What to read in print media. Chernobyl thirty years later: Invisible people of Belarus Life in the “exclusion zone”

April 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the accident Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which occurred on April 26, 1986. The accident is regarded as the largest of its kind in the entire history of nuclear energy, both in terms of the estimated number of people killed and affected by its consequences, and in terms of economic damage.

During the first three months 31 people died after the accident; long-term effects of radiation, identified over the next 15 years, caused the death of 60 to 80 people. 134 people suffered radiation sickness of varying severity. More than 115 thousand people from a 30-kilometer zone were evacuated. Significant resources were mobilized to eliminate the consequences; more than 600 thousand people participated in eliminating the consequences of the accident.
As a result of the accident, about 5 million hectares of land were taken out of agricultural use, a 30-kilometer exclusion zone was created around the nuclear power plant, hundreds of small settlements were destroyed and buried (buried with heavy equipment).
After assessing the scale of radioactive contamination, it became clear that the evacuation of the city of Pripyat would be required, which was carried out on April 27. In the first days after the accident, the population of the 10-kilometer zone was evacuated. In the following days, the population of other settlements within the 30-kilometer zone was evacuated. It was forbidden to take things with you, children’s favorite toys, etc., many were evacuated in home clothes. To avoid fanning panic, it was reported that the evacuees would return home in three days. Pets were not allowed.
Today the city of Pripyat has become a ghost town.
Ferris wheel in the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine. This city is located just a few kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.


Construction of a new sarcophagus over the exploded fourth block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.


City of Pripyat.


This was the Energetik Palace of Culture in the city of Pripyat in 1986, and this is what it became 30 years later.


View of the fourth block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant from the city of Pripyat.


A new sarcophagus was built over the fourth block.


An employee of a plant for processing liquid radioactive waste at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Ukraine.


Containers at a plant for processing liquid radioactive waste at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.


A worker stands near the temporary spent fuel storage facility, which is under construction. Ukraine.


People light candles at a memorial dedicated to firefighters and workers who died liquidating the consequences of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Ukraine.


The abandoned Duga radar system, which is located inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Ukraine.


A wolf in the forest, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in April 2012.


House in the abandoned village of Zalesye, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Ukraine.


A worker from the State Ecological Radiation Reserve tests radiation levels on a farm, in Vorotets, Belarus, April 21, 2011, near the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.


Ivan Semenyuk, 80, and his wife Marya Kondratovna, near their home located in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, in the village of Parushev, Ukraine.


A destroyed house in the abandoned village of Vezhishche, in the exclusion zone, 30 km around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.


View of the abandoned city of Pripyat, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine, March 28, 2016.


An abandoned hall in Pripyat, Ukraine, February 24, 2011.


View of the roof of a residential building, September 30, 2015, in Pripyat, Ukraine.


Pripyat


Carousel in Pripyat.


The interior of the Palace of Culture "Energetik".


Textbooks scattered on the floor of a music school in the village of Zalisya, located inside the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, September 29, 2015.


Pripyat


The skeleton of a dog inside a 16-story building in the city of Pripyat.


Elk in a state reserve, inside the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exclusion zone, near the village of Babchin, about 370 km (231 miles) southeast of Minsk, Belarus, March 22, 2011.


Game attractions in Pripyat.


Abandoned cafe. Pripyat.


Remains of a swimming pool. Pripyat.


Instrument panels in the control room of reactor number two of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. They are almost identical to those that stood in the control room of the fourth reactor at the time of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. September 29, 2015.


The dosimeter shows about one microroentgen/hour, which is considered the norm, behind the fence of the remains of the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.


Lynx near Chernobyl, Ukraine, in December 2012.


In the picture: the old sarcophagus of the fourth block (left) and the new sarcophagus, which should replace the old one (right). Pripyat, March 23, 2016.


Installation of a new sarcophagus.


A woman visits her abandoned house during the Radunitsa holiday, during which it is customary to visit the graves of deceased relatives, in the abandoned village of Orevichi, near the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, southeast of Minsk on April 21, 2015. Every year, residents who fled their villages after the Chernobyl disaster return to visit the graves of their relatives and meet former friends and neighbors.

Ukrainian scientists are against reducing the “exclusion zone” around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) currently employs 2,500 people. They maintain the destroyed fourth and three shutdown power units in a safe condition. 30 years after the Chernobyl tragedy, the attention of politicians, environmentalists and scientists is focused on the construction of a new confinement - a shelter that should solve the problem of radiation safety around the destroyed reactor for a hundred years.

