Chernobyl: The Nuclear Disaster that will haunt us for the next 20,000 years
The effects and solutions of untamed nuclear energy.
By Ahaan Vaknalli
“Do you taste metal?” was one of the first questions asked by the 28 firefighters that arrived at Chernobyl’s Reactor №4 on April 26th, 1986. The firefighters had been woken up at 2:29am, and had prepared themselves for nothing but a normal fire that had broken out. What they didn’t know was that the radiation they were going to experience was more than 30 times that of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki nuclear bombings. What they didn’t know was that the metallic taste in their mouth was radiation induced brain damage, and that with each breath, their life expectancy was being cut by years, leaving them only weeks to live. All of the firemen at the site were dead within three weeks. The very ground they were standing on was the equivalent of having 400,000 x-rays. Their bodies had to be sealed in metal caskets and drowned in cement, deep within the earth’s surface. Their clothes are still radioactive up till this date, and are piled alongside the hundreds of clothes in the basement of Pripyat’s hospital.
For many across the globe, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is a reminder of how fatal and untamed nuclear energy can be, however most people don’t understand the extent of the damage. Between 50–185 million curies (radioactive forms of chemical elements) had escaped during the 10 days that the burning nuclear reactor was exposed to the environment. They were spread across the continent by the wind to Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, France, Italy, and Sweden. Every country in a 3000 kilometer radius was affected by the radiation. Around 50,000 people had to be evacuated as an exclusion zone was formed with a radius of around 30km, centered on Reactor №4.
To clean up the damage caused by the explosion, there were over 600,000 military personnel, firefighters, and most blue collar workers such as janitors and miners. These people were called liquidators and were required to do all sorts of jobs from washing away radioactive dust from park benches and streets, to even shooting stray pets and animals so that there aren’t genetic mutations amongst the species. Despite these drastic measures, the biggest issue was that the vast forest spaces had been exposed to smoke, dust, and a large amount of radioactive contamination.
The area which was the most affected is called The Red Forest. It received the highest doses of radiation, which killed all the trees and discoloured the leaves and the dirt to an orangish-red. The clean up operation involved bulldozing all these trees and burying them in trenchesThese trenches were then covered using sand and dirt through the use of planes that flew above The Red Forest, carpeting the ground beneath it. Up till today, the risk that the decayed trees will contaminate groundwater with radioactive contaminants still stands. Everything that the radioactive dust came in contact with had to be either washed thoroughly with soap or abandoned completely. One of the biggest problems was the animals that roamed free on the deserted streets of Chernobyl and Pripyat. In fear of a species being mutated or killed altogether, the government ordered every animal species in the area to be killed and buried in cement. Even domestic animals.
Following the explosion, the Soviet government built a sarcophagus around the plant that stopped the burning core from emitting radiation. In 2019, there was another, more firm and technologically advanced structure that was slid over the structure to encapsulate the reactor and prevent the neighbouring environment from as much radiation as it possibly could. Nobody really knows the extent of Chernobyl’s damage, but what we do know is how brittle the natural world is, and how careful we need to be in the face of nuclear energy.
Works Cited
“Chernobyl 30 Years On: Environmental and Health Effects — Think Tank.” Europa.eu, 2016, www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EPRS_BRI(2016)581972#:~:text=Radionuclides%20were%20scattered%20in%20the,plants%20and%20later%20by%20animals.. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
Serhii Plokhy. “The True Cost of the Chernobyl Disaster Has Been Greater than It Seems.” Time, Time, 26 Apr. 2018, time.com/5255663/chernobyl-disaster-book-anniversary/. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
“Chernobyl: 3. How Has the Environment Been Affected by the Chernobyl Accident?” Greenfacts.org, 2013, www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/l-2/3-chernobyl-environment.htm. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
https://www.facebook.com/unep. “How Chernobyl Has Become an Unexpected Haven for Wildlife.” UN Environment, 2020, www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
