The desk calendar of the receptionist at the office announced that Wednesday was 'Administrative Professionals Day'.
It was also the twentieth anniversary of the day Chernobyl self destructed. On April 26th 1986 at 6:30am Unit 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear power station exploded spraying 120 tons of Uranium and 900 tons of highly radioactive graphite into the atmosphere to rain down over Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik and his firemen climbed ladders to the broken roof of the reactor to train their hoses on the fire in an attempt to control it. Without protective equipment they were subject to a lethal radiation dose every 48 seconds. After an hour, dizzy and vomiting they were rushed to hospital, Pravik's eyes had turned from brown to blue. Suffering from such massive internal radiation burns that their hearts blistered, they died and their radioactive bodies were welded into lead coffins for burial.
Twenty years on, a thirty kilometer radius around Chernobyl is sealed off and will remain so for as close to forever as makes no odds.
There are no reliable figures on the number of people that have died and will die as a direct result of this disaster. If you are interested, you can read more here, here or here.
3 comments:
Hello Jase.
I have been reading about the supposed death toll from this disaster...such a terrible tradgedy, especially with so many people uninformed and unable to protect their families.
Why is it sometimes spelled Chornobyl and sometimes Chernobyl....hmmm; something to look up.
Hi Cathy,
I guess the difference in the spelling is down to Chernobyl being in the Ukraine and Ukrainian uses a cyrillic script so some of their letters don't map very easily on to the Roman alphabet and to get something that sounds the same there might need to be some interpretation. A similar example, what we now call Beijing used to be called Peking. Just a guess of mine.
It was and is a tragic thing.
j
Around that time, us here in Nicaragua where in the middle of the Sandinista Government. I remember when I was eleven and we would cut class just to stay out and hear the black bird breaking the sound barrier as it took spy pictures of the country (we thought we could some how get to see it). I also remember a HUGE campaign destined to convince Nicaraguans (we have been eating corn tortillas for centuries) to eat U.R.S.S "potatoes" in every way possible...the potatoes "happened" to arrive around the same days the Chernobyl disaster occurred. I also remember that back then I could earn extra credits at school for explaining the kids how Nuclear Holocaust would occur and how nuclear winter would be triggered. Everyone had a bomb shelter at home, toilet paper was a bourgeois luxury, and undies came from china and where "one size-fits all" (UNDER CHINESE STANDARDS THAT IS!). Did you guys see "Good Bye Lenin"?, there is also a great german play called ?The Nuclear Shelter?.
Access to health and education was way better though. I think being misinformed and illiterate was considered counterrevolutionary back then.
I also learned how to plant my own hydroponic vegetable garden? ;)? LOL.
I hate War, and I specially dislike those who cause it.
Hugs,
Mel.
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