Construction of the new confinement began in the spring of 2012, and since then its commissioning has been delayed at least three times due to funding problems. The structure in the form of a huge arch has already been almost assembled, and in November of this year, according to plans, it should be pushed onto the old reinforced concrete sarcophagus, erected shortly after the accident in 1986.

“In fact, we are now in the final phase of the stage of creating a safe confinement, or “Arch,” in which two very complex projects are being implemented simultaneously. We are constructing end walls inside the “Shelter” object, which will extend out of the object and ensure sealing of the “Arch”, which will be pushed onto it. We are also completing work in the “Arch” itself on the installation of infrastructure and facilities of the technological building for managing life support systems. According to our plans, in November 2016 we should move the “Arch” to the fourth power unit. After this, we will complete the second stage of transforming the Shelter into an environmentally friendly system,” said Igor Gramotkin, General Director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in an interview with Zerkalo Nedeli.

In addition, by the end of the year, work on the construction of a new shelter and dry storage facility for spent nuclear fuel (SNF-2) should be completed. After all the necessary tests have been carried out, both of these facilities are planned to be put into operation in 2017. The cost of the new confinement, developed over ten years by the French concern Novarka, was initially 980 million euros, now it is almost 1.5 billion euros.

Money is provided by international donors, mainly Western countries. This project has one significant drawback: it does not involve the dismantling of unstable structures inside the facility, the extraction of radioactive fuel-containing masses and their reliable disposal. Such work, experts believe, should begin no earlier than 2020. This will require new project and, obviously, astronomical amounts to finance it.

“I am deeply convinced that at this stage the same platform for international cooperation should be created as during the construction of the Arch. This is an extremely difficult task that no country in the world can cope with on its own. Here you will need scientific knowledge, and industrial potential, and robotics, the potential of the entire global nuclear industry will be needed,” notes Igor Gramotkin.

Inside the old reinforced concrete sarcophagus there may be at least 180 tons of radioactive fuel in various states and about 30 tons of dust, which contains transuranium elements.

Decommissioning the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is a long and very costly process. Its total cost is estimated at $4 billion. One of the key tasks remains the construction of safe temporary and permanent storage facilities for nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Fuel from all Chernobyl reactors is now stored in an extremely unreliable “wet type” spent nuclear fuel storage facility built in Soviet times. The process of decommissioning the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to the schedule, should end in 2064. Until then, the reactors will remain mothballed until their radioactivity decreases.

The Chernobyl 30-kilometer exclusion zone was included in the top ten most environmentally unfavorable places on the planet, compiled by the Swiss branch of the Green Cross organization and the American Blacksmith Institute. Monitoring studies carried out by Ukrainian environmental organizations, in particular Ecocenter, showed that in most of this territory the danger associated with the growing concentration of toxic, highly mobile americium, which arises during the decay of plutonium, is increasing. The content of americium in the environment and its entry into the lungs of people and animals can occur within almost the entire zone.

The results of these studies do not affect the plans of the Ministry of Environment and natural resources Ukraine. Its new leader, Ostap Semerak, speaking recently at a government meeting, proposed moving away from the perception of this zone as a “territory of disaster” and treating it more as “a territory of change, innovation and the possible development of the Ukrainian economy and science.” The authorities propose to reduce the Chernobyl zone and make it as open as possible.

Director of the Center for Radiological Research, academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, former chairman of the National Commission for Liquidation of the Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident, Vyacheslav Shestopalov, in an interview with Radio Liberty, explains why Ukrainian scientists doubt the reliability of the new Chernobyl shelter, oppose the authorities’ plans to reduce the territory of the exclusion zone, and also expressed his assumptions about the causes of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986:

— Thirty years after the world’s largest man-made disaster, there are still different versions of the causes of the explosion at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In your opinion, what led to this accident?

— Analysis of geophysical and other materials during the accident and around its territory lead many experts, including me, to believe that the accident itself is not purely man-made and is associated with natural phenomena. The fact is that in the 80s and 90s, the territory, which is conventionally located between Minsk, Moscow and Kiev, was subject to quite strong seismic activity. This seismic activity manifested itself in different places - both in the Minsk region and in Moscow, where many such manifestations were recorded, including the destruction of individual buildings. Earthquakes were also recorded in Kyiv during this period, and they also occurred in Chernobyl, in 1986 from April 8 to May 8, and the greatest activity occurred at the end of April 25 and beginning of April 26. Ten seconds before the accident, a large shock was recorded by seismic stations. And it was proven that this was a seismic shock, and not any other shock that could be associated with some kind of explosions.

