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Mar. 9th, 2007 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mozgovayaКомп в очередной раз сдох... Пытаясь спасти, что можно, обнаружила старую статью о Чернобыле на английском. Нехай будэ. Некоторых ее героев, к сожалению, уже нет в живых.
"Chernobyl - life after death"
"Don't wander about here," warns me the chief of police in the closed area of Chernobyl. "Why should you soak up the poison?" And why indeed should he do this? It turns out that in the impoverished country of Ukraine there are thousands that would do anything for an addition to their monthly salary. Even live and work in the radiation-plagued site where 17 years ago occured one of the biggest ecological disasters in the history of humanity. Besides the policemen, there roam scientists fighting the radiation, criminals finding refuge in the ghost towns, tourists searching for children with two heads and elderly, who stole back into the poisened villages because for them it is home. Everyone drowns the fear in alcohol, the only "miracle medicine" to neutrilize the radiation, and try not to think about the moment when the cover of the reactor will ultimately collapse.
On the 26th of April, 1986, during a test being performed by the reactor scientists of the 4th block at the nuclear power plant Chernobyl in Ukraine, occured the largest radioactive disaster in the history of the human race. Technical failure resulted in a powerful blast within the reactor. From the fire that burst out from inside billowed an immense cloud, laden with radioactive chemicals, that soared over Europe wherever the wind would blow, leaving behind thousands of kilometers of contaminated lands.
Despite the fact that only 10 percent of the radioactive fuel from the reactor seeped out, the ecological disaster was enormous. Over 120 thousand individuals were evacuated in those days from their homes and removed from the areas closest to the reactor. Still today over 1.8 million people continue to live in the infected lands, whom doctors expect to succumb to various illnesses. The Ukraine has recognized 92 thousand people crippled by the disaster. Some half of the country's population claim their health as been damaged from the contamination.
Since the disaster and until today the 2,196 square kilometers around the reactor are surrounded by barbed wire. The contaminated area spans extensive lands of both Ukraine and Belarus. The Sisyphean job of purification has been carried out in these vast lands for years, in an attempt to prevent the further leakage of radioactive substances including Cesium, Strontium, and other poisons emitting dangerous radiation.
Within the ruined reactor, covered by its cement "sarcophagus", chemical reactions continue to occur under no scrutiny, emitting massive amounts of radiation and contaminating the surroundings and lives of tens of thousands of people. Those directly responsible for the spread of the substances are the winds and groundwater. But also man, with his own hands, increases the damage.
Where are the others?
I stop at the first checkpoint meant to prevent entrance to the fenced off nuclear reactor. The Geiger counter reads a radation level five times above the norm. It's only the beginning, but shivers run down my spine. Yet the officers posted at the blockade are indifferent. They wear regular uniforms of ordinary cotton. Protective suits of any kind are nowhere to be seen.
The road leading to the town of Chernobyl is deserted, and snow covers the surrounding forests. For a moment there is a feeling that the road leads to a quite and secluded vacation spot. Once it indeed was such a road, serving high-ranking officials of the Comunist Party, who would reach the area for hunting expeditions between the pine forests and birch groves, rivers and beautiful lakes.
Thoughts of the past are interrupted by a sign posted at the entrance to the town of Chernobyl. "Chernobyl - Good travels!", wrote someone on the tin board, and I can't believe I'm here, walking so easily into one of the most unpleasant places in the world. The first sights to appear before my eyes are somewhat strange. Men in army camouflage jackets walking about the streets of the town. Some hurry, but most pace in measured steps, slowly. Not one of them is wearing a protective suit.
"Don't wander about here," warns Yuri Tarasenko, chief of police in the closed sector. "Why should you soak up the poison?" he wonders out loud, as if he himself were living on the other side of the Earth. "Everyone at this place is here because of work. For that they get extra pay. A lot of people want to find work here because of the extra pay. In other places the police is understaffed, but here we have five full units."
It takes me a while to understand why 11,000 people continue to work inside the closed sector, exposed with no protection whatsoever to the dangerous radiation. From the stories about the difficulty of finding work, the poverty and destitution that plagues Ukraine and its citizens, you start to understand how there can be those, for whom Chernobyl is a life saver. Each body reacts differently to radiation," explain some of the local workers, perhaps to me - but maybe also to themselves. "There are those that get hit by it and nothing happens to them, but there are others that are exposed just a bit and get sick. It's the kind of risk people take, knowing that maybe nothing will happen to them. If tomorrow there wasn't any food to give the children, that would be much more tangible."
The monthly wage of a Ukrainian policeman stands at 400 Griven, which is less than 100 dollars. In the closed sector the policemen recieve a bonus of 300 Griven. "Besides that," continues Tarasenko to list the benifits, "here we work 15 days, and 15 days we rest outside the closed sector. We let our body rest from the radiation it soaked up during the two weeks, have a sauna, drink alcohol, and the poison comes out. In the area near the reactor we simply try to go around the places with the highest concentration of dangerous substances."
But here and there the chief of police has a moment of doubt. "Sometimes I forget where I am," says a softening Tarasenko, "and when I go home at night, to the apartment in Chernobyl, I ask myself where all the people have gone. Here, I say to myself, I'm walking in the street at night, so where are all the others?"
The Metal Thieves
Ukraine states, in official documents, that the risk to the lives of the few thousands of people that tend the area stricken by radiation is less than the potential damage the radiation would cause if it were to spread to other populated areas of the country. The workers themselves are not difficult to convince to stay in this cursed place.
"It's not certain that there will be damage to my health," thinks to himself one of the workers while holding his generous paycheck. "And if I do get hurt, the damage would be small compared to the benefit that comes from my double wages."
Apparently with the years the reactor zone has become the source of income not only to the government workers the tend daily to the exploded reactor. In recent years, it has become a nuclear tourist spot. Each year some 3,000 specially authorized visitors flock to the reactor. Most are foreign specialists, politicians and students. In addition, dozens are caught each month wandering around inside the closed sector without authorization and are expelled outside of the fence, which of late has been breached.
12 roadblocks are positioned around the closed sector, which police forces comb meticulously, and since the start of the year 38 infiltrators have been captured. The unprecedented security of the area, and even the statistics pointing to a rise in cases of cancer are not enough to deter curious individuals, especially in light of the rumors of a boar with claws that look like a human hand, or eels the size of a small whale. For local youths, a picnic near any of the toxic waste burial sites has become an adrenaline-packed adventure.
Some of the trespassers come to fish in the contaminated rivers, some come for the excitement, but most come to steal metals from the 'graveyards of radioactive equipment.' From afar, Rossoha looks like an impound lot for old cars. But upon closer inspection, the fear start creeping up again. Over a huge area surrounded by barbed wire, are strewn vehicles of different sorts. Endless rows of firetrucks, tanks, armored vehicles, bulldozers, buses, countless private cars, several helicopters and a small plane, thousands of vehicles that took part in the attempt to curb the Chernobyl disaster, and now no bath whatsoever will help lower their radiation level.
The most contaminated equipment, those which radiation level nears that of the reactor itself, are buried somewhere else. The equipment in Rossoha is slightly less tainted, but is still not something a responsible human being would dare come near. And yet, seeing the number of missing car doors, it is apparent that poverty has overcome fear. The 'Metal Thieves', some of which are found electrocuted in other parts of Ukraine trying to cut power lines to sell off later in town, have arrived here too. Even the rescue helicopters that hovered during the first days above the reactor, their crews long since dead, have been torn apart.
The very same contaminated metals turn up from time to time in various cities in Ukraine and beyond. Recently, the District Attorney charged six individuals for selling 426 radioactive fir trees in Kiev markets, and currently there is an investigation underway into a company that sold in Kiev radioactive beef from the restricted zone.
These incidences, alongside cases of murder that were committed among the homeless and criminals that found shelter in the area and are not included in any official statistics, are handled by Sergei Dubchek, the chief prosecutor of Pripiat. Dubcheck leads a healthy lifestyle by any standard. In the morning, in any temperature, he jogs to bathe in the Pripiat River. "If I have been living here for four years, breathing this air, then why shouldn't I swim in the Pripiat?" he meditates. "I'm convinced that small doses of radiation benefit your health, like any shock. True, it is disregarding our bodies, but if we were afraid every second, we simply couldn't work here."
The closed sector's attorney deals mainly with the smuggling of radioactive substances outside of its territory. "I can't stop people stealing things from the abandoned villages and towns, because from a legal standpoint they don't belong to anyone. They can be arrested only on grounds of ecological violations, because about 15 percent of the metals that are smuggled from here are dangerous to the public health. Also an investigation is underway tangled with an incident of money transfers to the reactor, that weren't taken advantage of properly."
Have there been any other crimes?
"Last year we had two cases of murder. In one case a gang of metal thieves killed one of their members, and in the other case one homeless person hiding here killed another. But local workers try to keep a low profile, because everyone is afraid of losing their job".
Ghost Town
In the hills in the outskirts leading to Pripiat, posted here and there, are signs with the radioactive symbol. There lies 'The Orange Forest' - the four square kilometers of pines that died after the blast at the reactor, and within hours their needles turned orange from radiation. Even today, because of the high radiation levels, lone cars of workers speed past as fast as they can, windows closed. The distance to the plant is barely a kilometer, and between the new trees that had a chance to grow on the shoulders of the road, looms the unsightly structure of the Sarcophagus.
