Chernobyl: City of ghosts. By DAVID PATRIKARAKOS
PRIPYAT, Ukraine
— In a post-Cold War world, the fear of nuclear holocaust has receded from
the global consciousness. Donald Trump’s threat of unleashing “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against
North Korea was an untimely and unwelcome reminder of a past, perilous
era. Even by Trump’s standards these statements were a new low. And they
are dangerous. History teaches us that the journey from political logorrhea to
global disaster can be terrifyingly short.
As demagogues toss
around nuclear threats like confetti at a wedding, it is easy to forget the
devastation nuclear power can cause. But in one country, on Europe’s edge, they
have not forgotten.
And where once life thrived, there now stands a vast
mausoleum.
The city of Chernobyl lies about 90
kilometers from Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. It’s an ancient site — originally part
of the land of Kievan Rus, the federation of Slavic tribes from whom modern
Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians all claim descent. In modern times the
city was chosen as the site of the first nuclear power plant in Ukraine (then
part of the USSR).
The plant had four
nuclear reactors and on April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 blew up during a test. The Soviets
were initially reluctant to make the disaster public, but had no choice when
nuclear reactors a thousand miles away in eastern Sweden began recording
radiation levels 10 times higher than normal. Fire from the explosion had sent
plumes of highly radioactive fallout across the USSR and Europe.
Eventually, almost
half a million people would come to be involved in the clean-up operation,
which would last for months and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles (back when
a ruble was equal to a U.S. dollar), playing its part in the eventual
bankruptcy of the Soviet Union… read more:
http://www.politico.eu/article/chernobyl-city-of-ghosts-ukraine-nuclear-power-devastation/
