April 26 - Day of the Chernobyl Tragedy: Remembrance of the Disaster and Its Consequences
Kyiv • UNN
On April 26, 1986, the explosion at ChNPP contaminated 200,000 km² with cesium and strontium, 115,000 people were evacuated. Liquidators minimized the consequences, the exclusion zone became a nature reserve.
April 26 – the date that divided the history of the Ukrainian people and the entire world into "before" and "after". The Chernobyl tragedy became the most severe test for civilian nuclear power engineering, leaving a deep mark on ecology, medicine, and public consciousness, writes UNN.
Significance of the Date
The International Day of Remembrance, established by the UN General Assembly, has a dual purpose. Firstly, it is deep respect for the feat of the liquidators – firefighters, military personnel, medics, and scientists who, at the cost of their own lives, minimized the consequences of the accident.
Secondly, it is a call for global nuclear safety. Chernobyl taught the world that radiation knows no borders, and concealing the truth about man-made threats leads to catastrophic proportions.
Chronology of the Tragedy
On April 26, 1986, at 01:23, during a scheduled test on the 4th power unit, a thermal explosion occurred. The reactor's active zone was completely destroyed, and the graphite blocks ignited, creating a powerful stream of radioactive smoke.
The Soviet authorities initially tried to hush up the incident: the first official report in the USSR appeared only two days later, when radiation levels began to be detected worldwide.
Global Scale of the Disaster
The accident received level 7, the maximum, on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.
- Over 200 thousand square kilometers of land were contaminated with radioactive isotopes: cesium-137, strontium-90, iodine-131.
- A 30-kilometer exclusion zone was created around the station, from which over 115 thousand people were permanently evacuated.
- In addition to the "Red Forest", water resources were affected, particularly the Dnieper River basin, which necessitated unprecedented measures to protect drinking water.
Victims and Heroes: The Cost of Liquidation
It is still difficult to establish the exact number of victims. In addition to the 31 people who died directly from the explosion and acute radiation sickness, thousands of people prematurely passed away due to oncological diseases and cardiovascular disorders caused by radiation exposure.
Special mention deserves the "Chernobyl divers" and helicopter pilots who prevented an even more powerful second explosion by dropping a mixture of sand and boron into the red-hot reactor core.
Interesting Facts about the Chernobyl Tragedy
- The nuclear workers' city of Pripyat was founded only 16 years before the accident. Today, it is an open-air museum city where time stopped at the mark "1986".
- The equipment used to clean the reactor unit's roof of graphite failed due to extremely high radiation levels. Then people came to the rescue, manually clearing the debris.
- The Chernobyl Zone today is a unique nature reserve. Due to the absence of humans, populations of rare species have recovered here: black storks, lynxes, and bears.
- In 2016, the New Safe Confinement was erected over the old "Sarcophagus". This giant arch, costing 1.5 billion euros, is designed to protect the world from radiation leaks for the next 100 years.
Reminder
On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the ChNPP accident, archival materials marked "secret" were presented. The documents contain government decisions, reports on evacuation and radiation, and have been included in the UNESCO register.