Many earthquakes in different parts world, including Soviet period in the Armenian city of Spitak and the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent - all of them were accompanied by active electromagnetic manifestations - glows, the formation of ball lightning. And, in addition, as studies have shown, periodic emissions of deep hydrogen gas occur in the central part of Russia. During the period of intensification of earthquakes, such degassing - the release of hydrogen - was recorded in many places, both during the Spitak and Tashkent earthquakes.

Such activation, the release of hydrogen to the surface and, accordingly, its explosion, apparently occurred during the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Literally seconds before the accident, when the fourth power unit was already collapsing, a torch 70 meters high was first observed, which after five seconds grew to 500 meters. And it was a bluish-violet flame. It is this kind of flame that always arises at the beginning of volcanic eruptions, when a huge amount of deep-seated hydrogen comes out of the crater of the volcano and ignites.

In addition, the vacuum explosion apparently occurred inside the fourth Chernobyl block. This may be indicated by some fragments of torn fuel rods (fuel elements - the basis nuclear reactor. - RS), namely, a vacuum explosion occurs during the explosion of hydrogen. Why? Because hydrogen combines with oxygen in the air, turns into finely dispersed water, and the pressure decreases sharply. This reduction in pressure leads to the rupture of various objects that are closed.

— So, the human factor, errors in the design of the reactor and experiments that were carried out at the nuclear power plant are not the key causes of the Chernobyl disaster?

— I believe that all the technical shortcomings that were recorded there had an impact. However, the accident itself is more complex and has natural aspects that were previously ignored and must be taken into account. Why? Because, yes, they built a new confinement. They even call it “new, safe confinement.” But how safe is it? Activation of seismicity can occur in the future at any time. If the confinement is designed for a hundred years, then during this period more than one such event can occur, which can lead to an explosion inside the shelter and the release of radioactivity to the surface.

“As planned, before the end of this year, a new confinement in the form of a huge arch will be placed on rails over the old sarcophagus. Will the old concrete shelter collapse before this time?

— The work that was carried out to strengthen it, they seem to be

sufficient to complete the construction process. But this is not the only danger. Let's assume that all work on the construction of the new sarcophagus is completed. There is a huge internal area, and, as you know, the activity there is in a finely dispersed fraction. If earlier these were solid masses, now they are mainly finely dispersed fractions.

Any uncontrolled, unplanned impacts could lead to this radioactive dust rising, and thus the inside of this sarcophagus could also turn into radioactive material, which would be irradiated from the inside. And the implementation of the second phase of liquidation of the consequences of the accident - the extraction of radioactive fuel-containing masses - is, in fact, postponed to an indefinite future. Without international financial assistance, this problem will not be solved.

— Do you rule out that a hydrogen release may occur directly under the sarcophagus and this could lead to a serious explosion?

— The explosion will not be radioactive, but an ordinary explosion of hydrogen in oxygen-containing air. But as a result of this explosion, the activity that is now inside the old sarcophagus will rise. If we take up this matter in time, study the situation and establish that such degassing is really happening, then, in principle, it is possible to create a program to protect the confinement. We believe that now, first of all, it is necessary to conduct research around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

There are structures on the surface that are candidates for hydrogen release. When carrying out preliminary work to assess the prospects for burying radioactive waste in a deep formation, we, together with geologists and geophysicists, reinterpreted all materials on the exclusion zone. We found out that the station itself is located in the zone of a powerful fault, which stretches from Turkmenistan through the Caspian Sea and the North Caucasus, through the Donbass, all of Ukraine and further across the territory of Belarus.

"Arch"

This is an active tectonic zone. The selection of sites for the construction of nuclear power plants in Soviet times was very unsuccessful. I looked at topographic maps to see how the surface of the earth changed during the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. There are such forms on the surface, they are called depressions - small saucer-shaped depressions. It was believed that these were purely exogenous, that is, external processes, and no special attention was paid to them.

I saw that there were such depressions in this territory. Before the construction of the station, the site was leveled, and 16 years later - in 1986, during the accident, a repeat topo-aerial survey was carried out. And it shows that some of the depressions have been restored. These depressions are not simple; they have some deep roots that indicate their activity. And they are also associated with various deep tectonic manifestations. We, with our own methods, and the Russians with ours, also conducted research on such depressions, and came to clear conclusions: they have deep roots. They are due to the fact that degassing of various gases, primarily hydrogen, occurs in the sub-recessed space. In fact, depressions are some kind of releases of hydrogen from great depths to the surface.

