21 years after the Chernobyl Disaster

Today is the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear power accident in history. Large areas of the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian republics of the USSR were contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of roughly 300,000 people. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine produced a plume of radioactive debris that drifted over parts of the western USSR, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia. According to WHO, this was a very serious accident especially for thousands of workers exposed in the early days who received very high radiation doses, and for the thousands more stricken with thyroid cancer. And, among that, poverty, “lifestyle” diseases now rampant in the former Soviet Union and mental health problems pose a far greater threat to local communities than does the radiation exposure. A review by Greenpeace showed that the full consequences of Chernobyl were heavily undervalued, estimating nearly 100,000 fatal cancers more to come, against 4,000 based on official estimates. According to the same research, nearly 2 billion people were already affected by the accident. The area received a lot of people sent to help evacuating the region, that were about 150,000, but 30,000 of them are already dead. These were strong and healthy people, able to work, being aged from 30 to 50. Almost all those 3,500 Moldovan citizens and about 1500 of their children born after the Chernobyl accident, have numerous maladies and disorders. Over 200 of them are dead because of the dangerous radiation they were exposed to. 21 years after the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, this city has become a ‘ghost city’ and looks exactly like on the day it was evacuated. Scientists say it could take more than 100 years to take the radiation hazard down to zero.