Surviving liquidators of Chernobyl nuclear disaster return 40 years later

Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster Marks 40 Years Since Catastrophic Blast

On April 26, 1986, at 1:23am, a safety test gone wrong triggered a devastating explosion at reactor four of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine. The blast released an enormous amount of radioactive smoke into the atmosphere, contaminating large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has attributed the disaster to “severe deficiencies in the design of the reactor and the shutdown system” as well as violations of operating procedures. The cleanup operation involved approximately 600,000 individuals from across the Soviet Union, including soldiers, firefighters, engineers, miners, and medics.

These workers were tasked with containing and cleaning up the disaster, which included activities such as washing and sealing the exposed core, scrubbing radioactive dust from buildings and roads, burying poisoned machinery, clearing forests, and hunting animals to slow the spread of contamination. Many of these individuals had limited understanding of the dangers they faced.

In recent years, a group of liquidators from Ukraine’s Poltava region returned to Chornobyl for a visit, wearing hastily issued uniforms and improvised protective gear. They spoke about their experiences, including the loss they endured and the ongoing impact of the disaster on Ukraine.

The nearby city of Pripyat, once home to 48,000 people, remains a ghost town within an exclusion zone spanning thousands of square kilometers in northern Ukraine and neighboring Belarus. The area has been closed since Russia’s invasion in 2022, allowing nature to reclaim the landscape and rare species, such as Przewalski’s horses, to inhabit the ruins.

Source: Al Jazeera