BACKGROUND TO THE DISASTER.

On the 26th April 1986 there was a major nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in the Republic of the Ukraine, close to the border with Belarus. 70% of the radioactive fall-out from the disaster, some 90 times greater than Hiroshima, was deposited on Belarus.
Most of us have heard about the problems created at Chernobyl at the time and the heroic actions of many Ukrainian and Belarusian people in the struggle to contain the problem. There are fewer media articles today, but many years on, the situation is still serious.

The reactor no: 4 after the accident and an abandoned fairground still showing high levels of radiation.

The problems in Belarus were caused by a major leak at a power station not even in Belarus. Chernobyl is right on the southern border of Belarus.  This accident has affected most of the population of Belarus in some way or another. Belarus is not a rich country and is struggling to cope with the medical and social impacts of the problems brought on them. With large swathes  of the country polluted by radiation, with many farm areas now non-cultivatable, with many farmers removed from contaminated areas and re-housed in tower blocks in the cities, there is a great social problem that needs attention.
Belarus WAS a major supplier of food to the Soviet Union, but with extensive areas of contamination from the Chernobyl disaster, it has difficulty selling even the un-contaminated food. Being deprived of such a large proportion of its income, the country has great economic problems.

         

Abandoned tows,villages and apartment blocks.

Formally a part of the USSR, now an independent country bordered by Poland, Lithuania, Russia and the Ukraine, it covers some 207,600 sq km and has a population of 10 Million. The capital of Belarus is Minsk which has a population of 2 Million.

Minsk itself looks like any other European capital city. However, out in the country the situation is difficult. There is a fair bit of reconstruction going on but the infrastructure isin a very poor state.Many villages do not have running water and depend upon wells for their water, and even some of these are frozen during the long, hard, winter months. People work long hours for poor wages in comparison with western standards.
In the 3 years following the Chernobyl disaster, 100,000 people, many simple farmers, where re-housed from the radiation hot spots, 55,000 ending up in high rise apartments, specially built for them in Minsk. It was essential to move people away from these contaminated areas, but no one foresaw the social implication of doing so. No jobs, no land - just despair.
By bringing parties of children to England for a months stay, we alleviate some of the suffering there. This period away from above normal radiation levels, reduces the winter illnesses they suffer, and their school attendance increases for the next two years.

On the Friday evening of April 25, 1986, the reactor crew at Chernobyl-4, prepared to run a test the next day to see how long the turbines would keep spinning and producing power if the electrical power supply went off line. This was a dangerous test, but it had been done before. As a part of the preparation, they disabled some critical control systems - including the automatic shutdown safety mechanisms.                                      
Shortly after 1:00 AM on April 26, the flow of coolant water dropped and the power began to increase.                                                             
At 1:23 AM, the operator moved to shut down the reactor in its low power mode and a domino effect of previous errors caused a sharp power surge, triggering a tremendous steam explosion which blew the 1000 ton cap on the nuclear containment vessel to pieces.
Some of the 211 control rods melted and then a second explosion, whose cause is still the subject of disagreement among experts, threw out fragments of the burning radioactive fuel core and allowed air to rush in - igniting several tons of graphite insulating blocks.
Once graphite starts to burn, it’s almost impossible to extinguish. It took 9 days and 5000 tons of sand, boron, dolomite, clay and lead dropped from helicopters to put it out. The radiation was so intense that many of those brave pilots died.
It was this graphite fire that released most of the radiation into the atmosphere and troubling spikes in atmospheric radiation were measured as far away as Sweden - thousands of miles away.
The causes of the accident are described as a fateful combination of human error and imperfect technology.
In keeping with a long tradition of Soviet justice, they imprisoned all the people who worked on that shift - regardless of their guilt. The man who tried to stop the chain reaction in a last desperate attempt to avoid the meltdown was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He died 3 weeks later.
Radiation will stay in the Chernobyl area for the next 48,000 years, but humans may begin repopulating the area in about 600 years - give or take three centuries. The experts predict that, by then, the most dangerous elements will have disappeared - or been sufficiently diluted into the rest of the world's air, soil and water. If our government can somehow find the money and political will power to finance the necessary scientific research, perhaps a way will be discovered to neutralize or clean up the contamination sooner. Otherwise, our distant ancestors will have to wait until the radiation diminishes to a tolerable level. If we use the lowest scientific estimate, that will be 300 years from now......some scientists say it may be as long as 900 years.