Still hoisted on some of the houses of Pripiat are slogans of the Communist Party, but the silence, so unbelievable, emanating from the streets of this ghost town, cause the heart to shrink. An abandoned city that was once so prosperous is much more intimidating than the crumbling villages surrounding the reactor. Inside the villages, somehow, the rotting wooden houses look more natural than the blocks of concrete or the towering ferris wheel with its plastic seats that retain their cheerful yellow color, out here in the middle of nowhere. Before the foundation of the power plant, the area was desolate. The plant filled it with life, and then took it away again.
Multi-storeyed houses with huge signs - a restaurant, a furniture store, a 'culture palace', the Hotel 'Polesye' - stand as if expecting visitors, which haven't come in 17 years. The glass windows remain securely closed by the apartment owners, lest the toxic wind penetrate the homes. The well-trimmed lawns, with swings and other playground equipment, have almost entirely been swallowed by the thicket of young trees that have grown here in the meantime.
The musty stench of mold and mildew reek from the vestibules.The doorway to building 11 on Kurchatova St. is blocked by a tree that grew in the middle of the path. I force its stubborn branches aside and enter the building. The paint is peeling from the walls, water is flowing from a pipe that burst long ago. Some of the apartments are locked, some broken into, and on the floor are scattered clothes, household utensils, shoes, books. Some have remained as they were abandoned the day of the evacuation, as if some evil sorceror with the wave of his wand had caused all the inhabitants to vanish. Some of the aparments have already been visited by anonymous looters that didn't fear the radiation. The aparments are standard, with nearly identical furniture, except for a broken piano here and a washing machine there. And tree branches that have grown strong and are beating menacingly against the windows, threatening to break though.
The gates of 'Yantarik' kindergarden are open, as if inviting you to come inside. Chairs and small wooden desks still stand in the spacious structures, wooden blocks are arranged in their boxes, and on the walls hang slogans that read "Our mission - to raise healthy children." Ragged teddy bear and doll, whose colors have faded over the course of the years, sit in an orphaned hug on children's lockers. Beside them, tiny discarded gas masks, covered by a thick layer of dust.
Before the disaster, Pripiat housed the reactor workers and their families. Several days after the accident, 47 thousand inhabitants were evacuated from the city. They were told that they could soon return to their houses, and that they may only carry with them a small bag. Some pets were left in closed apartments. From time to time convicts find shelter in one of the houses, and for this reason the police at the roadblock at the entrance to the city wear bullet-proof vests, instead of radiation suits.
I march along the main street of Pripriat. Some of the streets can no longer be used by cars because of the tree branches that block the way. I drag my feet though the snow in the dead streets, and the unearthly sight of abandoned living quarters floods me with despair and solitude. This is probably how the last man on Earth would feel, if he survived the nuclear winter. The city will remain contaminated for tens of thousands of years. The tree roots will ultimately crumble the sidewalks, and all that will remain are ruins within a wild toxic forest.
The dancing of the needle is meaningless. A sudden headache, burning lips and the vocal cords becoming heavy as lead - does it come from an unexpected radiation attack, or just the fear? I can barely drag myself to the roadblock. At the city limits a sign is posted: a diagnal red stripe crossing the word "Pripiat." Only now a new meaning joins the original. Erased city.
Up until two years ago, despite the contamination, one of the four reactors in Chernobyl Power Plant continued to work and provide electricity. Under continued pressure from the West it was closed down, in exchange for a commitment given to Ukraine to continue to aid it in dealing with the consequences of the disaster. Even today, some 4,500 people work in the atomic plant.
"Can you explain me, what all these people are doing in a closed power plant?" I ask Irina Kovbich, one of the workers in the plant, an elegant and cheerful woman. "We're preparing to shut it down," she answers. "An atomic power plant is not a textile factory, where you just stop the machines, hang a lock on the door and leave it like that. You need to clear out the radioactive substances, build repositories for them, and secure the systems. You need to build processing plants for solid and liquid nuclear waste. Except for the ruined block, two other blocks still contain radioactive fuel, and its storage silo is only halfway built. Bit by bit, we shut down all kinds of systems and dismiss workers. But I don't think that in our days we'll live to see the plant deserted. The process of shutting down will last tens of years, and I personally hope to work here until my pension."
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Andrey Serdiuk, former Health Minister of Ukraine, is today the head of the Nuclear Medicine Department in the Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology (IHME) of Ukraine. Following the accident he supported the recommendation to evacuate the entire population of Kiev. "Today we can no longer know whether what we did then was right or wrong," he says. "There was no precident to this disaster in history, and noone know what to do. Even in Hiroshima, most of the people were killed from the blast and the high temperatures that were discharged, not from the radiation itself."
"The only thing they knew for certain was how to keep information from the people. Moscow took command of the ruined reactor, and even we in the Department of Health didn't know what was going on over there. The leadership in Moscow insisted on holding the traditional 1st of May demonstration, when in the main street of Kiev the radiation level was reading 3,000 microtangens an hour (the norm is 10-12). Maybe they really should have evacuated Kiev, but I'm not sure they would have managed to relocate three million people."
"After four-five months the panic subsided somewhat, but the radiation continued to take its toll, the radioactive background was five times the norm, and we ate contaminated products. Northern residents were hit worse because they were missing natural iodine, and because of that their bodies soaked up radioactive iodine which affected their thyroid glands. In children the thyroid gland is 10 times smaller than in adults, so they absorbed the same amount of radiation but were hurt more. Besides that, the weeds were radioactive - a cow eats 50 kilos of grass a day, and children eat a lot of dairy products."
"One of the misfortunes of Chernobyl was that they sent many young people there, most of which were crippled. It was lucky that it was still the days of the Soviet Union, and the whole huge country was called on to aid. If it had happened in the independent Ukraine, a whole generation of young men would simply have perished."
What are the tangible repercussions of the radiation on the residents here?
"Only a few hundreds got sick from the radiation. Most were the firemen the worked to extinguish the burning reactor. Their bodies were sent for burial in Moscow, because there is special process of burying bodies that have become a source of radiation themselves. But now, 17 years later, there is a constant rise in the number of patients of all types of cancers. After Chernobyl, we have today 2,371 cases of thyroid cancer. Before the accident there were only isolated cases. There are also 36 cases amongst children who were born to parents that went through Chernobyl.
Some say that besides the rise in cancer levels, the rest of the illnesses are cased by 'кadiophobia', or phychosomatic reasons.
"That's something that we missed big time. The radiation was invisible, and in small doses, unpercievable. People didn't know what it was and how it affected them, and that created constant anxiety. People have been living this way for 17 years. When the disaster occured, we knew we had to take care of those hurt by the radiation, but we didn't know we needed to treat anxiety. Today a large population is in a state of depression, and we don't know how to deal with it. What do we do with a young woman who was a girl during the disaster, who is afraid to give birth and says "I don't know how long I have left to live?"
Fear of the radiation is joined by economic crisis. In casualties of Chernobyl, most of the damage revolves around the heart and nervous system. This isn't a direct result of radiation, it's the result of constant fear and fear for the health of the children. There's an increase in cases of diabetes. It's too early to talk about mutations, because that spans generations. For some reason everyone is searching here for children with two heads, but that isn't the most terrifying thing.
Today Ukraine invests 12 percent of its national budget in dealing with the aftermath of the disaster. Is it enough?
"In my opinion they treat it with dangerous recklessness. The radioactive substances aren't going anywhere, and they'll stay there for a long time. Today the doses of radiation are much lower, but they continue to accompany us, our children, out grandchildren and many generations to come. The radioactive stain will stay in the Ukraine forever. We are hostages of Chernobyl."
"We have entered a vicious circle," says Professer Ivan Los, head of the Department of Nuclear Safety of IHME. "Without the atom we would not be able to raise the standard of living, but on the other hand nuclear technology isn't for the poor, because we can't deal with their reprecussions. Treatment of nuclear waste, etc, costs billions of dollars. The Swedish bury it as deep as possible, the Russians - as far away as possible, in the Arctic. But Ukraine is very populated area. Today, for evrey Ukrainian citizen there's about 1.5 square meters of nuclear waste. We're leaving this 'gift' - a nuclear dump - to our descendants, hundreds of generations forward. The halflife of plutonium is tens of thousands of years. Who will remember all this in just a thousand?"
"What's for sure, the Americans that photographed the evacuation of the contaminated area from the air, said later that only in a totalitarian state could such an evactuation been done so quickly and organized. It's lucky that two weeks after the disaster they were wise enough to send away more than 650 thousand children. That way they spared them from the radiation dose that we caught, and I'm sure that it prevented heavier losses from the incident."
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Kovbich and her collegues think that the closing of the third block two years ago was a big mistake. Not only because the project is profitable, covering the expenses of the task of eliminating the effects of the accident, the plant has become a strain on the meager Ukrainian budget, but rather primarily because the closing was in fact a safety hazard.
