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Chernobyl Remembered - 20 years has passed

  2. unclepete
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Bells tolled, sirens blared and mourners bearing candles commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster....

The explosion that ripped through Reactor no. 4 two decades ago ripped the roof off the reactor block and a cloud of radiation -- many times that released by the Hiroshima bombing in 1945 -- resulted in 10 days of fallout across 200,000 square kilometers of the Soviet Union and Europe. One worker was killed instantly, his body never found, and at least 29 rescue workers and plant workers died subsequently of radiation poisoning. The exact death toll from the disaster remains a matter of controversy, with the World Health Organization saying the ultimate death toll will be as low as 9,300 while Greenpeace recently claimed that as many as 93,000 lives will be lost as a direct result of the disaster and diseases -- especially thyroid cancer -- caused by radiation.

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unclepete

3 responses // Chernobyl Remembered - 20 years has passed

  • "The China Syndrome" film is still highly recommended viewing for an insider's perspective.
    Art imitates Life imitates Art imitates Life...etc.
    huntre
  • All of the rescue workers who worked on the ruins of Tchernobyl to clean it up and contain it, in the weeks following the explosions, have died - including the helicopter pilots who were bringing them to and from the site - the workers could stay longer than about twenty or so minutes at a time and had to be hauled out and replaced constantly, so great was the radiation. These workers and pilots consisted of far more than 29. Even those who built the "coffin" around the ruins have died in large numbers, and this "coffin" has been badly deteriorating for years due to the radiation inside - some parts of it are literally melting like lava because of the radiation, and there are cracks and holes all over the place. Another "coffin" needs to be built above and around it, and as the years go buy, many more such coffins will have to be added to it for Lord knows how many decades (decades being a very conservative term in this context).
    Vierotchka
  • The situation of the children affected by Tchernobyl, - the first ones who have not succumbed to cancers of various kinds, are adults today - has been and still is very bad, but there continues to be children born since then who are badly affected, and there will continue to be so for a long time. The effects of such a catastrophe stretches throughout several generations.
    Vierotchka

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