— The Ukrainian authorities propose to significantly reduce the Chernobyl exclusion zone and create a biosphere reserve on its territory. How do scientists feel about such plans?

— In the thirty years since the Chernobyl disaster,

half-life of cesium and strontium. During this time, some of the radioactive substances were washed out of the soil. But plutonium is widespread throughout almost the entire territory of the exclusion zone, and as a result of its decay, americium is activated. This situation will remain here for a very long time, since plutonium migrates weakly, or rather, almost does not migrate, it is in the soil.

At the same time, americium, which is formed as a result of the decay of plutonium, is very toxic and is an actively migrating element. Studies carried out by specialists from the Center for Radiation Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and other institutions indicate that even slight radiation contamination and small but chronic doses of radiation within the territory with a specific Polesie landscape lead to a significant increase in morbidity, primarily in children, as well as adults.

Therefore, talk about the fact that it is possible to reduce the zone, to single out some of its parts without carrying out serious work related to radiological surveys and a detailed study of the entire territory, is not serious at all. As for the biosphere reserve, its creation without taking into account the fact that this is a dangerous territory that requires constant radiological, fire, and epidemiological control is also not a serious approach.

This territory is, first of all, a danger zone, and control over it must be carried out by the appropriate authority. IN in this case This is the state administration of the exclusion zone. The reserve is not a biosphere reserve, but I would call it a radioecological reserve; it can be created, although, in fact, it already exists, since this zone is closed. It can be created provided that scientific research is carried out there.

— The Chernobyl accident led to the creation of a huge volume of radioactive waste, which is located in the same exclusion zone. How should this problem be solved?

— As a result of the Chernobyl accident, Ukraine came into fourth place in the world in terms of medium and high-level waste. They need to be buried in the geological environment, in geological formations. A preliminary study of the territory showed that promising areas where it is possible to find places for disposal of such high-level toxic waste are located in the southern part of the exclusion zone. This is exactly the territory that the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine was going to give over to the reserve. And without preliminary geological exploration work, it is impossible to select a site, so it is necessary to carry out such work first. And after them, choose a place for waste disposal that will be connected to the Chernobyl station and to all temporary storage facilities located on the surface near the station. And this should be a unified system,” says Vyacheslav Shestopalov.

Thirty years have passed since the destruction of the fourth power unit at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The Chernobyl accident is considered the worst man-made disaster in human history. It gave rise to a whole layer of myths and speculation related to the effects of radiation on humans and nature, which in turn laid the foundation for radiophobia, an unreasonable fear of radiation. Rafael Varnazovich Harutyunyan, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, First Deputy Director of the Institute for Problems of Safe Development of Nuclear Energy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RIA Novosti about the myths that have developed around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Where do we get such confidence that the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had a catastrophic impact on the health of millions of people?

- The idea of ​​the catastrophic nature of the accident is not just an invention of individual journalists or environmentalists. Unfortunately, this idea arose in public consciousness after the so-called " Chernobyl Law" dated May 12, 1991, in the preamble of which it is written that the country was beset by an environmental catastrophe, a national disaster. The law determined the zone of radiation damage, indicated the number of 8 million victims and hundreds of thousands of liquidators of the accident. And all the people covered by this law , immediately found themselves in a zone of mortal risk, in anticipation of cancer, hereditary genetic defects.

And now, after 30 years, what picture do we see? In total, more than 638 thousand people are registered in the Russian National Radiation and Epidemiological Register. In fact, this Register is the largest in the world, its data is absolutely clear, it is impossible to refute it. Of the registered people, 187 thousand are in the status of liquidators, and 389 thousand are residents of territories exposed to the greatest contamination by radionuclides (Bryansk, Kaluga, Tula and Oryol regions). Over the past decades, radiation sickness was detected in 134 people who were at the emergency unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on the first day. Of these, 28 died within a few months after the accident (27 in Russia), 20 died from various causes within 20 years.

Among the liquidators of the accident, 122 cases of leukemia were identified, out of the 187 thousand people mentioned, and perhaps 37 of them could be induced by Chernobyl radiation.