"During the activity of the plant we didn't save money in case it was closed down, because no one even thought of that possibility," says Kovbich. "Because of this, today we don't have the funding to take care of all the problems that come up. The West just wanted to stand Ukraine on its knees, it was a wholly political decision. After the accident in the fourth block, they equipped the third block with all the possible safety systems, and because of that it could have kept working quietly until 2007, in order to fund the closing of the plant with no loss. But now we have to stand with arms outstretched, like beggars, to ask for financial aid, and we are threatened of being disconnected from electricity because of debts, and they're even cutting back on the number of wagons in trains that bring the workers to the plant."
And why don't you wear protective suits in the reactor itself? Despite the sanitization, even in the cleanest spots the radiation is around eight times normal.
"But the wages here are much larger - 1,500 Griven, about 300 dollars. I've been working here for 15 years, and so far nothing's happened to me. I came here from Moscow, and to this day I don't regret it. Right away my husband and I got an apartment and a good salary. Those that studied with me in the university didn't manage so well."
But this disregard for your health seems a bit irresponsible.
"A few years ago we had some real entertainment here. A French channel came to film the reactor. Still at the checkpoint, at the entrance to the closed area, they put on lead suits, even the camera had a special cover. They looked like aliens, everyone here teased them. We simply change our clothes here. It's so amusing, how people perceive this place. They brought a group of students here, and one girl kept looking at me with deep eyes, and finally let out: 'I didn't think you look like this.' 'What did you expect to see?' I asked her, 'horns and three feet?' "
I approach the Sarcophagus, what is known today as 'the world's most dangerous structure', peek at the radiation meter, thinking that maybe after this visit I'll have to get rid of my coat, and hope they don't force me to go home barefoot. A number of barbed-wire fences with cameras and guards, surround me. Even after a distance of tens of meters, the radiation level is insane - 1,400 microrentgens, as opposed to 80 microrentgens in most of the area surrounding the reactor. You can't miss the cracks in the concrete walls of the Sarcophagus, nor the large spots of rust on its iron roof.
The sarcophagus has been in use for 16 years, and because of the high moisture trapped inside, the inner structures are gradually falling to ruin. Locals warn that the roof isn't hermetic, and on days of rain the water leaks inside, reaching the radioactive substances, and these pour slowly and penetrate with the water downwards - under the reactor no cement plate was built. It's a slow process, but it's happening. Inside the Sarcophagus, so I learn, in addition to the 200 tons of radioactive fuel, accumulated some four tons of radioactive dust, which takes advantage of every orifice to work its way outside where it goes on a journey with the wind. It is not a massive leak, in the meantime, but it's continuing, despite the special 'showers' inside the sarcophagus, that are meant to 'ground' the dust.
Inside can be found a number of systems that monitor the state of the substances. In the relatively save spots inside the sarcophagus a team of 12 men rotates every few hours, whos job it is to track the data from the radiation meters. This is the only place where the workers can be seen wearing protective suits. But the level of control is lacking, and there's no guarentee that in the future there won't begin a chain reaction, whose implications are unknown.
"The sarcophagus structure was meant to last 30 years, " explains Valentina Odenitsa, Vice President of the Information Department at the atomic plant. "But in fact we don't have any information about the processes that occur inside. The systems that monitors the chemical reactions there aren't laid out in the places they should be, but instead only where we were able to reach, and that isn't much. The tests show that we need to repair the structure in 15 places, but in the meantime we have managed only two. There are places with such high radiation that it is impossible to approach them. If there were an earthquake, even three on the Richter Scale, the building would collapse, again releasing a giant cloud of radioactive dust. It's difficult to make these predictions, because we don't know what's really happening inside the reactor. If ten percent of the fuel was able to cause such a large contamination, it's difficult to know what would happen if 90 percent more were released".
Instead of trying to do the impossible and trying to seal the old structure, it was decided to build above the sarcophogus a newer structure, called 'shelter' - a giant arc of titanium or stainless steel. 28 contries, including Israel and the European Union, have committed to taking part in the funding of the project, whose cost is estimated at 768 million dollars. The best engineers from Ukraine, USA, Britan and France are currently laboring over the design, and construction should be completed in 2007. The new 'shelter' is supposd to last for a hundred years, and its purpose is to ensure the retention of the radioactive substances until their ultimate extraction from the ruins of the 4th block.
Why dont they start building it now, to prevent leakage?
"The bidding will take place within a few months, and the infrastructure isn't ready yet. There aren't even elementary things, like sanitation systems large enough for the construction crews. If today the system supports 40 men, we'll need one for 1,500 men that would need to work in the radiation zone."
The Squatters of Chernobyl
In addition to those working in Chernobyl, there remain in the forbidden zone 410 people that didn't find their place in the areas they were evacuated to following the accident at the reactor, who decided to return to their homes. Out of 72 villages whose population was evacuated, 12 villages have come back to life. Most are senior citizens. There are also younger people, but children are not allowed to live here. The only famly who had a baby (completely healthy), were forced to leave Chernobyl under threats that the child would be taken forcifully by the social services.
In one of the cumbling villages of the area live the Yuvchenko family, Anna and Michael, both 65. They raise cattle, geese and a piglet who refuses to grow. After the accident, they were put up, in their words, in a "cardboard house" that leaked, and despite their requests, noone bothered to find them a better spot. Along with 170 families they returned to their village, and decided to wait until better housing would be available. Some of the families did attain an apartment in the city, others ended up in an old-age home or their children's homes, or passed away, but the Yuvchenko's, along with 25 other people, remained where they were.
"A few days after the accident they came to evacuate the village," recalls Anna. "It was worse than in the war, people cried out loud.
Whoever didn't want to leave their home and pets, was dragged out by force, worse than facism. After that they said that whoever doesn't have small children can go back. So we went back. Then it turned out the area was closed and we were cut off from the world. The apartments that were set aside for us were taken by some senior. After we came back, I went to work as a cleaner in Cherbobyl, and every time I passed through the radiation meter, it rang off like a rabbit."
"Now noone needs us anymore," adds Michael. "Before the accident I was a buldozer driver in Chernobyl. Afterwards they took care of us, but now they don't care anymore. Just waiting for us to die, and that's it."
You grow vegetables here, drink milk from the cow that chews the contaminated grass. Does it affect you?
"I always have a headache," complains Anna. "Everyone here in the village has high blood pressure. How can we know whether it's from the radiation or from old age? Our children live in Belarus. The grandchild, when he was little, used to come here to visit us. Now he doesn't come anymore. Once in a while all kinds of scientists come. Once one came from China. They check the water in the well, the ground. Say that it's within the normal limits, but even at home we walk around wearing clothing, because of the radiation."
Incidently, although Israeli's aren't exactly worried about problems from Chernobyl, among Chernobyl's citizens Israel raises quite a bit of interest. "All of us hurt for you," 70-year-old Yosif Brach asks to pass on. Though himself living in the area, he displays surprising proficiency in the details of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Maybe now that Arafat has appointed that Abu-Mazen, the situation will calm down a bit? We're stengthening your arms from Chernobyl."
Among Chernobyl's population, there are some people that remain in the area for ideological reasons. Nadezhda Udavenko (50), a former teacher from the town of Chernobyl, was one of the few who refused to leave their homes under any circumstances. "I helped the people of Pripiat to leave," she says. "I saw the reactor burning from my window. I know what radiation is. But I taught chlildren in school what love of the land is. If not us, then who will stay here? Who will rehabilitate it? They try to banish us from here in every way possible. There are villages where cars drove in the streets throwing Molotov cocktails into people's houses. Their houses burned down, so they moved to another and kept on living here."
"Back then in '86, and I too didn't know what to do, how to digest all this. So I went into the church, because many then ran to the church to look for consolation, and slowly I was absorbed into religion. Now they call us by that insulting word - 'self settlers', but it just isn't true. We were born here, raised here, and we are patriots of this land. We are doing for this land more than all the Liquidators. I believe the land of Chernobyl will bloom once again. You can see that a woman living here gave birth to a healthy baby."
Today Udavenko helps Father Nikolai, a Chernobyl-born priest, restore the local church. The face of the church is ancient, with icons painted hundreds of years ago, that wouldn't shame any museum, and it would certainly attract many visitors - if not for the radiation. "There is radiation," says Father Nikolai. "But there are also miracles. Inside the church itself the radiation is lower than in my apartment in Kiev. Even a nonbeliever wouldn't find it in himself to give up such beauty. Last year we had another miracle - we were given permission to move here the remains of the saint Agaphit Pechersky, healer of incurable diseases, for the land of Chernobyl, that also suffers from an incurable disease."
"Everyone today thinks but this area is one of the most ancient in history. In the closed area there used to be 18 churches, and only one survived - the Saint Ilya Church in Chernobyl. There also used to be here six synogogues which were destroyed. I dream of founding an historical museum here, this place is any archeologist's dream." Father Nikolai's speech is so enthuseastic and filled with belief, that for a moment I forget exactly where we stand. Any excavation of the area has not only a good chance digging up ancient relics, but also radioactive waste, and the remains of those houses and forests, buried where they stood, under the channels dug so hastily after the disaster.
Across the closed area are scattered over 800 improvised contamination dumps such as these, which need to be reburied in a far safer manner. And while we're on the subject of digging, it turns out that out of 359 oil wells in the area, through which radioactive substances can penetrate the groundwater, only 168 have been sealed until today.
