Back to Chernobyl
I can remember reading about the Chernobyl accident in Readers’ Digest back when I was just six or seven years old. It was their condensed book in that issue, and I remember it gave me nightmares for weeks afterwards. Since then, I’ve had an obsession with the nuclear power plant, and indeed, I think it would be a cool summer job to work at a nuclear power plant. Despite my best efforts, that never panned out. By federal regulations, a person is allowed to be exposed to so much radiation per year, and those that work only a few months a year can get that amount in a relatively short amount of time, which allows them to do some things that those that work at a plant year-round theoretically cannot do. At least, this is my understanding; someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Over the years I’ve read some really cool articles and photojournals of Chernobyl and the surrounding area have come and gone. Some day, I would like to visit the area and take photos for myself. I think it would be fascinating to see a place that has been abandoned virtually overnight, leaving things today almost exactly as they were when the meltdown occurred.
This interview with Alexander Yuvchenko is always an excellent read. It’s a first hand account of the Chernobyl engineer’s efforts on that fateful day. It’s highly compelling; I highly recommend it.
Anyway, Chernobyl comes up in the news periodically for one reason or another, and today is one of those days. And it’s a potential spot of good news in an an otherwise bleak, ongoing story. It appears that the number of deaths as a result of the meltdown is higher than perhaps it should be. The confusion over the number of lives lost arises from the number of emergency and recovery workers that have died since 1986 which cannot be linked to radiation exposure.
This news, while good, does not lessen the human tragedy of the disaster by much. 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been diagnosed, most in people who were children or adolescents at the time of the meltdown. Drinking milk from cows who consumed irradiated grass is cited in these cases. Unexplained symptoms exhibited by those living in the affected areas are also present. Mental health experts cite high anxiety levels among the local populace as a source for concern, and it is well-known that anxiety can cause symptoms of ill health, so radiation cannot be linked to this in any significant way at the present time.
As always, the integrity of the concrete sarcophagus is in question, but radiation levels outside the 18-mile “dead zone” have apparently “returned to normal.” Despite this, I can’t say I’d want to live anywhere near there. Visit, perhaps, but not live. (Photos from inside the dead zone (”Ghost town”) can be seen at the photojournal linked above.)
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