According to the Register, by the beginning of 2016, out of 993 cases of thyroid cancer in children and adolescents (at the time of the accident), 99 could be associated with radiation exposure. There is no increase in the number of diseases of other types of oncology among liquidators compared to other groups.

That is, the Register data tells us that 30 years after the accident, numerous assumptions and forecasts regarding the extreme scale of the consequences of the radiation impact of the accident have not been confirmed. It is worth noting that the only radiological consequence of the Chernobyl accident among the population—thyroid cancer in children—could have been prevented with the timely introduction of a ban on the consumption of milk and fresh vegetables from personal plots.

Let me quote from the report World Organization Health: "A significant increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer occurred in people who were children and adolescents at the time of the accident, and lived in the most contaminated areas of Belarus, Russian Federation and Ukraine. This was caused high levels radioactive iodine that escaped from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant reactor in the first days after the accident. Radioactive iodine settled on the pastures where the cows grazed and then concentrated in their milk, which was subsequently consumed by children. In addition, the situation was aggravated by a general deficiency of iodine in the local diet, which led to an even greater accumulation of radioactive iodine in the thyroid gland. Because the lifespan of radioactive iodine is short, if people had stopped giving locally contaminated milk to children for several months after the accident, there would probably be no increase in radiation-induced thyroid cancer in most cases."

I repeat once again that no other negative impacts on people were recorded, which completely refutes all existing myths and stereotypes about the consequences of the accident for public health.

If today we analyze the radiation doses of residents of the Chernobyl zones over the past 20 years, then of the 2.8 million Russians who found themselves in the area affected by the accident, 2.5 million received an additional dose of less than 10 millisieverts over 20 years, which is five times less than the world average background radiation . Less than 2 thousand people received doses greater than 100 millisieverts, which is 1.5 times less than the dose naturally accumulated annually by residents of Finland or the Russian Altai Republic. It is for this reason that no radiological consequences are observed among the population, except for the thyroid cancers already noted above. At the same time, you need to understand that among 2.8 million people, regardless of their place of residence, the annual mortality rate from cancer diseases not related to the radiation factor ranges from 4 thousand to 6 thousand people.

Another quote from the WHO report: “By comparison, the high dose of radiation that a patient would typically receive from a full-body CT scan is approximately equivalent to the total dose accumulated over 20 years by residents of lightly contaminated areas after the Chernobyl accident.”

- But what about the genetic consequences for humanity from the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant? The media tells us horror stories about this topic.

- I will answer briefly but succinctly. Throughout 60 years of detailed scientific research, the entire world of science has never observed any genetic consequences of radiation exposure in humans. Moreover, two decades after Chernobyl, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, realizing that there was no reason to talk about genetic risks, reduced them almost 10 times. Therefore, talk about the genetic consequences of the Chernobyl disaster can be confidently called science fiction, or a lie, which would be more accurate.

I remember well how in the late 1980s. Information began to appear that a huge number of people were resettled after the accident, including tens of thousands evacuated from Pripyat and surrounding areas. This was a shock for the USSR. Today you can often hear that the evacuation was very poorly organized.

- In the conditions of uncertainty that arose immediately after the explosion, and its reason lay in the almost complete unpreparedness of the authorities and specialists for such an accident and the inability at that time to predict it further development, the decision to evacuate was made quickly and correctly. The radiation dose criteria then in force in the USSR stipulated the mandatory removal of the population. As a result, the evacuation of almost 120 thousand people was carried out, of course, not without mistakes, but quickly and professionally. The information that people received serious doses of radiation exposure during the evacuation is a lie.
By the way, at that time another myth arose that decisions were made without taking into account the interests of people, removal was delayed until the last minute, and because of this, many received high doses of radiation. So, this is also not true. The decision to evacuate was made before the situation reached the lowest threshold in terms of radiation doses. That is, people were taken out before anything dangerous could arise. And therefore, no overexposure, even by modern standards, was allowed.

- Since the early 1990s, information began to spread that the authorities hid the situation from the population and the public from the first minutes of the Chernobyl accident, although they themselves knew everything very well.

- Everything is much more complicated than some “experts” would like to imagine. Of course, the authorities hid complete information, but I repeat, primarily because the system itself was unable to quickly and adequately assess the situation. At that moment, there was no reliable and independent system for monitoring the radiation situation in the USSR. It was then almost impossible to obtain real-time information about the level of background radiation near and far from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Now this is a common thing, thanks to the advent of ASKRO - the Automatic Radiation Monitoring System, located around the nuclear power plant and allowing local authorities and anyone who wants to go online and find out the real radiation situation on a special website. At that time, such a system simply did not exist, and in order to make decisions it was necessary to analyze the situation, and this took up precious time. If such a system had been in place at that time, it would have been possible to prevent people from consuming food from the affected areas in the first days of the disaster.