The Plan - Nature Reserve
Dozens of plans concerning the future of the contaminated area have piled up over the last few years, since it was found that the radioactive substances aren't going to disappear in the coming tens of thousands of years, There were some proposals to turn the place into a scentific zone and to track the development of different species of flora and fauna under the difficult conditions. As part of this plan, a pair of buffalo and a herd of wild horses were brought to the area, which haven't stopped propagating themselves since.
A different plan, which was carried out, was to raise pig in the area, because it turned out that if they are fed clean food, their meat is not radioactive. A more profitable plan is to turn the area into an international depot for toxic waste - in exchange for money. Ukraine planned to bury the nuclear waste from hundreds of reactors from countries across the globe. But Sergei Saversky, deputy chief of the agency that manages the 'No Man's Land' (as the closed area is now called), has a slightly different vision - he dreams of turning the place into a vastest nature reserve of all Ukraine.
"I'm sick of dealing with nuclear waste for 17 years," he says. "I want something living to grow here. But noone wants to invest in the future, everyone just want to cut a profit today. Geographically speaking, the place is perfect for a unique nature reserve. This probably sounds cynical, man poisons this land and then brings back the wildlife - but actually, because of the security around the area, it is possible that this could be the only place where wildlife aren't driven to extinction, like in the rest of the world."
Saversky himself was summoned to Chernobyl from Moscow in '86. He was then a doctor and young father, with big plans for the future. Today he has trouble explaining how he got stuck here for 17 years. "We needed to finish the construction of the sarcophagus as quickly as possible," he recalls. "In the first years we did nothing besides work. It was a real struggle, an facsinating task, and also a feeling of grave responsibility. Then there still wasn't all this paperwork on four levels," he says, pointing to the pile of documents on his desk.
"I had a chance to leave, but I couldn't bring myself to do it midway. Out of the 15 people that worked with me on the roof of the sarcophagus, only five remain alive. Others became crippled. But even then there were people that came here for two hours, just to later reap the benefits. It's very negative in my eyes, people that were here two hours spending the rest of their lives trying to prove they are victims to receive benifits. A lot of the guys that worked with me are crippled today, but it's beneath their pride to start yelling about that they're heros."
"My family refused to come here, and because I got stuck here for so long my family broke apart. Now my daughter has already finished university. She came from Kiev to visit me, so I gave her a video tape about the work we did here. Sometimes I'm sorry I chose this path, but you can't run from your destiny. For many people here this is a temporary job, a monsterous place, and they want to get out as fast as they can. And there are others, mostly those that lived here before the accident, all kinds of experts from the plant, that for them this place is their life. For me, until today, 95 percent of my time is taken up by work."
What have you been doing here all these years?
"There's no lack of work, there's a lack of funds. We run tests of dangerous areas, because the substances tend to migrate from place to place. We make sure that when the snow melts it doesn't drag radioactive substances into the river. 30 percent of the substances come from Belarusian territories, and we need to find a ways to coorperate with them. Buried here we have 500 thousand square meters of nuclear waste. In addition to our professional work, we worry about other things as well. For instance, we receive bodies for burial from people that were evacuated from the area but asked to be buried where they were born."
Outside of this area, most people don't even know that you exist.
"Of course we aren't appreciated outside of the closed area. For people, a disaster is something that leaves scars but passes, it takes a few years but it can't go on forever. The problem is that here the work will go more or less forever, if we want to prevent another ecological disaster and stop the radiation from spreading farther. I don't believe our grandchildren will ever see this place openned up."
But you act is if there is no contamination here.
"What do you want, for us to walk around all day with gas masks? Every person here does their job. There are places where people do go with protective suits, work four hours, and then go through detoxification. If they soak up too much radiation, they are vacated from the premisis. When there's danger, life still goes on, you get accustomed to living with it. In '86, when I worked on the roof in fields of radiation that could have finished me, and I could actually feel the smell of ozone, I had existential thoughts. Now its just routine."
The Cure: Alcohol
One of the attested recipies to minimize the damages of radiation is alcohol. It is such that the amount needed to neutralize the effects of the radiation near a fatal dose, or rather could turn you into a chronic alcoholic, but the workers of the closed area, except the 'elite' - the workers of the reactor itself, take it as a warm recommendation. So it was that in the stores of Chernobyl after 8 in the evening, I was unable to buy any alcohol-free drink. In addition to the scientific justification, drinking in the area near Chernobyl has another distinguishing characteristic. The third glass, which Russians usually dedicate to 'the woman present here', in Chenobyl is rather dedicated to the first that were killed by the reactor, while trying to put out the flames.
In the end, and for lack of alternative 'medicinces', I gave in. The truth is, I think that in my entire life I never drank as much alcohol as in those three days of 'Chernobyl holiday'. The problem is that the moment you walk outside and feel the throat ache so characteristic of the radiation, out of pure fear the drunkeness evaporates in a second. On the third day the even the fear wasn't left. Only apathy. The place inspires abyssmal depression. It's not clear again where the headache comes from - roving in poisonous forests, the conversations with local residents (who still think they're lucky to risk their health for 'extra wages'), or from the feeling that your body has soaked up far too much poison, from the radiation, attacks of radiophobia, or simply from weariness and stress.
I'm sick of it all, I said to myself while biting into a cutlet, hoping that perhaps it wasn't made out of a Chernobyl cow. And I ate some fish, hoping it didn't come from the Pripiat River, from the same fishermen I saw that afternoon. In the end I surrendered and entered the shower in the hotel (Chernobyl-lux), whose two floors I manned with brilliant solitude, and bathed in water composed of the devil knows what. How long can a person hold out to the stress of this cursed place, where in the nights sound the howls of wolves and in the yard of the police station frolic wild boars.
On journey back, at the checkpost, the police officer with the radiation meter goes over the car, meticulously measuring the seats, wheels, doors. Mostly the instrument is silent, and from time to time it starts beeping. "No deviation from the norm," he announces at last. After that I'm brought into a building, where are positioned radiation meters the hight of a man. I stand on the steel apparatus, rest my hands on the special side plates, and after a few seconds the sign lights up reading 'clean'.
And what does that mean?
"You may have been hit by radiation," explains the officer, "but there are not paricles on your clothes that emit radiation. I hope you aren't dissapointed," he smiles.
The Israeli Connection
Out of hundreds of thousands of people that took part in the labor of extinguishing the flaming reactor and dealing with the consequences, today 1,006 'liquidators' reside in Israel. For a number of years they obstinately struggled with the authorities in Israel, demanding that the state acknowledge them as a high risk group healthwise and to help them in a legal battle against Russia and Ukraine, so that they can get compensation. Finally, in 2001 passed the 'law aiding the neutralization of the results of the disaster of Chernobyl.' But according to the group's activists, it is a law devoid of content.
Alexander Kalantirsky, who oversaw the construction of the peel surrounding the reactor at Chernobyl: "Today I feel a nuisance, an outcast who can't penetrate into the Israeli consciousness. Israel says it has enough of its own problems. But when Ukraine asked for donations to fortify the canopy covering the reactor, suddenly Netanyahu pounced on them with a 250 thousand dollar check. We raised an outcry that they're giving money to Ukraine, when in Israel there are casualties that didn't get dime, and we came out as extortionists. Our situation hasn't gotten better over the years. Ukraine told us they don't have to repay us, that we're no longer citizens of the country, and that the economic situation in Ukraine is bad enough as it is."
"In the Ukraine the Liquidators get everything: housing without a wait, retirement with pension ten years earlier than usual. Once a year they have a trip to the spa, free of charge. Use of public transportation, free. 50 percent discount on property tax, gas, water, electricity, television. An allowance four times minimum wage. 100 percent coverage of dental treatment of any kind. In Israel we get only eight days recuperation each year, a ten percent addition in aid for rent, and they're supposed to enlarge our morgetge as well."
"We even found that we can't get life insurance in Israel, because the insurance companies claim we're a high-risk group. There are scarcely any Liquidators without chronic diseases: cancer, bone ailments, heart, skin...the law states that in one of the hospitals will open a special healh center to track the Liquidator group. But the center wasn't opened, and we haven't been able to get from Israel legal support in demands for reparations from our native countries."
"Member of Parlament Yuri Shtern (National Unity Party), one of the prompters of the law: "Nativ" (a liason organization that maintained contact with Jews in the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain), announced that there is not point in funding this suit, because in translation to our currency, it would be only pennies. I disagree with this, because the Liquidators in Ukraine have tangible benifits, like free treatments at the spa, housing - and that could help them over here as well. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told us several times that the issue of compensation has been raised in talks with Russia, but to this day I haven't been able to find out where the question was raised, if at all."
In response to the question of why Israel needs to pay for the negligence of the Soviet Union, the Liquidators sway in embarressment. As far as they're concerned, they saved the world, plain and simple. If not for them doing their jobs there, a substantial part of the world would have been contaminated by the nuclear fallout. The people who were drafted from all parts of Russia in the attempt to minimize the effects of the Chernobyl disaster were engineers, drivers, doctors and others, who worked for months beside the ruined reactor, spewing out its radiation, with no suitable protective measures, and who payed the price - some with cancer, some with heart problems, some with damaged children. Many were sent there without being given a choice, because someone had to do it. As they call it now, it was war. But, they add with bitterness, "it isn't worth it being a war hero that survives."
