Remember watching the evening news with my dad when they finally announced it publicly. They completely downplayed it. In came in as "Oh by the way, an accident at ChAES happened, next up - sports...".
My dad, a mechanical engineer, also specializing in workplace safety was really concerned and told me. "This is bad. They are probably downplaying the accident who knows who horrible it really is...".
The fact that people knew government lied routinely in cases like that, nobody believed them so all kinds of rumors started to circulate.
My mom kept some flowers on the balcony. She claimed they died that year because of the radiation. I don't really believe that was the cause, but it just explains the anxiety and worry people experienced.
Then there was a call to go help clean up. They promised money, even better apartments for volunteers (housing was government provided). Some went and they came back to a new apartment but they didn't enjoy it for too long. Others told stories of people burned so badly by the radiation their skin and meat was falling off their bones.
Another really sad thing happened when evacuees started streaming to different cities. They were shunned and treated horribly by others. It was paranoia, prejudices and mistrust. Mixed with lots of irrational fear ("Maybe they are still radioactive, I wouldn't get near them". I can remember my uncle saying...). How horrible. Those poor people had to leave everything behind only to be faced by that kind of attitude.
> Then there was a call to go help clean up. They promised money, even better apartments for volunteers (housing was government provided). Some went and they came back to a new apartment but they didn't enjoy it for too long. Others told stories of people burned so badly by the radiation their skin and meat was falling off their bones.
Just as a complementary data point, there were people who turned out OK. My friend's father was on his honeymoon in the area and when the call for volunteers came, he signed up. From looking at the family album, my friend tells me he lost something like 20kg in 3 weeks, but otherwise, it turned out well - he's alive and healthy today, and so is my friend.
I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while.
----
What troubles me is the contant flow on anti-nuclear-power propaganda to HN. If we accept the fact of global warming, and humanity as its cause, then the fearmongering about nuclear power should stop, as it is a necessary component in reducing CO2 emissions while not giving up too much from our lifestyle. With the lessons learned from the nuclear accidents we have every measure to avoid them in the future, until the fusion technology is ready, and to have reliable, zero-emission power in our energy mix.
There are a number of problems with nuclear power.
1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1].
2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclear reactors (eg they're seismically active).
3. We have to trust either corporations or governments to run such plants. Corporations will tend to maximize short term profits at the cost of long term safety. Governments will tend to do the same for budgetary reasons.
4. We'd create a whole bunch of radioactive slag that we honestly have no good way of dealing with.
So far it seems the best power source we have is hydroelectric. Of course it's only possible in some places. This can devastate certain species (eg salmon) but in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option.
Solar has been on a stellar (pardon the pun) rise for some years simply because the cost of cells has decreased by way more than I ever would've predicted.
Widespread electric vehicles are still hindered by the relative expense and scalability issue of batteries, notably how much lithium we have available as well as the environmental impact of mining the necessary materials. It does seem like we're one big battery breakthrough away from completely changing this landscape however.
Wind has a place but I think will remain a niche energy source.
I increasingly have the view the the economic production of electricity from nuclear fusion is a pipe dream. The temperatures are too high, magnetic containment seems too problematic and, worse, the neutron emissions are a big problem (yes, yes, I know about He3).
This does seem like it's a problem we're going to have to solve this century.
Problem is, that wouldn't satisfy the "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills" narrative that underlays much of the activism around climate policy and other environmentalist causes.
The solution always has to be fewer humans and less human activity, with the possible exception of temporary "sorry, we were never here" cleanup efforts.
What I see on HN is a stream of technological idealism that tends to ignore the practical difficulties. Blaming protestors for lack of progress is very easy as it allows you to neatly ignore those issues. There are many economic and engineering reasons why nuclear is so hard to get right.
You tell us some short emotional story. And then provide a second completely contrary paragraph comment how bad the propaganda is and how great nuclear is. You know what, your tactic is called Zersetzung, and what you are doing is not nice.
the OP is a sequence of brief (100 - 500 words) (skillfully edited & translated) vignettes from people who have first-hand memory of the events related to the Chernobyl disaster.
i clicked and began reading the first one; two hours later and i just read the last one. The editor (who compiled, edited and translated these brief accounts) did a remarkable job, but stories themselves are extraordinary and compelling--many deeply sad; many of them provide revealing snapshots of the former USSR.
here's a portion of one from a radiation scientist working in Kiev at the time:
> Both sides of it were lined up with buses. Dozens upon dozens of them, parked bumper to bumper. People were streaming out of them endlessly. Most wore house coats, pajamas, tapochki (slippers),…. Very few passengers had as much as a purse on them....it was almost silent. The trolley had to stop and I walked all the way to the institute mingling with these unusual and unwilling passengers. They were evacuees from Pripyat. Their destination was that same facility I was heading to. Reason: decontamination. It was only one place that can handle it en-masse. I remember marching with them in a very solemn procession. Not like a funeral one, rather a trip to a “then what?” destination. People talked in hush tones, kids didn’t jump and yell, even infants were uncharacteristically quiet.”
