![]() ![]() Some showed us photos they had taken of Chernobyl’s destruction. After that revelation, I stood rather than sitting on a chair or sofa out of fear the furniture had nuclear contamination, as we visited family after family. Many survivors we visited said they had returned to Chernobyl to retrieve clothing, furniture and other household goods, clearly not understanding radiation exposure or its duration. We drove to a Stalinist-era concrete block apartment building, which Oleg called “a high-rise research laboratory with human guinea pigs.” He said keeping survivors together helped doctors and scientists track and measure the advancement of radiation sickness, such as skin lesions, cancers of the mouth, throat and thyroid.” The callousness made me feel ill. Some 100 Americans and an equal number of Soviet citizens - Russians and Ukrainians - came together for a peace mission, visiting cities from Kyiv to Odesa that had been completely shut off during the Cold War because of nuclear and other military weapons production in the region. I learned devastating details about the Chernobyl disaster from a control room engineer named Oleg during a trip to Ukraine in August 1990. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine suffered a massive explosion and meltdown. Ukraine’s recent history holds an important lesson for us about what’s at stake. ![]() As Ukrainian workers continue to operate the plant amid the shelling, the whole world should be afraid about the risk of a radiation leak and the possibility of a reactor core meltdown. They based soldiers and heavy equipment there and have been using the plant as a defensive shield, lobbing shells from there and hoping Ukrainians would not risk hitting one of the six power units by counterattacking.īut Russian officials say Ukraine has now fired back. After Russian forces brutally invaded Ukraine six months ago, they gained control of the nuclear facility early in the fighting. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, lies along the Dnieper River in southeastern Ukraine.
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