"Chernobyl - life after death"
"Don't wander about here," warns me the chief of police in the closed area of Chernobyl. "Why should you soak up the poison?" And why indeed should he do this? It turns out that in the impoverished country of Ukraine there are thousands that would do anything for an addition to their monthly salary. Even live and work in the radiation-plagued site where 17 years ago occured one of the biggest ecological disasters in the history of humanity. Besides the policemen, there roam scientists fighting the radiation, criminals finding refuge in the ghost towns, tourists searching for children with two heads and elderly, who stole back into the poisened villages because for them it is home. Everyone drowns the fear in alcohol, the only "miracle medicine" to neutrilize the radiation, and try not to think about the moment when the cover of the reactor will ultimately collapse.
On the 26th of April, 1986, during a test being performed by the reactor scientists of the 4th block at the nuclear power plant Chernobyl in Ukraine, occured the largest radioactive disaster in the history of the human race. Technical failure resulted in a powerful blast within the reactor. From the fire that burst out from inside billowed an immense cloud, laden with radioactive chemicals, that soared over Europe wherever the wind would blow, leaving behind thousands of kilometers of contaminated lands.
Despite the fact that only 10 percent of the radioactive fuel from the reactor seeped out, the ecological disaster was enormous. Over 120 thousand individuals were evacuated in those days from their homes and removed from the areas closest to the reactor. Still today over 1.8 million people continue to live in the infected lands, whom doctors expect to succumb to various illnesses. The Ukraine has recognized 92 thousand people crippled by the disaster. Some half of the country's population claim their health as been damaged from the contamination.
Since the disaster and until today the 2,196 square kilometers around the reactor are surrounded by barbed wire. The contaminated area spans extensive lands of both Ukraine and Belarus. The Sisyphean job of purification has been carried out in these vast lands for years, in an attempt to prevent the further leakage of radioactive substances including Cesium, Strontium, and other poisons emitting dangerous radiation.
Within the ruined reactor, covered by its cement "sarcophagus", chemical reactions continue to occur under no scrutiny, emitting massive amounts of radiation and contaminating the surroundings and lives of tens of thousands of people. Those directly responsible for the spread of the substances are the winds and groundwater. But also man, with his own hands, increases the damage.
Where are the others?
I stop at the first checkpoint meant to prevent entrance to the fenced off nuclear reactor. The Geiger counter reads a radation level five times above the norm. It's only the beginning, but shivers run down my spine. Yet the officers posted at the blockade are indifferent. They wear regular uniforms of ordinary cotton. Protective suits of any kind are nowhere to be seen.
The road leading to the town of Chernobyl is deserted, and snow covers the surrounding forests. For a moment there is a feeling that the road leads to a quite and secluded vacation spot. Once it indeed was such a road, serving high-ranking officials of the Comunist Party, who would reach the area for hunting expeditions between the pine forests and birch groves, rivers and beautiful lakes.
Thoughts of the past are interrupted by a sign posted at the entrance to the town of Chernobyl. "Chernobyl - Good travels!", wrote someone on the tin board, and I can't believe I'm here, walking so easily into one of the most unpleasant places in the world. The first sights to appear before my eyes are somewhat strange. Men in army camouflage jackets walking about the streets of the town. Some hurry, but most pace in measured steps, slowly. Not one of them is wearing a protective suit.
"Don't wander about here," warns Yuri Tarasenko, chief of police in the closed sector. "Why should you soak up the poison?" he wonders out loud, as if he himself were living on the other side of the Earth. "Everyone at this place is here because of work. For that they get extra pay. A lot of people want to find work here because of the extra pay. In other places the police is understaffed, but here we have five full units."
It takes me a while to understand why 11,000 people continue to work inside the closed sector, exposed with no protection whatsoever to the dangerous radiation. From the stories about the difficulty of finding work, the poverty and destitution that plagues Ukraine and its citizens, you start to understand how there can be those, for whom Chernobyl is a life saver. Each body reacts differently to radiation," explain some of the local workers, perhaps to me - but maybe also to themselves. "There are those that get hit by it and nothing happens to them, but there are others that are exposed just a bit and get sick. It's the kind of risk people take, knowing that maybe nothing will happen to them. If tomorrow there wasn't any food to give the children, that would be much more tangible."
The monthly wage of a Ukrainian policeman stands at 400 Griven, which is less than 100 dollars. In the closed sector the policemen recieve a bonus of 300 Griven. "Besides that," continues Tarasenko to list the benifits, "here we work 15 days, and 15 days we rest outside the closed sector. We let our body rest from the radiation it soaked up during the two weeks, have a sauna, drink alcohol, and the poison comes out. In the area near the reactor we simply try to go around the places with the highest concentration of dangerous substances."
But here and there the chief of police has a moment of doubt. "Sometimes I forget where I am," says a softening Tarasenko, "and when I go home at night, to the apartment in Chernobyl, I ask myself where all the people have gone. Here, I say to myself, I'm walking in the street at night, so where are all the others?"
The Metal Thieves
Ukraine states, in official documents, that the risk to the lives of the few thousands of people that tend the area stricken by radiation is less than the potential damage the radiation would cause if it were to spread to other populated areas of the country. The workers themselves are not difficult to convince to stay in this cursed place.
"It's not certain that there will be damage to my health," thinks to himself one of the workers while holding his generous paycheck. "And if I do get hurt, the damage would be small compared to the benefit that comes from my double wages."
Apparently with the years the reactor zone has become the source of income not only to the government workers the tend daily to the exploded reactor. In recent years, it has become a nuclear tourist spot. Each year some 3,000 specially authorized visitors flock to the reactor. Most are foreign specialists, politicians and students. In addition, dozens are caught each month wandering around inside the closed sector without authorization and are expelled outside of the fence, which of late has been breached.
12 roadblocks are positioned around the closed sector, which police forces comb meticulously, and since the start of the year 38 infiltrators have been captured. The unprecedented security of the area, and even the statistics pointing to a rise in cases of cancer are not enough to deter curious individuals, especially in light of the rumors of a boar with claws that look like a human hand, or eels the size of a small whale. For local youths, a picnic near any of the toxic waste burial sites has become an adrenaline-packed adventure.
Some of the trespassers come to fish in the contaminated rivers, some come for the excitement, but most come to steal metals from the 'graveyards of radioactive equipment.' From afar, Rossoha looks like an impound lot for old cars. But upon closer inspection, the fear start creeping up again. Over a huge area surrounded by barbed wire, are strewn vehicles of different sorts. Endless rows of firetrucks, tanks, armored vehicles, bulldozers, buses, countless private cars, several helicopters and a small plane, thousands of vehicles that took part in the attempt to curb the Chernobyl disaster, and now no bath whatsoever will help lower their radiation level.
The most contaminated equipment, those which radiation level nears that of the reactor itself, are buried somewhere else. The equipment in Rossoha is slightly less tainted, but is still not something a responsible human being would dare come near. And yet, seeing the number of missing car doors, it is apparent that poverty has overcome fear. The 'Metal Thieves', some of which are found electrocuted in other parts of Ukraine trying to cut power lines to sell off later in town, have arrived here too. Even the rescue helicopters that hovered during the first days above the reactor, their crews long since dead, have been torn apart.
The very same contaminated metals turn up from time to time in various cities in Ukraine and beyond. Recently, the District Attorney charged six individuals for selling 426 radioactive fir trees in Kiev markets, and currently there is an investigation underway into a company that sold in Kiev radioactive beef from the restricted zone.
These incidences, alongside cases of murder that were committed among the homeless and criminals that found shelter in the area and are not included in any official statistics, are handled by Sergei Dubchek, the chief prosecutor of Pripiat. Dubcheck leads a healthy lifestyle by any standard. In the morning, in any temperature, he jogs to bathe in the Pripiat River. "If I have been living here for four years, breathing this air, then why shouldn't I swim in the Pripiat?" he meditates. "I'm convinced that small doses of radiation benefit your health, like any shock. True, it is disregarding our bodies, but if we were afraid every second, we simply couldn't work here."
The closed sector's attorney deals mainly with the smuggling of radioactive substances outside of its territory. "I can't stop people stealing things from the abandoned villages and towns, because from a legal standpoint they don't belong to anyone. They can be arrested only on grounds of ecological violations, because about 15 percent of the metals that are smuggled from here are dangerous to the public health. Also an investigation is underway tangled with an incident of money transfers to the reactor, that weren't taken advantage of properly."
Have there been any other crimes?
"Last year we had two cases of murder. In one case a gang of metal thieves killed one of their members, and in the other case one homeless person hiding here killed another. But local workers try to keep a low profile, because everyone is afraid of losing their job".
Ghost Town
In the hills in the outskirts leading to Pripiat, posted here and there, are signs with the radioactive symbol. There lies 'The Orange Forest' - the four square kilometers of pines that died after the blast at the reactor, and within hours their needles turned orange from radiation. Even today, because of the high radiation levels, lone cars of workers speed past as fast as they can, windows closed. The distance to the plant is barely a kilometer, and between the new trees that had a chance to grow on the shoulders of the road, looms the unsightly structure of the Sarcophagus.