Information about the accident was indeed limited until 1988, due to the secrecy regime. By the way, during the accident at Fukushima-1, objective and operative information was absent in the first days, since neither the nuclear power plant operator, nor the Japanese special services, nor the country’s authorities were prepared for the dramatic unfolding of events.

There are many terrible pictures and even photographs circulating on the Internet and the media depicting nature allegedly disfigured by the accident in the Chernobyl zone. Really environment suffered from the accident at a nuclear power plant even more than a person?

- According to the radioecology paradigm, if a person is protected from the effects of radiation, then the environment, nature, is protected with a huge margin. That is, if the impact of a radiation incident on human health is minimal, then its impact on nature will be even smaller. Speaking of Chernobyl, the impact on nature was observed only next to the destroyed power unit, where the irradiation of trees reached 2 thousand roentgens. Then these trees turned into the so-called “red forest”. But at the moment, the entire natural environment, even in this place, has been completely restored, which would not have happened, for example, in the event of a chemical accident. Now nature in the Chernobyl zone, in the so-called contaminated area, feels great. Literally blooms and smells fragrant. And for animals there is practically a reserve.

- Is it true that Russia spent huge amounts of money on eliminating the consequences of the accident?

- Let's look at the real numbers. Since 1992, Russia has spent more than $4 billion to eliminate the consequences of the accident. As you know, the bulk of the funds were allocated to social benefits. The money is actually scanty - about 1 thousand dollars for each person. That is, we are not talking about any colossal amounts in this case.

After Chernobyl, radiation exposure standards were tightened in Russia. They say that we now have the strictest standards among all countries developing nuclear energy.

- Unfortunately it's true. The fact is that the Chernobyl accident was made catastrophic by a number of political decisions that were not based on real criteria and had nothing to do with the real level of risks for the population.

Today, our radiation standards are among the most stringent in the world. Let me give you an example. A measure of radioactivity is activity, which is measured in Becquerels (Bq). For example, in Russia there is a rule according to which the content of the cesium-137 isotope in milk should not exceed 100 Bq per liter. In Norway, the norm for baby food is 370 Bq per kg. That is, if in our country milk with 110 Bq is already considered radioactive waste, then in Norway it is more than 3 times lower than the norm.

- Have the countries developing the nuclear industry, including us, learned the lessons of Chernobyl well?

- The first major nuclear power plant accident was the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant (Pennsylvania, USA) in 1979. As a result of technical failures and personnel errors, the reactor core melted at the station. It's good that there were no catastrophic consequences. It must be said that the key mistake of the USSR was ignoring the events at Three Mile Island as the first harbinger of a serious accident at a nuclear power plant. We didn't learn this lesson, that's why Chernobyl happened.

Unfortunately, the lessons of Chernobyl were not learned in Japan. And now our Japanese partners are running into the same rake that we stepped on during the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. In Japan, a mass evacuation of people was carried out, and the same strict, unreasonable radiation safety standards were introduced. These are all repetitions of our mistakes. The Japanese government's refusal to use nuclear energy is also completely unjustified. After Chernobyl, the scientific community and designers in our country began to seriously study severe accidents; in parallel, research programs on severe accidents at nuclear power plants were launched around the world, and when Rosatom, as part of the nuclear renaissance, determined the appearance of future nuclear power plants, security was put at the forefront safe operation of nuclear power plants. I am sure that Japan will return to nuclear power anyway, because abandoning it will cost too much.

- How much can we control the “peaceful atom”?

- Let's look at the main causes of the Chernobyl accident. Firstly, the decision to transfer nuclear power plants to the USSR Ministry of Energy was wrong. Almost all the commandments of safety culture in the nuclear energy industry were violated when it was transferred from a special industry, as it was in the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine Building, to the field of general energy and, as a result, the safety level of nuclear power plants was overestimated. The Ministry of Energy staff consisted of people untrained to operate nuclear power plants. The personnel of the nuclear power plant itself violated all instructions and rules during the testing program. Such a situation is now categorically impossible. In addition to the fact that currently the actions of personnel are strictly regulated in accordance with internationally recognized approaches and documents.

