asthfghl | Memories of Chernobyl (Reply)

Awesome lettuce salads for Easter, May 1 parades under the open sky and all that, while in blissful ignorance about what had just happened not more than a thousand km away from our homes - that's what I could say about April 1986...

About thirty and a half years ago, the biggest and most dangerous incident happened in the nuclear plant in Northern Ukraine. The consequences were devastating and the effects are being felt even today. And for those who'd like to make parallels with Fukushima - I'll just say this. Believe me, these two incidents are very different. If anything, that one was marked by the complete silence of the communist elites who kept the people totally in the dark, letting them sunbathe outdoors, eat fresh lettuces and queue under the radioactive rain, only to learn about the horrible incident many days and weeks later.

The Chernobyl disaster happened in the small hours of April 26, and it released vast amounts of Cesium 137, Iodine 131 and Strontium 90 into the atmosphere. The radiation levels exceeded those at Hiroshima by 600 times. The radioactive cloud spread to the Scandinavian countries at first, who were the most affected in the whole world beside Ukraine and Belarus.

Then the wind direction changed and the radiation came towards the Balkans. The cloud remained in the sky above my country for a week around May 1, a time usually spent by the locals on vacations in the countryside, and mostly outdoors.

I myself was 7 years old then, and my mom has told me stories about our trip to the countryside (we liked camping in the forest), and the weird incident where she was about to prepare a fresh lettuce salad before leaving home, and then the boiler suddenly had a short circuit and almost exploded, going into flames. This, she now says in hindsight, must've been some sort of bad omen or something. We ate that lettuce salad eventually. That was on May 1, just enough time after the Chernobyl disaster for the wind to have changed direction towards my country, and for some rainfall to have fallen. I'm OK though, if we exclude the slightly higher-than-average amount of non-malignant moles on my back, which must've been all I got from the event, I guess. But it's a scary story nevertheless...

During that week when the cloud hanged over my country, approximately 2-3 kg of nuclear waste had been deposited into our soils. That's a scary thought too.

BG was eventually the 5th most contaminated place in the world (beside the directly affected countries). And the consequences are surely felt here severely even today. We're among the leaders in terms of nuclear-caused illnesses like cancer and leukemia. And the main responsibility for the heavy consequences during the first days after the fallout belongs to the communist government at the time, who didn't say a word about it and kept us in the dark, letting us shop foods like usual while the elite were secretly storing imported supplies. Then May 1 came, and the traditional street parades took place under the pouring rain, the people as usual applauding our dear communist leaders who cared so much for the country. Yes, under the radioactive rain. Needless to say, the leaders were under the safety of their umbrellas and the roof of Dimitrov's Mausoleum.

No surprise that, while in Poland it was the shipyard workers' unions who triggered the collapse of the regime, in Bulgaria it was largely caused by the environmental organizations (well, the trigger was a trans-border chemical leak from Romania into our town of Ruse, but the Chernobyl event had already contributed to the formation and establishment of such influential dissident structures, whose main goal was holding the rulers accountable for their crimes against our environment and health).

But back to Chernobyl'86... Some modern estimates show that there had been radioactive contamination as early as Easter. But the worst part was around St. George's Day (May 6), when people spend the whole day outdoors, BBQ'ing and baking lambs around the country's lush lawns and forests, and enjoying the "fresh" air.

Despite the heavy consequences from Chernobyl and the even fresher memory of Fukushima, our politicians have now been entertaining the thought of building a second nuclear power plant. Which will be an addition to our already existing old one in Kozlodui, which saw half of its blocks being closed prematurely as a condition for an EU entry - relinquishing our position as a main energy center and mejor electricity exporter in the region was the price we had to pay for being "accepted" into EU, thus proving that there are powerful economic interests at play here. The second plant is planned to be built in Belene, again beside the Danube river (a proven seismic zone btw). And, though the EU (mainly France) had been pushing for the closing of half of our Kozlodui nuclear plant in the 90's, now they have to deal with the facts: it'll be again Russia who'd build the new plant, if ever. How ironic...

Obviously, the powerful nuclear lobby still doesn't care about taking any such things into account as safety arguments - it seems as indifferent to the pleas of the ordinary sheeple people as it was back then, during that Chernobyl episode.

There are occasionally protests going on these days around here too, again organized by ecological organizations, but those are only a shadow of what they used to be back at the time when they contributed hugely for the collapse of the communist regime. Now they're just seen as "those pesky tree-huggers" and nothing more. People have other serious issues to deal with, like unemployment, the economic crisis and the all-encompassing spiritual misery that comes along with the above. They just don't seem to care that much. But Chernobyl has shown that these are serious things that should be investigated very very thoroughly, and people need to be informed about these decisions which are otherwise being taken behind their back, only to possibly have direct effects in the long-term for everybody, while those elites who pull the strings would just sit back somewhere in their yachts on the Riviere, smoking cigars and counting their Swiss (or Panamanian) bank accounts, while clicking compassionately with their tongues at the sight of the TV reports from this or that country which is suffering the consequences of their neglect and incompetence. And would then simply change the channel.

After all, the experts never missed to point out that the real effects of Chernobyl would only begin to manifest 25-30 years after the incident. Well, that time has come now.

Some hugely disturbing images behind this link - the weak-hearted please DO NOT click.