Still hoisted on some of the houses of Pripiat are slogans of the Communist Party, but the silence, so unbelievable, emanating from the streets of this ghost town, cause the heart to shrink. An abandoned city that was once so prosperous is much more intimidating than the crumbling villages surrounding the reactor. Inside the villages, somehow, the rotting wooden houses look more natural than the blocks of concrete or the towering ferris wheel with its plastic seats that retain their cheerful yellow color, out here in the middle of nowhere. Before the foundation of the power plant, the area was desolate. The plant filled it with life, and then took it away again.
Multi-storeyed houses with huge signs - a restaurant, a furniture store, a 'culture palace', the Hotel 'Polesye' - stand as if expecting visitors, which haven't come in 17 years. The glass windows remain securely closed by the apartment owners, lest the toxic wind penetrate the homes. The well-trimmed lawns, with swings and other playground equipment, have almost entirely been swallowed by the thicket of young trees that have grown here in the meantime.
The musty stench of mold and mildew reek from the vestibules.The doorway to building 11 on Kurchatova St. is blocked by a tree that grew in the middle of the path. I force its stubborn branches aside and enter the building. The paint is peeling from the walls, water is flowing from a pipe that burst long ago. Some of the apartments are locked, some broken into, and on the floor are scattered clothes, household utensils, shoes, books. Some have remained as they were abandoned the day of the evacuation, as if some evil sorceror with the wave of his wand had caused all the inhabitants to vanish. Some of the aparments have already been visited by anonymous looters that didn't fear the radiation. The aparments are standard, with nearly identical furniture, except for a broken piano here and a washing machine there. And tree branches that have grown strong and are beating menacingly against the windows, threatening to break though.
The gates of 'Yantarik' kindergarden are open, as if inviting you to come inside. Chairs and small wooden desks still stand in the spacious structures, wooden blocks are arranged in their boxes, and on the walls hang slogans that read "Our mission - to raise healthy children." Ragged teddy bear and doll, whose colors have faded over the course of the years, sit in an orphaned hug on children's lockers. Beside them, tiny discarded gas masks, covered by a thick layer of dust.
Before the disaster, Pripiat housed the reactor workers and their families. Several days after the accident, 47 thousand inhabitants were evacuated from the city. They were told that they could soon return to their houses, and that they may only carry with them a small bag. Some pets were left in closed apartments. From time to time convicts find shelter in one of the houses, and for this reason the police at the roadblock at the entrance to the city wear bullet-proof vests, instead of radiation suits.
I march along the main street of Pripriat. Some of the streets can no longer be used by cars because of the tree branches that block the way. I drag my feet though the snow in the dead streets, and the unearthly sight of abandoned living quarters floods me with despair and solitude. This is probably how the last man on Earth would feel, if he survived the nuclear winter. The city will remain contaminated for tens of thousands of years. The tree roots will ultimately crumble the sidewalks, and all that will remain are ruins within a wild toxic forest.
The dancing of the needle is meaningless. A sudden headache, burning lips and the vocal cords becoming heavy as lead - does it come from an unexpected radiation attack, or just the fear? I can barely drag myself to the roadblock. At the city limits a sign is posted: a diagnal red stripe crossing the word "Pripiat." Only now a new meaning joins the original. Erased city.
Up until two years ago, despite the contamination, one of the four reactors in Chernobyl Power Plant continued to work and provide electricity. Under continued pressure from the West it was closed down, in exchange for a commitment given to Ukraine to continue to aid it in dealing with the consequences of the disaster. Even today, some 4,500 people work in the atomic plant.
"Can you explain me, what all these people are doing in a closed power plant?" I ask Irina Kovbich, one of the workers in the plant, an elegant and cheerful woman. "We're preparing to shut it down," she answers. "An atomic power plant is not a textile factory, where you just stop the machines, hang a lock on the door and leave it like that. You need to clear out the radioactive substances, build repositories for them, and secure the systems. You need to build processing plants for solid and liquid nuclear waste. Except for the ruined block, two other blocks still contain radioactive fuel, and its storage silo is only halfway built. Bit by bit, we shut down all kinds of systems and dismiss workers. But I don't think that in our days we'll live to see the plant deserted. The process of shutting down will last tens of years, and I personally hope to work here until my pension."
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Andrey Serdiuk, former Health Minister of Ukraine, is today the head of the Nuclear Medicine Department in the Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology (IHME) of Ukraine. Following the accident he supported the recommendation to evacuate the entire population of Kiev. "Today we can no longer know whether what we did then was right or wrong," he says. "There was no precident to this disaster in history, and noone know what to do. Even in Hiroshima, most of the people were killed from the blast and the high temperatures that were discharged, not from the radiation itself."
"The only thing they knew for certain was how to keep information from the people. Moscow took command of the ruined reactor, and even we in the Department of Health didn't know what was going on over there. The leadership in Moscow insisted on holding the traditional 1st of May demonstration, when in the main street of Kiev the radiation level was reading 3,000 microtangens an hour (the norm is 10-12). Maybe they really should have evacuated Kiev, but I'm not sure they would have managed to relocate three million people."
"After four-five months the panic subsided somewhat, but the radiation continued to take its toll, the radioactive background was five times the norm, and we ate contaminated products. Northern residents were hit worse because they were missing natural iodine, and because of that their bodies soaked up radioactive iodine which affected their thyroid glands. In children the thyroid gland is 10 times smaller than in adults, so they absorbed the same amount of radiation but were hurt more. Besides that, the weeds were radioactive - a cow eats 50 kilos of grass a day, and children eat a lot of dairy products."
"One of the misfortunes of Chernobyl was that they sent many young people there, most of which were crippled. It was lucky that it was still the days of the Soviet Union, and the whole huge country was called on to aid. If it had happened in the independent Ukraine, a whole generation of young men would simply have perished."
What are the tangible repercussions of the radiation on the residents here?
"Only a few hundreds got sick from the radiation. Most were the firemen the worked to extinguish the burning reactor. Their bodies were sent for burial in Moscow, because there is special process of burying bodies that have become a source of radiation themselves. But now, 17 years later, there is a constant rise in the number of patients of all types of cancers. After Chernobyl, we have today 2,371 cases of thyroid cancer. Before the accident there were only isolated cases. There are also 36 cases amongst children who were born to parents that went through Chernobyl.
Some say that besides the rise in cancer levels, the rest of the illnesses are cased by 'кadiophobia', or phychosomatic reasons.
"That's something that we missed big time. The radiation was invisible, and in small doses, unpercievable. People didn't know what it was and how it affected them, and that created constant anxiety. People have been living this way for 17 years. When the disaster occured, we knew we had to take care of those hurt by the radiation, but we didn't know we needed to treat anxiety. Today a large population is in a state of depression, and we don't know how to deal with it. What do we do with a young woman who was a girl during the disaster, who is afraid to give birth and says "I don't know how long I have left to live?"
Fear of the radiation is joined by economic crisis. In casualties of Chernobyl, most of the damage revolves around the heart and nervous system. This isn't a direct result of radiation, it's the result of constant fear and fear for the health of the children. There's an increase in cases of diabetes. It's too early to talk about mutations, because that spans generations. For some reason everyone is searching here for children with two heads, but that isn't the most terrifying thing.
Today Ukraine invests 12 percent of its national budget in dealing with the aftermath of the disaster. Is it enough?
"In my opinion they treat it with dangerous recklessness. The radioactive substances aren't going anywhere, and they'll stay there for a long time. Today the doses of radiation are much lower, but they continue to accompany us, our children, out grandchildren and many generations to come. The radioactive stain will stay in the Ukraine forever. We are hostages of Chernobyl."
"We have entered a vicious circle," says Professer Ivan Los, head of the Department of Nuclear Safety of IHME. "Without the atom we would not be able to raise the standard of living, but on the other hand nuclear technology isn't for the poor, because we can't deal with their reprecussions. Treatment of nuclear waste, etc, costs billions of dollars. The Swedish bury it as deep as possible, the Russians - as far away as possible, in the Arctic. But Ukraine is very populated area. Today, for evrey Ukrainian citizen there's about 1.5 square meters of nuclear waste. We're leaving this 'gift' - a nuclear dump - to our descendants, hundreds of generations forward. The halflife of plutonium is tens of thousands of years. Who will remember all this in just a thousand?"
"What's for sure, the Americans that photographed the evacuation of the contaminated area from the air, said later that only in a totalitarian state could such an evactuation been done so quickly and organized. It's lucky that two weeks after the disaster they were wise enough to send away more than 650 thousand children. That way they spared them from the radiation dose that we caught, and I'm sure that it prevented heavier losses from the incident."
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Kovbich and her collegues think that the closing of the third block two years ago was a big mistake. Not only because the project is profitable, covering the expenses of the task of eliminating the effects of the accident, the plant has become a strain on the meager Ukrainian budget, but rather primarily because the closing was in fact a safety hazard.
"During the activity of the plant we didn't save money in case it was closed down, because no one even thought of that possibility," says Kovbich. "Because of this, today we don't have the funding to take care of all the problems that come up. The West just wanted to stand Ukraine on its knees, it was a wholly political decision. After the accident in the fourth block, they equipped the third block with all the possible safety systems, and because of that it could have kept working quietly until 2007, in order to fund the closing of the plant with no loss. But now we have to stand with arms outstretched, like beggars, to ask for financial aid, and we are threatened of being disconnected from electricity because of debts, and they're even cutting back on the number of wagons in trains that bring the workers to the plant."
