This Post is Radioactive
By AnjaP
@Rollo1 (16676)
Boston, Massachusetts
October 8, 2015 6:48am CST
In April, 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, ruptured and ignited. The explosion and resulting fire caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. Radioactive fallout was spread by winds as far as Europe. 350,000 people were evacuated and resettled elsewhere. An exclusion zone of approximately 30 square km was established. And the world has long considered that people are excluded from it.
In reality, there are many people working and living in the exclusion zone. Surprised?
7,000 people still work at the Chernobyl plant. About half of them live in nearby villages, and the other half actually live inside the exclusion zone for up to two weeks at a time when working there. They are working to decommission the plant safely.
Although the government relocated everyone living around Chernobyl, many did not want to leave their homes and they moved back. Initially, about 1200 people returned to their homes and farms inside the exclusion zone. And many more live in the surrounding villages.
As the years have passed, there are about 400 people left of the original resettlers. The majority of them are elderly women who still raise pigs and chickens, eat the mushrooms and berries, and refuse to leave the homes that they lived in all of their lives prior to the accident. They get a small pension from the Russian government as Chernobyl victims, and live meager lives. But they are happy. The most common cause of death in these women is stroke, possibly because pig fat is such an important part of their diet.
It isn’t only wildlife in the exclusion zone. There are original residents, plant workers, and the occasional researchers who either live or visit here every day.
Decades after Chernobyl's nuclear disaster, despite the severely contaminated ground, government objections and the deaths of many fellow 'self-settlers’, a community of determined babushkas remains.
18 people like this
14 responses
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
8 Oct 15
The factor that I remember most about that disaster was that Russia declined assistance by American and British scientists. Secrecy is perfectly understandable when it surrounds government establishments of that nature, but should not outweigh the interests of people across such a vast area as this catastrophe could have potentially affected.
3 people like this
@Bluedoll (16770)
• Canada
8 Oct 15
The truth has to be told here.
What were the scientists going to do?
The problem: Loss of containment.
Solution: Put sand on it and build wall around.
Another Problem: Heat build up
Solution:Use sprinklers to cool radioactive pile down
Another Problem: Ground water contamination.
Seems to me the scientists, correction actually no one can fix this yet.
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
8 Oct 15
@Bluedoll The concern at the time was to limit the danger by stopping the situation getting worse by resulting in the China Syndrome. Russian expects were extremely busy trying to contain the problem and could certainly have done with as much help as possible.
@Rollo1 (16676)
• Boston, Massachusetts
8 Oct 15
Of course, this was still the Soviet Union and refusing help to them meant not allowing scientists from other countries to steal their technologies, etc. The accident actually happened during a test of a safety system, which obviously failed.
1 person likes this
@LadyDuck (502427)
• Italy
8 Oct 15
I am not surprised to know that people live in that area, as there are people who decided to stay in Fukushima to take care of the animals. This proves that people can live in contaminate places and it must be true that the animals living there are not deformed, but perfectly healthy.
3 people like this
@arthurchappell (44941)
• Preston, England
8 Oct 15
What was worse about Chernobyl was that it proved that while bad, a nuclear station disaster won't wipe out humanity. This has given pro-nuclear governments incentive to build even more nuclear power stations
1 person likes this
@Rollo1 (16676)
• Boston, Massachusetts
8 Oct 15
I think the biggest problem with nuclear power plants is WHERE they choose to put them. Take a look sometime at where the power plants are in California. They are all built along the fault line. Those plants don't have to experience any problems for there to be a disaster. They just need a quake, and there are plenty of those.
1 person likes this
@Jessicalynnt (50523)
• Centralia, Missouri
9 Oct 15
so it's really not that unsafe now? I mean I am sure it's not the best place to live, but I guess I thought one still risked like, glowing in the dark or something, by being there for too long
1 person likes this
@Jessicalynnt (50523)
• Centralia, Missouri
9 Oct 15
@Rollo1 And they aren't just keeling over from aggressive cancers, I am impressed. Not willing to up and move, but impressed.
@humanity_revisited (92)
• Mumbai, India
9 Oct 15
@Rollo1 (10283) I don't know much about history of Ukraine. But I want to know whether citizens of Ukraine happy today or were their lives were better under Soviet Union
1 person likes this
@scheng1 (24649)
• Singapore
8 Oct 15
I think it is better for the old women to die of strokes than to die from contamination from the radioactive material.
At least the pain is short-lived.
I think the disaster is not that bad if pigs and chickens can survive there now.
I just hope that the government can provide free medical care for all of them for the rest of their lives.
1 person likes this
@jstory07 (148730)
• Roseburg, Oregon
9 Oct 15
The people that stayed behind might all be healthy because they got used to the area and it did not seem to brother them.
@Tampa_girl7 (54715)
• United States
8 Oct 15
It was a most frightening disaster. We had to have our food shipped in . The Air Force told us not to eat the local food in Germany.
1 person likes this
@mom210 (9170)
• United States
8 Oct 15
I am glad they planted their feet firmly and did not let anybody push them out of their homes. Somethings are worth fighting for, if they want to stay it is their lives. It is fantastic they are outliving the ones that left. They are probably happier.
1 person likes this
@OneOfMany (12150)
• United States
9 Oct 15
The unfortunate thing about that disaster was that it was a test to see if a nuclear plant could run on its own power in case of a grid failure. They removed some of the control rods to help it coast down on its own strength. It apparently did much better than they thought, and overheated, which caused the rupture. If they hadn't tested it, it probably would never have happened.
