage me almost to the power station entrance, I harvest. Chornobyl has more active involve- become a reproach to These consequences ment among the world stopped. Right in front of me was a reactor, the past and - at the cannot be ignored as community in solving same time – a painful they still affect the the remaining problems and it was on fire….among the smoke above warning for generations health of all those who in this sphere. to come. live on the contami- its roof flames were dancing,… red and green nated territories and I believe that this year’s and yellow and blue. They were not dancing The whole world need medical assis- commemorative events realised the horrific tance, those who were will open up a new wildly or with excitement, they were swaying consequences of this resettled and need phase of international disaster, one which moral and humanitarian cooperation aimed at - almost merrily, to the tune which was produced hundreds help, as well as children turning the “Shelter” of times more radia- who in the third genera- into an ecologically suddenly in my head… It was an allegro; the tion than the bombing tion suffer from cancer safe system. In the very flames were dancing in a stately way, and this of Hiroshima and and immune system near future Chornobyl Nagasaki combined. diseases. will be known not was terrifying to me, because it seemed I can And today, 30 years only as the site of a later, Chornobyl is We are very grateful to nuclear disaster, but only say quite normal… once again demanding all friends of Ukraine as a world-renowned the world’s attention, in the United Kingdom scientific and research reminding us of the who continue to help centre which will help Nadia Larova, newspaper editor dangers of the peaceful us in alleviating the keep the world safe: atom and how vigilant consequences of the an unexpected lesson the world needs to be Chornobyl catas- of hope from a nuclear in its interaction with trophe. tragedy. ” “The odds of a meltdown are one in Another kind of war 10,000 years. The VEN TODAY, anyone Belarus and Ukraine were the two plants have safe and visiting Pripyat - the ghost- countries worst affected by the town which once housed Chernobyl disaster, but the radiation reliable controls that 50,000 residents in the cloud blew right across Europe, Eshadow of the Chornobyl power- also contaminating - among other are protected from any station - can see what a well-designed countries - Russia, Scandinavia, breakdown with three place it was. Switzerland and Wales. safety systems”. Close to forests and lakes and on In Pripyat, effectively the Ground the banks of the Pripyat River, it Zero of the tragedy, radiation levels Vitaly Sklyarov, laid on everything for its citizens: rose to 600,000 times higher than Minister of Power of Ukraine, playgrounds, restaurants, a cinema, normal, its 50,000 residents being February 1986. a theatre, good schools, good health evacuated - a catastrophic day late - services, an olympic-size swimming in a single afternoon, transported on pool. Houses were plentiful, shops over 1,000 buses ‘borrowed’ from were well-stocked. It was a genuine Kyiv. Told they were leaving the city community of nuclear workers and and their homes for just three days, their families, and getting a job there they were never to return. was good fortune indeed. By 5 May, another 80,000 from the “An accident has All this ended at 1.23 am on 26 April Exclusion Zone had joined them. 1986, when an experiment to see Houses built by their owners’ families occurred at the what would happen to Reactor 4 if and lived in for generations were the power were switched off went abandoned forever, their fixtures Chernobyl Nuclear horribly wrong. The reactor heated and furnishings now dangerously up to 10 times its normal level, radioactive. And, as the sky began to Power Plant, and one causing a massive power-surge. The discharge radioactive rain and forests resulting explosion blasted 50 tonnes surrounding Pripyat turned a livid and of the reactors has of radioactive matter into the atmos- eerie shade of red, a massive damage been damaged. Steps phere, while the fire beneath it would limitation exercise got underway, rage and then smoulder perilously for are being taken to weeks. A fleet of helicopters flew over 1800 sorties to dump a mixture of sand and deal with the situation, The firefighters who appeared on boric acid, in an attempt to extinguish the scene a few minutes after the the fire. Conscripts - ‘liquidators’ - and aid is being given blow-out proved unable to extin- were retained for months in perilous guish it, for this was a new kind of conditions, forced - a job that defies to those affected. blaze against which conventional description - to hose the radioac- efforts were useless. So too were tive dust off the houses and shoot The Government has their uniforms: deprived of protective the domestic animals left in them, to clothing, many were to die lingering strip the upper layer of earth from the formed a commission of and agonising deaths a few days 40km Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and enquiry”. later at Moscow’s special Hospital bury it in the ground. 6 for radiation patients - a place to which many ‘Chernobylites’ return by Others were despatched to shovel Soviet television news report, in its entirety, necessity even today. debris from the power-plant’s roof 28 April 1986. back into the reactor, taking the most As an investigation subsequently got Undeniably, life is slowly returning rapid of turns, since more than 40 underway, steps were taken to ensure to the region. The ghost-town of seconds in its proximity could lead the explosion was blamed on the Pripyat - recently deemed uninhab- to their deaths. They complained of errors of a few individuals rather than itable for 200,000 years - now hosts dizziness, burning eyes, a strange design and construction faults in the daily tours bussed in from Kyiv, metallic taste in the mouth and – reactor itself. whose customers are mesmerised because they too lacked adequate by the town’s abandoned schools protective clothing - were told ‘Culprits’ were jailed, careers were and hospitals, the Soviet posters that their best defence against the ruined - seldom the right ones - and which still hang on the walls, and effects of radiation was simply to on 25 April 1988, almost two years the rusted and derelict funfair up their vodka intake. Many were to the day after the catastrophe, whose Big Wheel has become the subsequently to die. Chief Investigator Valery Legasov, city’s best known icon. over-burdened with guilt and Drawing parallels with Afghanistan unable any longer to bear the lies There are approximately 3,000 - for Chornobyl was another kind of and half-truths he had been forced workers still staffing the Zone, and war - one soldier remarked grimly to present to the public as ‘facts’, about 200 ‘resettlers’ living there, on the major difference between hanged himself in his Moscow home. their lifespans seemingly unaffected them: home from Afghanistan, you in a region where, just 20 years had survived; it was when you got Yet, for all that the cover-up had afterwards, radiation levels are back from Chornobyl, in the months intended, the ramifications would often lower than in the city of Kyiv. and years that followed, that the real be felt worldwide. Chornobyl, Nature has bloomed here, with problems started. Gorbachev later admitted, was burgeoning forests, and thriving perhaps ‘the real cause of the collapse populations of wolves and wild This was the Chornobyl clear-up of the Soviet Union.’ horses. operation: it affected thousands and involved countless unsung heroes, Estimates vary widely on how many A new sarcophagus - the largest many of whom sacrificed their lives have died as a direct result of the moveable structure ever created on to prevent a second, even worse, Chornobyl tragedy: no two sources land - is being built at Chornobyl explosion from the reactor: one of information agree, while Soviet to house the ruins of Reactor 4, which - Secret Soviet documents later state records deliberately obfuscated ensuring that the area is safe from revealed - would have devastated half figures, refusing to recognise all but more emissions for 100 years.