And why don't you wear protective suits in the reactor itself? Despite the sanitization, even in the cleanest spots the radiation is around eight times normal.
"But the wages here are much larger - 1,500 Griven, about 300 dollars. I've been working here for 15 years, and so far nothing's happened to me. I came here from Moscow, and to this day I don't regret it. Right away my husband and I got an apartment and a good salary. Those that studied with me in the university didn't manage so well."
But this disregard for your health seems a bit irresponsible.
"A few years ago we had some real entertainment here. A French channel came to film the reactor. Still at the checkpoint, at the entrance to the closed area, they put on lead suits, even the camera had a special cover. They looked like aliens, everyone here teased them. We simply change our clothes here. It's so amusing, how people perceive this place. They brought a group of students here, and one girl kept looking at me with deep eyes, and finally let out: 'I didn't think you look like this.' 'What did you expect to see?' I asked her, 'horns and three feet?' "
I approach the Sarcophagus, what is known today as 'the world's most dangerous structure', peek at the radiation meter, thinking that maybe after this visit I'll have to get rid of my coat, and hope they don't force me to go home barefoot. A number of barbed-wire fences with cameras and guards, surround me. Even after a distance of tens of meters, the radiation level is insane - 1,400 microrentgens, as opposed to 80 microrentgens in most of the area surrounding the reactor. You can't miss the cracks in the concrete walls of the Sarcophagus, nor the large spots of rust on its iron roof.
The sarcophagus has been in use for 16 years, and because of the high moisture trapped inside, the inner structures are gradually falling to ruin. Locals warn that the roof isn't hermetic, and on days of rain the water leaks inside, reaching the radioactive substances, and these pour slowly and penetrate with the water downwards - under the reactor no cement plate was built. It's a slow process, but it's happening. Inside the Sarcophagus, so I learn, in addition to the 200 tons of radioactive fuel, accumulated some four tons of radioactive dust, which takes advantage of every orifice to work its way outside where it goes on a journey with the wind. It is not a massive leak, in the meantime, but it's continuing, despite the special 'showers' inside the sarcophagus, that are meant to 'ground' the dust.
Inside can be found a number of systems that monitor the state of the substances. In the relatively save spots inside the sarcophagus a team of 12 men rotates every few hours, whos job it is to track the data from the radiation meters. This is the only place where the workers can be seen wearing protective suits. But the level of control is lacking, and there's no guarentee that in the future there won't begin a chain reaction, whose implications are unknown.
"The sarcophagus structure was meant to last 30 years, " explains Valentina Odenitsa, Vice President of the Information Department at the atomic plant. "But in fact we don't have any information about the processes that occur inside. The systems that monitors the chemical reactions there aren't laid out in the places they should be, but instead only where we were able to reach, and that isn't much. The tests show that we need to repair the structure in 15 places, but in the meantime we have managed only two. There are places with such high radiation that it is impossible to approach them. If there were an earthquake, even three on the Richter Scale, the building would collapse, again releasing a giant cloud of radioactive dust. It's difficult to make these predictions, because we don't know what's really happening inside the reactor. If ten percent of the fuel was able to cause such a large contamination, it's difficult to know what would happen if 90 percent more were released".
Instead of trying to do the impossible and trying to seal the old structure, it was decided to build above the sarcophogus a newer structure, called 'shelter' - a giant arc of titanium or stainless steel. 28 contries, including Israel and the European Union, have committed to taking part in the funding of the project, whose cost is estimated at 768 million dollars. The best engineers from Ukraine, USA, Britan and France are currently laboring over the design, and construction should be completed in 2007. The new 'shelter' is supposd to last for a hundred years, and its purpose is to ensure the retention of the radioactive substances until their ultimate extraction from the ruins of the 4th block.
Why dont they start building it now, to prevent leakage?
"The bidding will take place within a few months, and the infrastructure isn't ready yet. There aren't even elementary things, like sanitation systems large enough for the construction crews. If today the system supports 40 men, we'll need one for 1,500 men that would need to work in the radiation zone."
The Squatters of Chernobyl
In addition to those working in Chernobyl, there remain in the forbidden zone 410 people that didn't find their place in the areas they were evacuated to following the accident at the reactor, who decided to return to their homes. Out of 72 villages whose population was evacuated, 12 villages have come back to life. Most are senior citizens. There are also younger people, but children are not allowed to live here. The only famly who had a baby (completely healthy), were forced to leave Chernobyl under threats that the child would be taken forcifully by the social services.
In one of the cumbling villages of the area live the Yuvchenko family, Anna and Michael, both 65. They raise cattle, geese and a piglet who refuses to grow. After the accident, they were put up, in their words, in a "cardboard house" that leaked, and despite their requests, noone bothered to find them a better spot. Along with 170 families they returned to their village, and decided to wait until better housing would be available. Some of the families did attain an apartment in the city, others ended up in an old-age home or their children's homes, or passed away, but the Yuvchenko's, along with 25 other people, remained where they were.
"A few days after the accident they came to evacuate the village," recalls Anna. "It was worse than in the war, people cried out loud.
Whoever didn't want to leave their home and pets, was dragged out by force, worse than facism. After that they said that whoever doesn't have small children can go back. So we went back. Then it turned out the area was closed and we were cut off from the world. The apartments that were set aside for us were taken by some senior. After we came back, I went to work as a cleaner in Cherbobyl, and every time I passed through the radiation meter, it rang off like a rabbit."
"Now noone needs us anymore," adds Michael. "Before the accident I was a buldozer driver in Chernobyl. Afterwards they took care of us, but now they don't care anymore. Just waiting for us to die, and that's it."
You grow vegetables here, drink milk from the cow that chews the contaminated grass. Does it affect you?
"I always have a headache," complains Anna. "Everyone here in the village has high blood pressure. How can we know whether it's from the radiation or from old age? Our children live in Belarus. The grandchild, when he was little, used to come here to visit us. Now he doesn't come anymore. Once in a while all kinds of scientists come. Once one came from China. They check the water in the well, the ground. Say that it's within the normal limits, but even at home we walk around wearing clothing, because of the radiation."
Incidently, although Israeli's aren't exactly worried about problems from Chernobyl, among Chernobyl's citizens Israel raises quite a bit of interest. "All of us hurt for you," 70-year-old Yosif Brach asks to pass on. Though himself living in the area, he displays surprising proficiency in the details of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Maybe now that Arafat has appointed that Abu-Mazen, the situation will calm down a bit? We're stengthening your arms from Chernobyl."
Among Chernobyl's population, there are some people that remain in the area for ideological reasons. Nadezhda Udavenko (50), a former teacher from the town of Chernobyl, was one of the few who refused to leave their homes under any circumstances. "I helped the people of Pripiat to leave," she says. "I saw the reactor burning from my window. I know what radiation is. But I taught chlildren in school what love of the land is. If not us, then who will stay here? Who will rehabilitate it? They try to banish us from here in every way possible. There are villages where cars drove in the streets throwing Molotov cocktails into people's houses. Their houses burned down, so they moved to another and kept on living here."
"Back then in '86, and I too didn't know what to do, how to digest all this. So I went into the church, because many then ran to the church to look for consolation, and slowly I was absorbed into religion. Now they call us by that insulting word - 'self settlers', but it just isn't true. We were born here, raised here, and we are patriots of this land. We are doing for this land more than all the Liquidators. I believe the land of Chernobyl will bloom once again. You can see that a woman living here gave birth to a healthy baby."
Today Udavenko helps Father Nikolai, a Chernobyl-born priest, restore the local church. The face of the church is ancient, with icons painted hundreds of years ago, that wouldn't shame any museum, and it would certainly attract many visitors - if not for the radiation. "There is radiation," says Father Nikolai. "But there are also miracles. Inside the church itself the radiation is lower than in my apartment in Kiev. Even a nonbeliever wouldn't find it in himself to give up such beauty. Last year we had another miracle - we were given permission to move here the remains of the saint Agaphit Pechersky, healer of incurable diseases, for the land of Chernobyl, that also suffers from an incurable disease."
"Everyone today thinks but this area is one of the most ancient in history. In the closed area there used to be 18 churches, and only one survived - the Saint Ilya Church in Chernobyl. There also used to be here six synogogues which were destroyed. I dream of founding an historical museum here, this place is any archeologist's dream." Father Nikolai's speech is so enthuseastic and filled with belief, that for a moment I forget exactly where we stand. Any excavation of the area has not only a good chance digging up ancient relics, but also radioactive waste, and the remains of those houses and forests, buried where they stood, under the channels dug so hastily after the disaster.
Across the closed area are scattered over 800 improvised contamination dumps such as these, which need to be reburied in a far safer manner. And while we're on the subject of digging, it turns out that out of 359 oil wells in the area, through which radioactive substances can penetrate the groundwater, only 168 have been sealed until today.
