April 26, 1986 ... This date will be remembered by several generations of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians as the day and year when a terrible technological accident occurred. When all this happened, perhaps even the most experienced experts did not fully and completely realize what subsequently awaits us all.
The catastrophe on April 26, 1986 caused thousands of deaths and diseases, contaminated forests, poisoned water and soil, mutations of plants and animals. Among other things, a thirty-kilometer exclusion zone appeared on the map of Ukraine, access to the territory of which is possible only with a special permit document.
This article is intended not only to once again remind readers of what happened on April 26, 1986, but also to look at what happened, as they say, from different angles. Now, it seems, it’s no secret to anyone that in the modern world there are more and more people who are willing to pay a lot of money to go on an excursion to these places, and some former residents, who have not taken root in other regions, often return to their ghostly and abandoned cities.
Summary of events
Almost 30 years ago, namely on April 26, 1986, the largest nuclear accident in the world happened on the territory of present-day Ukraine, the consequences of which the planet has felt to this day.
At a power plant in the city of Chernobyl, the nuclear reactor of the fourth power unit exploded. A huge amount of deadly radioactive substances was thrown into the air at the same time.
It has now been estimated that in the first three months, starting April 26, 1986, 31 people died literally on the spot. Later, 134 people were sent to specialized clinics for intensive treatment for radiation sickness, and another 80 died in pain from infection of the skin, blood and respiratory tract.
The Chernobyl NPP (1986, April 26 and the following days), as never before, needed working hands. More than 600 thousand people participated in the liquidation of the accident, most of whom were military personnel.
Perhaps the most dangerous consequence of the accident was the huge release into the environment of deadly radioactive substances, namely isotopes of plutonium, uranium, iodine and cesium, strontium and radioactive dust itself. A plume of radiation covered not only a huge part of the USSR, but also Eastern Europe and the Scandinavian countries, but the most affected Chernobyl tragedy on April 26, 1986 affected the Belorussian and Ukrainian SSR.
A lot of international experts were investigating the causes of the accident, but even so far no one knows for sure the true causes of the incident.
Distribution area
After the accident around Chernobyl, it was necessary to designate the so-called “dead” zone of 30 km. Hundreds of settlements were destroyed almost to the ground or buried under tons of land using heavy equipment. If we consider the sphere of agriculture, we can confidently say that Ukraine at that time lost five million hectares of fertile soil.
Before the accident, the reactor of the fourth power unit contained almost 190 tons of fuel, 30% of which was released into the environment during the explosion. In addition, at that time in the active phase there were a variety of radioactive isotopes accumulated during operation. They, according to experts, represented the greatest danger.
More than 200,000 square meters. km of the surrounding land was contaminated by radiation. Fatal radiation spread like an aerosol, gradually settling on the surface of the earth. Contamination of territories then mainly depended only on the direction of the wind. Those regions in which it rained on April 26, 1986 and the next few weeks suffered greatly.
Who is to blame for what happened?
In April 1987, a hearing was held in Chernobyl. One of the main culprits of the Chernobyl nuclear accident was the director of the station, a certain V. Bryukhanov, who initially neglected the basic safety rules. Subsequently, this person deliberately underestimated the data on the level of radiation, did not put into effect a plan for the evacuation of workers and local people.
Also in the process, facts of gross neglect of their official duties on April 26, 1986 by the Chernobyl chief engineer N. Fomin and his deputy A. Dyatlov were discovered. All of them were sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The head of the same shift in which the accident happened (B. Rogozhkin) was sentenced to another five years, to three - A. Kovalenko, his deputy, and to two - Y. Laushkin, state inspector of Gosatomenergonadzor.
At first glance it might seem that this is quite cruel, but if all these people had shown great caution in working at such a dangerous enterprise as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the catastrophe on April 26, 1986 would hardly have happened.
Alert and evacuation of the population
The expert commission claims that after the accident, the first thing to do was to immediately evacuate the population, but no one took the responsibility to make the necessary decisions. If the situation had happened on the contrary, there could have been dozens or even hundreds of times less human casualties.
In practice, it turned out that people all day did not know anything about what had happened. On April 26, 1986, someone worked on a personal plot, someone prepared the city for the upcoming May holidays, kindergarten kids walked on the street, and schoolchildren, as if nothing had happened, were engaged in physical education in what seemed to be fresh air.
Work on the removal of the population began only at night, when an official instruction was issued to prepare for evacuation. On April 27, a directive was announced on the full evacuation of the city, scheduled for 14.00.
So the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the catastrophe of April 26, 1986, which deprived many thousands of Ukrainians at home, turned the modest satellite town of Pripyat into a terrible ghost with devastated houses, abandoned parks and squares and dead, deserted streets.
Panic and provocation
When the first rumors about the accident passed, part of the population decided to leave the city on their own. Already on April 26, 1986, closer to the afternoon, many women in panic and despair, picking up babies in their arms, literally ran along the road away from the city.
