As a result of constant exposure to low-dose radiation, every year Belarus sees a rise in the incidence of cancer, child mental retardation, neuropsychiatric disorders and genetic mutations.
Chernobyl (Minsk: Belorusskaya
Entsiklopediya, 1996), pp. 7, 24, 49, 101, 149
Monitoring records show that high levels of background radiation were reported on 29 April 1986 in Poland, Germany, Austria and Romania; on 30 April in Switzerland and northern Italy; on 1 and 2 May in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain and northern Greece; and on 3 May in Israel, Kuwait and Turkey.
Gaseous and volatile matter was launched into the sky and dispersed around the globe: its presence was documented on 2 May in Japan; on 4 May in China; on 5 May in India; and on 5 and 6 May in the US and Canada.
In less than a week, Chernobyl became a global problem.
Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident in Belarus
[Posledstviya Chernobyl'skoy avarii v Belarusi]
(Minsk: International Sakharov Higher College of Radioecology, 1992), p. 82
Reactor No. 4, now known as the ‘Shelter Object’, still holds in its lead-reinforced concrete belly around 200 tonnes of nuclear material. This fuel is partially mixed with graphite and concrete. Nobody knows what is currently occurring inside.
The sarcophagus was hastily constructed to a unique design, one that must fill the design engineers from St Petersburg with pride. It was intended to last for thirty years, but the structure was built with a remote assembly technique, its sections joined together by robots and helicopters: hence the gaps. Today, the data suggest the breaches and cracks exceed 200 square metres in total, and aerosol radioactivity is continually leaking through them. When the wind blows from the north, traces of uranium, plutonium and caesium appear in the south. On a sunny day with the lights off, shafts of light can be seen inside the reactor hall falling from above. What are they? Rain also penetrates the building, and should moisture reach the fuel-containing material, there is the potential for a chain reaction.
The sarcophagus is a corpse which still has breath. It is breathing death. How much longer does it have? Nobody really knows: it remains impossible to access many of the structural components to assess their soundness. What everybody does know is that, should the Shelter Object fail, it would unleash consequences even more devastating than in 1986.
Ogonyok magazine, No. 17, April 1996
From Belarusian online newspaper articles, 2002–2005
Before Chernobyl, the incidence of cancer in Belarus was 82 in 100,000. Today, the rate has risen to 6,000 in 100,000: an almost seventy-four-fold increase.
Over the past ten years, the mortality rate has risen by 23.5 per cent. Just one person in fourteen dies of old age; the majority of deaths occur among able-bodied people in the forty-six to fifty age bracket. In the worst affected provinces, medical screening has shown that for every ten people, seven are in ill health. Travelling through the villages, one is struck by the overspill of the cemeteries.
Many statistics have still not been revealed. Some are so outrageous that they are being kept secret. The Soviet Union sent 800,000 regular conscripts and reservist clean-up workers to the disaster area. The average age of the drafted workers was thirty-three, while the conscripts were fresh out of school.
In Belarus alone, 115,493 people are recorded as clean-up workers. According to figures from the Belarusian Ministry of Health, between 1990 and 2003, 8,553 clean-up workers died. Two people per day.
Here is how the story began.
The year is 1986. The trial of the perpetrators of the Chernobyl disaster is making front-page news in the USSR and abroad.
Now imagine a deserted five-storey block. An apartment building without residents, but full of furniture, clothes and belongings that can never be used again, because this building is in Chernobyl. Yet that block inside the dead city was the venue for a small press conference. It was held by those poised to prosecute the people guilty of the nuclear disaster. The Communist Party’s Central Committee had decided at the highest level that the case should be heard at the scene of the crime, in Chernobyl itself. The trial took place in the local House of Culture. Six defendants stood in the dock: the director of the plant, Viktor Bryukhanov; the chief engineer, Nikolai Fomin; the deputy chief engineer, Anatoly Dyatlov; the shift chief, Boris Rogozhkin; the chief of the reactor, Alexander Kovalenko; and the inspector, Yury Laushkin, of the State Nuclear Safety Inspectorate.
The seats for the public were empty: only journalists had come. But then, there were no people left in this closed city: access to the zone of strict radiation control was restricted. Was that why they chose it as the site for the hearing: fewer people meaning less publicity? There were no camera crews or Western correspondents present. Of course, everyone would have liked to see in the dock the dozens of guilty officials, including those in Moscow. Modern science itself should have been called to account. Instead, they settled for scapegoats.
The verdict was delivered: Viktor Bryukhanov, Nikolai Fomin and Anatoly Dyatlov got ten years each. The others received shorter sentences. Anatoly Dyatlov and Yury Laushkin died in detention from the effects of severe radiation exposure. The chief engineer, Nikolai Fomin, went mad. The power plant’s director, Viktor Bryukhanov, served his sentence in full, the entire ten years. When released, he was met at the gates by his family and a handful of journalists. The event all but escaped notice.
The former director now lives in Kiev, working as an ordinary clerk for some company.
And that is the end of the story.
Ukraine will shortly start work on a grandiose construction project. A new shelter known as the ‘Arch’ will be placed over the sarcophagus built in 1986 to cover the destroyed Reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Twenty-eight donor countries are earmarking an initial tranche of funding for the project of over 768 million dollars. This new shelter is designed to last not thirty, but a hundred years. It is conceived on a grander scale, as it will need to have sufficient capacity for handling waste disposal. The structure will require a massive foundation: concrete pillars and slabs will be used to create what will essentially be an artificial rock base. Next, they will need to prepare the storage that will be used for radioactive waste extracted from beneath the old sarcophagus. The new shelter will be built of high-quality steel capable of withstanding gamma radiation: 18,000 tonnes of metal alone will be needed.
The Arch will be an unprecedented edifice in the history of mankind. The scale of the structure is awe-inspiring: the double shell will tower up to 150 metres. In terms of aesthetics, it will almost be comparable with the Eiffel Tower.
A lone human voice
I don’t know what to tell you about. Death or love? Or is it the same thing. What should I tell you about? …
We were just married. We’d still hold hands walking down the street, even if we were going to the shops. We were together the whole time. I used to say, ‘I love you.’ But I couldn’t imagine just how much I loved him. I had no idea. We lived in the hostel for the fire station where he worked. On the first floor. Lived there with three other young families. We all shared a kitchen. The fire engines were below us, at ground level. Red fire engines. It was his work. I always knew where he was, what he was up to. In the middle of the night, I heard some noise. There was shouting. I looked out the window. He saw me and said, ‘Shut all the windows and go back to bed. The power station’s on fire. I won’t be long.’
I never saw the explosion itself. Only the flames. Everything was kind of glowing. The whole sky … There were these tall flames. Lots of soot, terrible heat. I was waiting and waiting for him. The soot was from burning bitumen, the roof of the power plant was covered in it. He told me later it was like walking on hot tar. They beat back the fire, but it was creeping further, climbing back up. They kicked down the burning graphite. They didn’t have their canvas suits on, they left just in the shirts they were wearing. Nobody warned them. They were just called out to an ordinary fire.