36 YEARS AGO today, at exactly 1:23am on the morning of April 26, 1986, a chain of events in Reactor No 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine led to an explosion spewing deadly radioactive contamination into the night sky, where the blowing winds scattered it far and wide.
Events unfolded at terrifying speed, triggering the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
A new word, ‘Chernobyl’, entered the history of language, the history of world disasters and the history of the world… with deadly and frightful force.
The sun shone, the wind blew, rain fell, and so did the deadly radioactive poison with it.
There may be an impression that, 36 years on, Chernobyl is something which happened a very long time ago and no longer poses a threat to the world. The reality of the situation is very, very different.
Chernobyl is not something from the past. Chernobyl is, sadly, forever. The impact of that single shocking nuclear accident can never be undone; its radioactive footprint is embedded in our world forever and millions of people are still being affected by its deadly legacy.
We may never know the full extent of that contamination, we may never be able to prove it as if it were a simple geometry proposition, but the tragedy that is Chernobyl is very real.
Russian takeover
Chernobyl re-entered ‘centre stage’ for all the wrong reasons on 24 February 2022.
News of the Russian invasion of Ukraine came menacing into our bedrooms, into our kitchens, telling us troop movement en route to Kyiv came via the world’s most toxic environment, the dreaded Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
This shocking invasion assault – driving thousands of Russian troops in trucks and
personnel carriers and other deadly war-making assault weapons – signified to the world that the nature of modern warfare had changed forever.
The takeover of the entire Chernobyl reactor site and Exclusion Zone was akin to making a deadly nuclear threat without having to make it verbally.
The world was held to ransom as Russian troops ran rampant through the reactor facility and its surrounding buildings, looting and damaging everything they could find.
Despite warnings from the reactor scientists, young troops entered the nearby highly radioactive forest, known as the ‘Red Forest’, without any respiratory protection or protective clothing, and dug fortification trenches, tank shelters, command centres and underground kitchens throughout the most radioactive ground in the world whilst unearthing some of the 600 ‘nuclear grave sites’ containing deadly and highly radioactive material buried from the 1986 disaster.
While it is a welcome development that the Russian troops eventually withdrew from the Chernobyl Radiation Zone, sadly and alarmingly, we are now hearing deeply disturbing news of the mayhem and vandalism left behind at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
The Russian soldiers looted and destroyed an EU radiation monitoring facility.
There is serious concern regarding stolen radioactive material such as small instruments, taken as ‘souvenirs’, that appear harmless to the un-informed soldier, but such instruments may cause radiation burns to the skin in as little as two minutes.
During the occupation of the ‘exclusion zone’ several fires ‘erupted’ in an expansive area throwing up into the air radioactive ‘dust’ previously ‘locked’ in the land.
Scientists working in the region are deeply concerned that any disturbance of radioactivity is potentially lethal, as it re-releases radioactivity into the atmosphere.
Following the liberation of the besieged region of Ivankiv in the Chernobyl zone, it has emerged that the citizens are now faced with another threat – a huge rise in radiation levels.
Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, an expert scientist on all matters Chernobyl, noted that the disturbance of the soil from tanks, troops and shelling has led to elevated levels of radioactive long-lived radionuclides (Caesium 137, Strontium 90 and Americium 241) on the clothing and bodies of children and adults in this highly populated area.
Professor Bandazhevsky is calling for ‘an immediate evacuation of the most vulnerable’ to clean land in Ukraine in order to save the victims of the ‘first’ war from this now
potential ‘second’ but invisible war.
This potential ‘second invisible war’ is exacerbated by the zone being mined and heavily trip-wired. Once activated, the radioactive soil spewed up into the atmosphere will damage the innocent people living and farming in this area.
While the ‘war’ in Chernobyl does not have the graphic, brutal images of death and destruction of the ongoing war in other parts of Ukraine, the ‘war’ that has been waged by the invasion of Chernobyl is a silent, invisible but deadly one.
No smell, no sight, nothing to forewarn you of danger. No ‘safe haven’. No escape.
Yet it beats in the hearts of every innocent man, woman, and child, in all living things, from human beings to animals, flora and fauna. It beats in their rivers, towns, streams, and forests.
The deadly radiation, clicking endlessly, ferociously in Geiger counters into the silent numbness that is, and sadly, always will be Chernobyl.
I dread to think that the next Chernobyl could be Chernobyl itself.
Stand up and speak out
The great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas urged us not to ‘go gentle into that good night’ … but to ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’.
Today on this 36th anniversary of one of the blackest days in human history and human tragedy, in this time of terrible war, in this time of fleeing refugees, especially the children, let us also rage against that dying light, that dimming light, of ‘not enough done’, of neglect, of forgetfulness, of abandonment, indifference, and the distraction of other disasters, today we renew our commitment not to give up, not to stand idly by, but to stand up, speak out and give witness and be at the frontline of humanitarian aid and comfort.
Let us also rage against that dimming light, today on this 36th anniversary. Let us ‘rage’ and renew and rekindle our commitment to the innocent victims of Chernobyl, those countless ordinary men and women, but especially those innocent children … their lives, their hopes, their homes, their security, their safety, and say to them once more, you are not forgotten, you are not irrelevant, you are not peripheral.
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