Everything would be fine, but this was done through the forest, the dose of pollution of which in fact was many times higher than all permissible indicators. And the road ... According to eyewitnesses, the asphalt pavement glowed with some strange neon shade, although they tried to flood it abundantly with water mixed with some unknown ordinary man in the street with a white solution.
It is very unfortunate that serious decisions to save and evacuate the population were not taken on time.
And, finally, only a few years later it turned out that the special services of the Soviet Union were aware of the procurement of three tons of meat and fifteen tons of oil in the territories directly affected by the Chernobyl tragedy on April 26, 1986. Despite this, they decided to reprocess the radioactive products, adding relatively clean components to them. In accordance with the decision, this radioactive meat and oil was transported to many large plants in the country.
The KGB also knew for sure that defective equipment from Yugoslavia was used in the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and it was also acquainted with various kinds of miscalculations in the design of the station, delamination of the foundation and the presence of cracks in the walls ...
What was still being done? Attempts to prevent even greater grief
At about half past one in Chernobyl (1986, April 26), a fire signal was sent to the local fire department. The guard on duty went to the call and almost immediately transmitted a signal about a fire of high complexity.
Upon arrival, a special team saw that the roof of the engine room and the huge reactor hall were on fire. By the way, to date, it has been established that when extinguishing that terrible fire, the guys who were engaged in the reactor hall were the most affected.
Only at 6 a.m. the fire was completely extinguished.
In total, 14 cars and 69 employees were involved. Of the overalls, people who performed such an important mission had only a tarpaulin robe, helmet and mittens. Men extinguished the fire without gas masks, since at high temperatures it was simply impossible to work in them.
At two in the morning the first victims of radiation appeared. People started experiencing severe vomiting and general weakness, as well as the so-called “nuclear tanning”. It is said that in some, hand skin was removed along with mittens.
Desperate firefighters did everything possible to prevent the fire from reaching the third block and further. The station personnel was engaged in extinguishing local foci in different rooms of the station and took all necessary measures to prevent a hydrogen explosion. These actions helped prevent an even greater technological disaster.
Biological consequences for all of humanity
Ionizing radiation when exposed to all living organisms has a detrimental biological effect.
Radiation radiation leads to the destruction of biological matter, mutations, changes in the structure of organ tissues. Such irradiation contributes to the development of various types of cancer , radiation sickness, disruption of the vital functions of the body, change and decay of DNA, and as a result leads to death.
The ghost town called Pripyat
Several years after the man-made disaster, this settlement aroused the interest of various specialists. They came here in large numbers, trying to measure and analyze the level of radiation background of the infected territory.
However, in the 90s. Pripyat began to attract more and more attention from scientists interested in ecological changes in the environment, as well as the transformation of the natural zone of the city, which was completely left without anthropogenic influence.
Many Ukrainian research centers in the city assessed changes in flora and fauna.
Stalkers of the Chernobyl zone
First of all, it is worth noting that stalkers call people who by hook or by crook penetrate the exclusion zone. Chernobyl fans of extreme sports are conditionally divided into two categories, distinguished by their appearance, used slang, photographs and prepared reports. The former are curious, the latter are ideological.
Agree, now in the media you can really find a lot of information on the topic: “Chernobyl. 1986 year. 26 April". It was from there that curious stalkers got their knowledge about the radiation zone. Computer games also played a significant role. These young people, whose average age rarely exceeds 20 years, in most cases only penetrate the exclusion zone, but do not cross the border of Chernobyl. This is where their adventures end.
The second category is unique ideological stalkers. They climb deeper, not only into the 30-kilometer zone, but also the 10-kilometer zone, and live there for several days. It's hard to explain what drives such people, but that seems to be their way of expressing themselves. There is no reliable data on the number of this group of stalkers, but according to approximate estimates there are no more than 20, while the “game” ones are an order of magnitude higher.
Modern inhabitants of Chernobyl
A significant part of the evacuated population, despite the ban and restrictions, after a while still came back. Of the one hundred thousand people transported, about 1200 returned home, but by 2007 there were only 314 left. They call them self-propelled. As a rule, these are elderly people, and the main reason for the sharp reduction in their number is considered to be age. What prompted people to return to their radiation-infected homes? The main reasons for this decision were the deep economic crisis in the country, the decline in incomes of the population and the reluctance to leave their homes.
The fate of the power plant
After the accident in April 1986, all the work of the nuclear power plant was stopped, but already in October, after the construction of the sarcophagus and the cleaning work, the two units started working again, and in December 1987 the third one was also launched.
In 1995, Ukraine, the European Union and the G7 countries signed a Memorandum, according to which the program for the complete closure of the Chernobyl NPP was launched, which was supposed to be done by the year 2000. In December 2000, the 3rd Chernobyl unit was finally stopped.
Today, the sarcophagus erected over the burning block of the station is gradually being destroyed. Therefore, in 2004 the EBRD held a tender for the construction of a new shelter; in 2007, a joint French venture won it.
In 2015, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant finally and irrevocably ceased operation.