i'm from southeastern Belarus (Gomel region) but at the time attending Lyceum ("science high school") in Moscow. Like many students, i listened to Voice of America on the radio late in the evenings; at 0800 the next morning, i went to the Lyceum authorities and requested immediate leave to visit my family. The response was not a disposition notice ("approve"/"denied") but an urgent request to meet in an administrator's office. When i was led into her office, she spoke to me in an uncharacteristically gentle voice and told me i should not go in sum because there is absolutely nothing i could do to help my family and because to do so would likely irreparable damage my health. i asked her what she would do if she were in my place. She signed my request, then after a 14-hour wait in the queue at the train station, and a 17-hour journey by train, i was home.
Editor here. Thank you for sharing your memories. And, for the note.
Some details about the origin: the vignettes were originally English-language comments in a private Facebook group.
It was a huge team effort to get them all collated, organized, and to check and re-check attribution and consent to share. We are so happy that we are able to share these collective memories and eyewitness testimonies, particularly outside of Facebook's walled garden.
Maybe in contrast Polish authorities decided to go against our USSR occupation masters(first time in whole Warsaw pact?) and distributed stable iodine to 18 million people just 4 days after the accident.
Would you be willing to share the albums as zip files or such for downloading? Strangely, google photo albums don't seem to have a method to download the complete album for public albums (there is supposed to be a way to do it for your own albums, though - but that doesn't apply here - though if you were willing to create a download file of the albums, you could download them that way to your google drive, then share the drive files publicly).
In states near the Nevada test site, senior government officials evacuated before test series, with their families. And Kodak was notified in advance, so they could avoid using fallout-contaminated paper to interleave with their X-ray film.
What's even creepier is that the main reason Kodak was notified is because they were able to determine when the testing was occurring based on their manufacturing defects (and it meant they lost a lot of product to sell). They sued to stop the US Govt but got an agreement to know the testing schedule so they wouldn't produce film on those days.
The article mentioning this was on HN awhile back,
Chernobyl is the earliest memory I recall. I was less than 1y old, but I can remember staring through the window into the garden not comprehending why I was not allowed to be outside like usual and everyone being in a strange mood.
“Everyone who thinks the EPA is not necessary and the regulations on power plants are there to stifle growth and profit should read every comment here… ”— Ilya K.
Didn't this catastrophe happen in a communist country with the government in complete control of all aspects? The presence of a government agency regulating the activity is not like some magic amulet that will prevent bad things from occurring.
The EPA has caused its own share of disasters, such as the MBTE fiasco.
If anyone enjoyed this, I can recommend Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich (who won the Nobel a few years ago). It's basically the same thing, but more and more in depth.
Some people who post comments didn't read the article - thousands of people dying of cancer, children loosing hair, etc. It wasn't just 36 people, it's couple million tragedies, as their families were affected, themselves, children because of the lies of the communists
> The biggest man-made environmental disaster in written history.
I stopped reading right there. Now I expected to reach exasperation somewhere in the article, but not at the second sentence. Chernobyl is a wildlife haven, it shelters a sea of fauna and flora that would otherwise have been the typical suburban death zone of humans, cat and dogs and nothing else. The biggest man made disaster has been committed and is being committed as we speak. Billions of tons of CO2 is pumped into the ocean and into the air right this minute. The Chernobyl accident affected a few hundred square kilometers maybe killed 5000 people. Air pollution kills 700 000 people a year.
It touches on all aspects of the accident and cleanup. There are a lot of good interviews and actual footage from the event. The most amazing/sad part to me were the men who did the clean up in 30 second - 1 minute shifts.
A family member almost became a liquidator when he was told about a possible way of emigrating from the Soviet Union to Europe as a graduate student. He was told that he'd just have to do some work in Ukraine in between for a month or two.
You wonder how many other liquidators were tricked into doing the job.
Editor here. These were originally written in English, so we have plans to translate to Russian, which might take a while since we only have one fully-qualified translator. Help is welcome! Shoot me an email (included in my profile).
This really strikes chord with how Fukushima was treated - nothing to be concerned about, citizen, move along and enjoy swimming on a Fukushima beach a year later... One would think this would happen only in communist societies but seeing it happening in Japan and everybody being fine with that was shocking. And then there were people pointing out xkcd and bananas, downplaying the effects and conflating radiation dust effects you can wash away with inhaled/ingested particles that get incorporated to bones and tissues with grim long-term effects.
Comparing to Japan, even USSR behaved in some way more responsibly as they threw a couple of million people at the problem at the cost of waging a war just to clean up what they could. All we got from Japan was there is no issue, TEPCO saying all is fine and then suddenly a big hole in the reactor where all robots stop functioning and who knows how much water continuously being contaminated for a few years already. All because panic is the bigger evil (is it? or just the "fat cats" decided it is?)
