The Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster happened on April 26th 1986, ironically, during a safety test. The blast erupted about 8 tonnes of contaminated material into the atmosphere. Directly after the accident the intensity of radiation in the area around the plant was reported to be equivalent to 500 Hiroshima bombs.
Even now, with the reactor building buried under a million tonnes of steel and concrete, radiation leaks from the crippled power station.
Disasters come and go. This one doesn't. It just goes on and on.
Zina Botte
Former Consul for Ukraine
Victoria, Australia |
Chernobyl has been described as the most poisonous place on Earth.
The dormitory towns where the Chernobyl workers and their families lived have been abandoned and armed guards patrol a boundary 30km from the power station. But no barriers can contain the pollution.
Children sent from Kiev, Ukraine's ancient capital near Chernobyl, to recuperate in camps run by aid organisations all record high levels of Caesium 137 and low levels of potassium, which is likely to cause bone and heart problems later in life. A month's holiday, during which the Caesium is flushed from their bodies, boosts their immune system for two years.
Radiation-related illnesses burden Ukraine's hospitals, eat into fragile government budgets, blight the lives of children born before and after the accident at the power plant, and strike into even distant communities to which Chernobyl families were exiled.
At least one million children have poor health.
Almost 10% of Ukraine's national budget is spent on fixing what Chernobyl broke - the money goes on health services, pensions, resettlement of families and environmental clean-up.
One in 16 Ukrainians has a health disorder related to Chernobyl.
The thyroid cancer rate has increased tenfold, according to a report prepared by Ukraine's health ministry.
The newest plague is psychological, with tens of thousands suffering depression and other forms of stress due to Chernobyl's debilitating impact on the life of the nation. The cost is also reckoned in the dead and dying.
The Ukrainian government says 4362 people who participated in the clean-up opera ton had died by mid-1999, though an independent study by an academic found the figure to be much higher.
It estimated the death toll at 22,000.
The figures are inexact because many of the soldiers and civilian workers brought in to cloak the shattered reactor building ... died unheralded in far-flung outposts of the former communist empire. |