The Plan - Nature Reserve
Dozens of plans concerning the future of the contaminated area have piled up over the last few years, since it was found that the radioactive substances aren't going to disappear in the coming tens of thousands of years, There were some proposals to turn the place into a scentific zone and to track the development of different species of flora and fauna under the difficult conditions. As part of this plan, a pair of buffalo and a herd of wild horses were brought to the area, which haven't stopped propagating themselves since.
A different plan, which was carried out, was to raise pig in the area, because it turned out that if they are fed clean food, their meat is not radioactive. A more profitable plan is to turn the area into an international depot for toxic waste - in exchange for money. Ukraine planned to bury the nuclear waste from hundreds of reactors from countries across the globe. But Sergei Saversky, deputy chief of the agency that manages the 'No Man's Land' (as the closed area is now called), has a slightly different vision - he dreams of turning the place into a vastest nature reserve of all Ukraine.
"I'm sick of dealing with nuclear waste for 17 years," he says. "I want something living to grow here. But noone wants to invest in the future, everyone just want to cut a profit today. Geographically speaking, the place is perfect for a unique nature reserve. This probably sounds cynical, man poisons this land and then brings back the wildlife - but actually, because of the security around the area, it is possible that this could be the only place where wildlife aren't driven to extinction, like in the rest of the world."
Saversky himself was summoned to Chernobyl from Moscow in '86. He was then a doctor and young father, with big plans for the future. Today he has trouble explaining how he got stuck here for 17 years. "We needed to finish the construction of the sarcophagus as quickly as possible," he recalls. "In the first years we did nothing besides work. It was a real struggle, an facsinating task, and also a feeling of grave responsibility. Then there still wasn't all this paperwork on four levels," he says, pointing to the pile of documents on his desk.
"I had a chance to leave, but I couldn't bring myself to do it midway. Out of the 15 people that worked with me on the roof of the sarcophagus, only five remain alive. Others became crippled. But even then there were people that came here for two hours, just to later reap the benefits. It's very negative in my eyes, people that were here two hours spending the rest of their lives trying to prove they are victims to receive benifits. A lot of the guys that worked with me are crippled today, but it's beneath their pride to start yelling about that they're heros."
"My family refused to come here, and because I got stuck here for so long my family broke apart. Now my daughter has already finished university. She came from Kiev to visit me, so I gave her a video tape about the work we did here. Sometimes I'm sorry I chose this path, but you can't run from your destiny. For many people here this is a temporary job, a monsterous place, and they want to get out as fast as they can. And there are others, mostly those that lived here before the accident, all kinds of experts from the plant, that for them this place is their life. For me, until today, 95 percent of my time is taken up by work."
What have you been doing here all these years?
"There's no lack of work, there's a lack of funds. We run tests of dangerous areas, because the substances tend to migrate from place to place. We make sure that when the snow melts it doesn't drag radioactive substances into the river. 30 percent of the substances come from Belarusian territories, and we need to find a ways to coorperate with them. Buried here we have 500 thousand square meters of nuclear waste. In addition to our professional work, we worry about other things as well. For instance, we receive bodies for burial from people that were evacuated from the area but asked to be buried where they were born."
Outside of this area, most people don't even know that you exist.
"Of course we aren't appreciated outside of the closed area. For people, a disaster is something that leaves scars but passes, it takes a few years but it can't go on forever. The problem is that here the work will go more or less forever, if we want to prevent another ecological disaster and stop the radiation from spreading farther. I don't believe our grandchildren will ever see this place openned up."
But you act is if there is no contamination here.
"What do you want, for us to walk around all day with gas masks? Every person here does their job. There are places where people do go with protective suits, work four hours, and then go through detoxification. If they soak up too much radiation, they are vacated from the premisis. When there's danger, life still goes on, you get accustomed to living with it. In '86, when I worked on the roof in fields of radiation that could have finished me, and I could actually feel the smell of ozone, I had existential thoughts. Now its just routine."
The Cure: Alcohol
One of the attested recipies to minimize the damages of radiation is alcohol. It is such that the amount needed to neutralize the effects of the radiation near a fatal dose, or rather could turn you into a chronic alcoholic, but the workers of the closed area, except the 'elite' - the workers of the reactor itself, take it as a warm recommendation. So it was that in the stores of Chernobyl after 8 in the evening, I was unable to buy any alcohol-free drink. In addition to the scientific justification, drinking in the area near Chernobyl has another distinguishing characteristic. The third glass, which Russians usually dedicate to 'the woman present here', in Chenobyl is rather dedicated to the first that were killed by the reactor, while trying to put out the flames.
In the end, and for lack of alternative 'medicinces', I gave in. The truth is, I think that in my entire life I never drank as much alcohol as in those three days of 'Chernobyl holiday'. The problem is that the moment you walk outside and feel the throat ache so characteristic of the radiation, out of pure fear the drunkeness evaporates in a second. On the third day the even the fear wasn't left. Only apathy. The place inspires abyssmal depression. It's not clear again where the headache comes from - roving in poisonous forests, the conversations with local residents (who still think they're lucky to risk their health for 'extra wages'), or from the feeling that your body has soaked up far too much poison, from the radiation, attacks of radiophobia, or simply from weariness and stress.
I'm sick of it all, I said to myself while biting into a cutlet, hoping that perhaps it wasn't made out of a Chernobyl cow. And I ate some fish, hoping it didn't come from the Pripiat River, from the same fishermen I saw that afternoon. In the end I surrendered and entered the shower in the hotel (Chernobyl-lux), whose two floors I manned with brilliant solitude, and bathed in water composed of the devil knows what. How long can a person hold out to the stress of this cursed place, where in the nights sound the howls of wolves and in the yard of the police station frolic wild boars.
On journey back, at the checkpost, the police officer with the radiation meter goes over the car, meticulously measuring the seats, wheels, doors. Mostly the instrument is silent, and from time to time it starts beeping. "No deviation from the norm," he announces at last. After that I'm brought into a building, where are positioned radiation meters the hight of a man. I stand on the steel apparatus, rest my hands on the special side plates, and after a few seconds the sign lights up reading 'clean'.
And what does that mean?
"You may have been hit by radiation," explains the officer, "but there are not paricles on your clothes that emit radiation. I hope you aren't dissapointed," he smiles.
The Israeli Connection
Out of hundreds of thousands of people that took part in the labor of extinguishing the flaming reactor and dealing with the consequences, today 1,006 'liquidators' reside in Israel. For a number of years they obstinately struggled with the authorities in Israel, demanding that the state acknowledge them as a high risk group healthwise and to help them in a legal battle against Russia and Ukraine, so that they can get compensation. Finally, in 2001 passed the 'law aiding the neutralization of the results of the disaster of Chernobyl.' But according to the group's activists, it is a law devoid of content.
Alexander Kalantirsky, who oversaw the construction of the peel surrounding the reactor at Chernobyl: "Today I feel a nuisance, an outcast who can't penetrate into the Israeli consciousness. Israel says it has enough of its own problems. But when Ukraine asked for donations to fortify the canopy covering the reactor, suddenly Netanyahu pounced on them with a 250 thousand dollar check. We raised an outcry that they're giving money to Ukraine, when in Israel there are casualties that didn't get dime, and we came out as extortionists. Our situation hasn't gotten better over the years. Ukraine told us they don't have to repay us, that we're no longer citizens of the country, and that the economic situation in Ukraine is bad enough as it is."
"In the Ukraine the Liquidators get everything: housing without a wait, retirement with pension ten years earlier than usual. Once a year they have a trip to the spa, free of charge. Use of public transportation, free. 50 percent discount on property tax, gas, water, electricity, television. An allowance four times minimum wage. 100 percent coverage of dental treatment of any kind. In Israel we get only eight days recuperation each year, a ten percent addition in aid for rent, and they're supposed to enlarge our morgetge as well."
"We even found that we can't get life insurance in Israel, because the insurance companies claim we're a high-risk group. There are scarcely any Liquidators without chronic diseases: cancer, bone ailments, heart, skin...the law states that in one of the hospitals will open a special healh center to track the Liquidator group. But the center wasn't opened, and we haven't been able to get from Israel legal support in demands for reparations from our native countries."
"Member of Parlament Yuri Shtern (National Unity Party), one of the prompters of the law: "Nativ" (a liason organization that maintained contact with Jews in the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain), announced that there is not point in funding this suit, because in translation to our currency, it would be only pennies. I disagree with this, because the Liquidators in Ukraine have tangible benifits, like free treatments at the spa, housing - and that could help them over here as well. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told us several times that the issue of compensation has been raised in talks with Russia, but to this day I haven't been able to find out where the question was raised, if at all."
In response to the question of why Israel needs to pay for the negligence of the Soviet Union, the Liquidators sway in embarressment. As far as they're concerned, they saved the world, plain and simple. If not for them doing their jobs there, a substantial part of the world would have been contaminated by the nuclear fallout. The people who were drafted from all parts of Russia in the attempt to minimize the effects of the Chernobyl disaster were engineers, drivers, doctors and others, who worked for months beside the ruined reactor, spewing out its radiation, with no suitable protective measures, and who payed the price - some with cancer, some with heart problems, some with damaged children. Many were sent there without being given a choice, because someone had to do it. As they call it now, it was war. But, they add with bitterness, "it isn't worth it being a war hero that survives."
