nenos 19/03/2024
“Every lie incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, this debt is paid.”
When delving into the Chernobyl accident, one encounters a wealth of information, often marred by omissions, weak translations, conflicting testimonies, or narrow focuses on political agendas, environmental impacts, or quantitative data. Given the multidisciplinary nature of the event and its wide-reaching effects, I challenge myself to write a distinctive remembrance.
What captivates me about this book is its structure. As I absorb each staggering revelation, I ponder the challenge of conveying technicalities while upholding truth in every sentence. The narrative blends the author’s personal reflections from a 2011 visit to Chernobyl with a comprehensive report on the accident, co-authored with Reddit colleagues. From the dawn of the atomic age to the history of nuclear mishaps, the Chernobyl disaster, heroic deeds, and its aftermath, the narrative illuminates what once seemed perplexing.
This is a poignant tale of tragedy marked by greed, negligence, deceit, suffering, heroism, and rationality. It began with a safety test on nuclear reactor number 4, situated near Pripyat in northern Ukraine, close to the Belarusian border. A nuclear power plant, both intricate and precise, traces its origins to figures like Marie Curie, James Chadwick, and pivotal events like Project Manhattan.
While Chernobyl may have thrust nuclear accidents into the spotlight, it is not the sole instance, merely the one that couldn't be concealed. Beyond recounting the birth of the atomic era, the author examines other nuclear incidents, including the partial meltdown of Chernobyl’s reactor number 1 in 1982, a similar event in Leningrad’s RBMK reactor number 1, and the Fukushima disaster triggered by an earthquake and tsunami, resulting in meltdowns and hydrogen explosions.
Radiation is a complex phenomenon, with various units of measurement, often eluding common understanding. We are continually exposed to radiation from diverse sources, with the critical factor being the extent of exposure. High doses, like those experienced by numerous Chernobyl victims, can lead to various cancers, elevated infant mortality, developmental delays, and a range of other health issues.
For those directly exposed to radiation, the experience is harrowing. Initial symptoms include skin discoloration ("nuclear tanning"), followed by headaches, fever, shock, and unconsciousness. Subsequent stages involve excruciating pain, skin deterioration, bone decay, organ failure, immune system collapse, and ultimately, a agonizing death following DNA alteration.
The complexity of nuclear reactors necessitates multiple safety layers and protocols. The Chernobyl accident, likewise, unfolded through a series of flawed decisions, from approving a subpar RBMK reactor lacking vital containment features to a flawed testing procedure overseen by negligent engineers.
Following the explosion, unprecedented consequences ensued, met with heroic efforts to contain the damage. Firefighters and military personnel battled the radioactive inferno, while a 30km exclusion zone was established, and Pripyat evacuated. Miners dug tunnels to prevent further explosions, engineers and civilians entered hazardous areas to drain radioactive pools, and liquidators worked to decontaminate the exclusion zone.
Questions linger regarding the prioritization of safety measures, the approval of a project riddled with safety violations, censorship of critical reports, scapegoating of operators, the discrepancy in official death tolls, and the delayed review of safety protocols. Perhaps Dr. Legasov’s critique of the USSR’s economy and administration encapsulates the underlying issues.
“To be a scientist is to be naïve. We’re so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in and wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies? The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth.” -Jared Harris as Valeri Legasov in Chernobyl HBO Minisseries (2019).
We will probably never know, with precision, how many lives were lost, the true contaminated area and the number of resources needed.
My highlights on this work: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QG1XG_P9IF4VUdtigpzwrc3-COb4D0MI/view?usp=sharing