From each unit of all nuclear power plants in Russia, hundreds of safety parameters are transmitted in real time to the crisis center of the Rosenergoatom concern. This ensures complete control independent of personnel.

Secondly, the design of the nuclear power plant reactor allowed the accident to unfold or stop if the personnel behaved erroneously. After 1986, the safety systems of nuclear power plants in our country and abroad were maximally improved in order to almost completely eliminate the human factor.

After Chernobyl, the development of nuclear energy throughout the world stopped. The nuclear renaissance in the mid-2000s slowed down due to the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. Is the world abandoning nuclear energy today?

- The world has not just returned to widespread use of nuclear power. As we are now seeing, many new countries have announced plans to develop their own nuclear industry. Rosatom's order portfolio for 10 years is record-breaking - more than $110 billion. We build nuclear power plants both in our traditional countries - Finland, Hungary, India, China, Iran, and in completely new countries, for example, Turkey and Egypt. This suggests that we have learned all the lessons of accidents at nuclear power plants well enough to win the long-term trust of our partners.

The only thing I think is important to note is that we need to understand in detail the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Why did we manage to scare ourselves so much about Chernobyl, without having any good reason?

Andrey Reznichenko

April 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the worst nuclear disaster in history at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Photographer Jadwiga Brontë traveled to Belarus to meet the invisible people still feeling the effects of the disaster.

The disaster occurred about 30 years ago, but its consequences are still felt to this day. When the reactor in Pripyat in northern Ukraine began to collapse, it became the worst nuclear accident in history, both in terms of casualties and financial costs. But this was not the end.

Photographer Jadwiga Bronte was born in Poland, just a week before the terrible tragedy. The proximity of the place and time of her birth to Chernobyl still determines the importance of this event for her.

Her latest project, “Invisible People of Belarus,” documentsthe lives of crippled victims of Chernobyl living in Belarusian government buildingsinstitutions – “boarding schools” – that act as “shelters, orphanages and almshouses rolled into one.” Although the disaster occurred in Ukraine, it was Belarus that bore the brunt of the blow.

The living faces of boarding school residents give us a rare opportunity to see how Chernobyl survivors live. Decades later, they were too easily forgotten.

– Why did you decide to photograph these people?

– I was one of more than 18 million Poles who were given"Lugol" – iodine solution for protection against radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl accident. Unfortunately, not all affected countries did the same. Belarus is closest to Chernobyl and people here suffered more than others. The consequences of the accident affect public health to this day.

However, my project is not only about the victims of the Chernobyl accident. It's about all the disabled people that society doesn't notice. Unfortunately, the topic of disability is still taboo in Belarus. This may be due to the post-Soviet mentality, religion, or simply a lack of information and general knowledge about disability.

– 30 years have passed since the disaster - what is life like for those people you met?

– When I say “victims of the Chernobyl disaster,” I do not mean people who were direct victims, such as power plant workers or liquidators of the accident. I mean people who were born after April 1986 with physical or mental disabilities. Some of the Chernobyl children are now 30 years old, others were born recently, and many more will be born in the future. A mutated gene - a direct consequence of radiation - can be passed on through generations.

Most Chernobyl victims and disabled people live in Belarusian boarding schools These are government institutions - something between orphanages, shelters and hospices. To be honest, the people living in them are simply eking out an existence - they are not provided with any education, and their activity is minimal. They simply support their existence by cooking, cleaning and working in the fields.Very often they make strong friendships with each other and live for each other.

– What difficulties did you encounter while filming?

– These were difficulties of a personal nature rather than technical ones. Working in such places, it is impossible not to feel strong emotions - not only while filming, but spending time with the residents of boarding schools, listening to their stories and trying to understand how the system in which they live works.What you see is depressing.

– What do you hope to show or achieve with your photographs?

– I want these invisible people to become visible. I want people to know more about their lives and hear their stories that no one else knows. I want the Belarusian people to take better care of them, because the future of these people is truly in the hands of the Belarusian people.

There are places like these in many other countries throughout Europe and beyond. People must understand that it is wrong to separate those who have mental or physical disabilities,from the rest of society.

I hope that parents will become stronger when deciding to care for disabled children and see how beautiful they really are. Government agencies– not the best place for them. I saw this with my own eyes.

Thinking out loud

First person

P I present to my readers a selection of materials dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl tragedy. Since you can’t talk about this in a few words, I divided my publication into three parts:

Part 1 is dedicated to brief information about the accident and the people who eliminated it at the cost of their lives.