Well, now that the dust settled, it turned out they were perfectly right, and pretty much all the damage to lives and the region was caused by panic and evacuation.
Are you friggin kidding me? Not a single person was killed by nuclear exposure after a 8.4M earthquake killed 25000 people. The forced removal of people lead to 1000+ suicides.
People who raised panic are responsible for huge damage of people's lives.
It was same in Chernobyl, tens of thousands got their life fucked. Alcoholism general belief in being damaged and worthles. I fucking hate USSR government(I was born an lived in Kyiv at the time). But people who fear monger come up with bullshit ar just as guilty.
rdtsc|8 years ago
Here I found the 20 seconds blurb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ouJjaV_NbY (sorry in Russian, obviously).
My dad, a mechanical engineer, also specializing in workplace safety was really concerned and told me. "This is bad. They are probably downplaying the accident who knows who horrible it really is...".
The fact that people knew government lied routinely in cases like that, nobody believed them so all kinds of rumors started to circulate.
My mom kept some flowers on the balcony. She claimed they died that year because of the radiation. I don't really believe that was the cause, but it just explains the anxiety and worry people experienced.
Then there was a call to go help clean up. They promised money, even better apartments for volunteers (housing was government provided). Some went and they came back to a new apartment but they didn't enjoy it for too long. Others told stories of people burned so badly by the radiation their skin and meat was falling off their bones.
Another really sad thing happened when evacuees started streaming to different cities. They were shunned and treated horribly by others. It was paranoia, prejudices and mistrust. Mixed with lots of irrational fear ("Maybe they are still radioactive, I wouldn't get near them". I can remember my uncle saying...). How horrible. Those poor people had to leave everything behind only to be faced by that kind of attitude.
TeMPOraL|8 years ago
Just as a complementary data point, there were people who turned out OK. My friend's father was on his honeymoon in the area and when the call for volunteers came, he signed up. From looking at the family album, my friend tells me he lost something like 20kg in 3 weeks, but otherwise, it turned out well - he's alive and healthy today, and so is my friend.
AnonNo15|8 years ago
kodfodrasz|8 years ago
I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while.
----
What troubles me is the contant flow on anti-nuclear-power propaganda to HN. If we accept the fact of global warming, and humanity as its cause, then the fearmongering about nuclear power should stop, as it is a necessary component in reducing CO2 emissions while not giving up too much from our lifestyle. With the lessons learned from the nuclear accidents we have every measure to avoid them in the future, until the fusion technology is ready, and to have reliable, zero-emission power in our energy mix.
cletus|8 years ago
1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1].
2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclear reactors (eg they're seismically active).
3. We have to trust either corporations or governments to run such plants. Corporations will tend to maximize short term profits at the cost of long term safety. Governments will tend to do the same for budgetary reasons.
4. We'd create a whole bunch of radioactive slag that we honestly have no good way of dealing with.
So far it seems the best power source we have is hydroelectric. Of course it's only possible in some places. This can devastate certain species (eg salmon) but in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option.
Solar has been on a stellar (pardon the pun) rise for some years simply because the cost of cells has decreased by way more than I ever would've predicted.
Widespread electric vehicles are still hindered by the relative expense and scalability issue of batteries, notably how much lithium we have available as well as the environmental impact of mining the necessary materials. It does seem like we're one big battery breakthrough away from completely changing this landscape however.
Wind has a place but I think will remain a niche energy source.
I increasingly have the view the the economic production of electricity from nuclear fusion is a pipe dream. The temperatures are too high, magnetic containment seems too problematic and, worse, the neutron emissions are a big problem (yes, yes, I know about He3).
This does seem like it's a problem we're going to have to solve this century.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium
tbrownaw|8 years ago
The solution always has to be fewer humans and less human activity, with the possible exception of temporary "sorry, we were never here" cleanup efforts.
7952|8 years ago
miguelrochefort|8 years ago
unlmtd|8 years ago
[deleted]
frik|8 years ago
doug1001|8 years ago
i clicked and began reading the first one; two hours later and i just read the last one. The editor (who compiled, edited and translated these brief accounts) did a remarkable job, but stories themselves are extraordinary and compelling--many deeply sad; many of them provide revealing snapshots of the former USSR.
here's a portion of one from a radiation scientist working in Kiev at the time:
> Both sides of it were lined up with buses. Dozens upon dozens of them, parked bumper to bumper. People were streaming out of them endlessly. Most wore house coats, pajamas, tapochki (slippers),…. Very few passengers had as much as a purse on them....it was almost silent. The trolley had to stop and I walked all the way to the institute mingling with these unusual and unwilling passengers. They were evacuees from Pripyat. Their destination was that same facility I was heading to. Reason: decontamination. It was only one place that can handle it en-masse. I remember marching with them in a very solemn procession. Not like a funeral one, rather a trip to a “then what?” destination. People talked in hush tones, kids didn’t jump and yell, even infants were uncharacteristically quiet.”
