Lasting poison

By Lu Wen'ao Source:Global Times Published: 2016-4-27 23:48:01

Scars of Chernobyl still burden Ukraine


People attend a commemoration ceremony for the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Moscow, Russia on Tuesday. Photo: CFP 



 

Oleh Dyomin, Ukrainian ambassador to China, describes the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to Global Times reporters at the Ukraine Embassy in Beijing on Monday. Photo: Zhang Siyang/GT



For many people in the world, Chernobyl may be only a name, but for the Ukrainians, it is a tragedy they will never forget.

On April 26, 1986, the No.4 reactor of Chernobyl nuclear station exploded during a safety test, spewing tons of poisonous radioactive particles across Europe.

For Oleh Dyomin, the current Ukrainian ambassador to China, the disaster should be remembered as a warning on the importance of nuclear safety.

"At that time I was on a short vacation … I was going to visit my mother, she was living about 100 kilometers from Chernobyl," the ambassador, who was then in his late 30s, recalled in an interview with the Global Times. "I grew up in a territory that really suffered a lot because of the disaster."

The Chernobyl disaster is one of the only two top-level nuclear accidents to date, the other being Fukushima in 2011, as evaluated by the International Atomic Energy Association.

The town of Chernobyl, with a population of 14,000 was largely abandoned, while the nearby but larger town of Pripyat,  about three kilometers away from the nuclear site with 49,400 people,  was completely evacuated, and a permanent 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the reactor was established due to radiation contamination.

In total, about 350,000 people were resettled from the contaminated areas.

Many pointed their finger to the technical mishandling during the test resulted the disaster, but Dyomin said he believes the government at the time, the Soviet Union, should take the main responsibility.

"For the government of the Soviet Union, the biggest mistake was that they didn't inform the public about the whole situation of Chernobyl disaster," the 68-year-old said.

Five days after the accident had happened, Kiev celebrated the Labor Day holiday, and many tourists came to what was then a republic capital, located only 134 kilometers south of Chernobyl.

It was Sweden who raised the first alarm on April 28 when they detected an unexplained rise of radiation levels. Then-Soviet Communist Party chief Mikhail Gorbachev, in his second year at the post, did not publicly admit the disaster until May 14.

"Every Ukrainian single citizen - who was adult enough at the time - wasn't ready," Dyomin said. "Even when we were not informed by the government, we could understand something really important and really big has happened."

The formerly Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic contained the biggest number of nuclear stations in the Soviet Union, with more than 50 percent of energy was obtained from nuclear sites.

Before the disaster, the SSR Ukraine had plans to build two more nuclear plants in Kharkiv of northeast Ukraine and the other on Crimea Peninsula, but the plans were later refused by the Ukrainian government after the Chernobyl diaster.

Currently four nuclear stations, Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, South Ukraine and Zaporizhia, still make of about half of Ukraine's electricity production.

Even at Chernobyl, the whole site was shut down in 2000 when then-Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma turned out Reactor No.3.

A geiger counter shows a reading of radiation levels near the remains of the Chernobyl site. Photo: CFP



Care for victims

But fears still linger of new leaks at Chernobyl as about 200 tons of uranium remain inside of the damaged No.4 reactor.

A giant steel containment arch called the New Safe Confinement is under construction to replace the aging sarcophagus currently protecting the reactor, and experts say it will keep the site safe for at least a century.

"The biggest conclusion Ukraine made was that after the disaster took place, we have to deal with the safety situation of the other blocks of the station," Dyomin said. "For  safe use of these nuclear stations, we need to protect in advance."

The official death toll from the disaster was only in the dozens, but Ukraine says up to 2 million people were affected. A somewhat controversial UN report in 2005 estimated "up to 4,000" could have died from the aftereffects of the radiation exposure. In the aftermath of the disaster, 600,000 "liquidators," mostly emergency workers and state employees, were dispatched with little or no protective gear to help put out the poisonous flames.

"Ukraine paid the most attention of any country on taking care of the victims," Dyomin said. "Everywhere in Ukraine special hospitals and rehabilitation centers where from time to time these people can go in for a check up."

During the first decade after the disaster, 10 percent of Ukraine's state budget was requisitioned for taking care of the victims and eliminating the aftereffects, noted the ambassador. Some of the victims and their relatives have staged protest against the government, saying their social benefits were canceled.

"There is a saying that 'old rules and instructions are written in blood,' which means unfortunately that from bad experiences people will learn to improve the use of different kinds of systems and technical equipment," Dyomin said, adding he still believes nuclear energy is not dangerous if handled properly.

"Humanity is making technological progress, and people are trying to find solutions and offer the world some new successes. All these facts say to us that the nuclear power has a good prospective for the future."

Fan Lingzhi contributed to the story



Posted in: Europe

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