Part 2 is an interview given to Novaya Gazeta by Konstantin Chicherin, a Russian nuclear physicist, a specialist in the field of nuclear fuel and radiation materials, a senior researcher at the Laboratory of Radiation Materials Science of the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, a participant in the liquidation of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, who gave more than 20 years of studying the accident and its causes.

Part 3 -this, so to speak, is a photo session dedicated to people, participants in the events of those now distant and terrible days and a photo report by Victoria Ivleva, who visited the 4th reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1990, most of the photographs from which are little or almost unknown to us.

26 April 1986. Time: 1 hour 24 minutes. 30 years ago. On this day, the largest man-made disaster in human history occurred. catastrophe - catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which affected the fate of millions of people.

The total release of radioactive substances was 77 kg (during the bomb explosion in Hiroshima - 740 grams). The “Chernobyl bell” struck and was heard by the residents of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and people all over the planet.

Experts have calculated that the total damage caused by the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to the world community over thirty years is estimated at about one trillion US dollars, 550 billion of which occurred in Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

The firefighters of Pripyat took the worst blow. They extinguished the fire in the area of ​​​​heaviest radiation - above the reactor. And two weeks later, on Victory Day, many of them were no longer alive: they were dying in a Moscow clinic from acute radiation sickness. They felt death, said goodbye to each other calmly, without tears, and died quietly. In subsequent years, the Chernobyl tragedy claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people.

A radioactive cloud passed over the European part of the USSR, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Great Britain and the eastern part of the USA. Approximately 60% of the radioactive fallout fell on the territory of Belarus. About 200,000 people were evacuated from contaminated areas.
The wind carried the radiation far from Chernobyl.

According to observational data, on April 29, 1986, high background radiation was recorded in Poland, Germany, Austria, Romania, on April 30 - in Switzerland and Northern Italy, on May 1-2 - in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Northern Greece, on May 3 – in Israel, Kuwait, Turkey. There is now a dead zone for hundreds of kilometers within a radius of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The consequences of Chernobyl would have been much greater if not for the courage and dedication of the people who, at the call of their Motherland, stepped into the radioactive inferno, despite the mortal danger, risking their health and life itself. Hundreds of thousands of specialists from all republics of the USSR took part in eliminating the consequences of the disaster. Their heroic efforts managed to curb the disaster in a short time. Among the liquidators was my friend, an employee of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. At that time, many of them were sent to Chernobyl on business trips to eliminate the consequences of the accident. And who knows, maybe this business trip of his became the cause of the ailments that he still suffers from.

The most dangerous and labor-intensive part of the work to eliminate the consequences, to decontaminate the station and the surrounding area, and to build the sarcophagus was entrusted to the Armed Forces - military personnel and military personnel, whose heroic and selfless work in the period from 1986 to 1990 made it possible to significantly weaken the global development of the disaster . As the Minister of Defense of the USSR Marshal rightly noted in one of his speeches Soviet Union D.T. Yazov: “The army closed Chernobyl with its breasts.”

The most difficult and dangerous work fell on those who, in the first days, weeks, and months, fought with the raging reactor and carried out emergency restoration work in a 30-kilometer zone.

1. H The Chernobyl disaster was rated 7 out of 7 by the International Nuclear Event School (INES), making it the worst man-made disaster of its time. It is worth noting that 7 points were also assigned to the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011, where a disaster also occurred as a result of an earthquake.

2. As a result of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 100 times more radiation was released than the effect from atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

3. The nuclear rain traveled so far that it even reached Ireland.

4. 800 thousand men risked their health to prevent the consequences of the accident and stabilize the situation. They worked in a high-risk area, exposing themselves to radiation. 25 thousand of them died, and more than 70 thousand became disabled. 20% of these deaths were suicides.

5. Greenpeace claims that the Chernobyl accident caused the death of about 90 thousand people around the world from cancer.

6. Some people returned with their families to the affected area to take advantage of government compensation.

7. There are plans to use the areas surrounding the reactor, such as processing and disposal of radioactive waste, as well as the creation of nature reserves.

8. More than 5 million people live in areas considered "contaminated" by radioactive substances after the accident.

9. The area, listed as "polluted", has become one of the world's most unique nature reserves with thriving populations of wolves, deer, beavers, eagles and other animals.

10. Today, every restored house in Chernobyl has an inscription indicating the name of the owner of this property.