i'm from southeastern Belarus (Gomel region) but at the time attending Lyceum ("science high school") in Moscow. Like many students, i listened to Voice of America on the radio late in the evenings; at 0800 the next morning, i went to the Lyceum authorities and requested immediate leave to visit my family. The response was not a disposition notice ("approve"/"denied") but an urgent request to meet in an administrator's office. When i was led into her office, she spoke to me in an uncharacteristically gentle voice and told me i should not go in sum because there is absolutely nothing i could do to help my family and because to do so would likely irreparable damage my health. i asked her what she would do if she were in my place. She signed my request, then after a 14-hour wait in the queue at the train station, and a 17-hour journey by train, i was home.
vkb|8 years ago
Some details about the origin: the vignettes were originally English-language comments in a private Facebook group.
It was a huge team effort to get them all collated, organized, and to check and re-check attribution and consent to share. We are so happy that we are able to share these collective memories and eyewitness testimonies, particularly outside of Facebook's walled garden.
rasz|8 years ago
There is even a documentary about it called 'Chernobyl. Four Days in April' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1904869
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl0pG3TPxeM https://www.cda.pl/video/6949094e?wersja=720p sadly no english subtitles.
jnsaff2|8 years ago
- being told not to keep water in my cup anymore in kindergarten.
- dad going to grandparents farm for a few weeks (to hide from mobilisation into cleanup crew).
- a few frames of TV news about the helicopters flying over the reactor (tho this memory could be from years later).
choult|8 years ago
If anyone is interested, my unedited photos can be found here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/115800995007308025308/album/5...
https://plus.google.com/photos/115800995007308025308/album/5...
cr0sh|8 years ago
Would you be willing to share the albums as zip files or such for downloading? Strangely, google photo albums don't seem to have a method to download the complete album for public albums (there is supposed to be a way to do it for your own albums, though - but that doesn't apply here - though if you were willing to create a download file of the albums, you could download them that way to your google drive, then share the drive files publicly).
Regardless - thank you for sharing these!
mirimir|8 years ago
windlep|8 years ago
The article mentioning this was on HN awhile back,
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a21382/how-ko...
Glauc|8 years ago
cel1ne|8 years ago
tomohawk|8 years ago
Didn't this catastrophe happen in a communist country with the government in complete control of all aspects? The presence of a government agency regulating the activity is not like some magic amulet that will prevent bad things from occurring.
The EPA has caused its own share of disasters, such as the MBTE fiasco.
acidburnNSA|8 years ago
steevenwee|8 years ago
lkramer|8 years ago
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0312425848/ref=as_li_tl?...
bolololo12|8 years ago
ageofwant|8 years ago
I stopped reading right there. Now I expected to reach exasperation somewhere in the article, but not at the second sentence. Chernobyl is a wildlife haven, it shelters a sea of fauna and flora that would otherwise have been the typical suburban death zone of humans, cat and dogs and nothing else. The biggest man made disaster has been committed and is being committed as we speak. Billions of tons of CO2 is pumped into the ocean and into the air right this minute. The Chernobyl accident affected a few hundred square kilometers maybe killed 5000 people. Air pollution kills 700 000 people a year.
Please stop propagating this bloody bullshit.
GhostVII|8 years ago
matwood|8 years ago
It touches on all aspects of the accident and cleanup. There are a lot of good interviews and actual footage from the event. The most amazing/sad part to me were the men who did the clean up in 30 second - 1 minute shifts.
xattt|8 years ago
You wonder how many other liquidators were tricked into doing the job.
archagon|8 years ago
acidburnNSA|8 years ago
vkb|8 years ago
cr0sh|8 years ago
valuearb|8 years ago
unlmtd|8 years ago
[deleted]
jjt-yn_t|8 years ago
[deleted]
bitL|8 years ago
Comparing to Japan, even USSR behaved in some way more responsibly as they threw a couple of million people at the problem at the cost of waging a war just to clean up what they could. All we got from Japan was there is no issue, TEPCO saying all is fine and then suddenly a big hole in the reactor where all robots stop functioning and who knows how much water continuously being contaminated for a few years already. All because panic is the bigger evil (is it? or just the "fat cats" decided it is?)
TeMPOraL|8 years ago
adrianN|8 years ago
ageofwant|8 years ago
tlear|8 years ago
It was same in Chernobyl, tens of thousands got their life fucked. Alcoholism general belief in being damaged and worthles. I fucking hate USSR government(I was born an lived in Kyiv at the time). But people who fear monger come up with bullshit ar just as guilty.