Chernobyl Incident

 
Early in the morning of April 26th 1986, technicians at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine allowed the power in the fourth reactor to fall as part of a controlled experiment. To carry out their tests they deactivated several saftey systems that would have cooled down and shut the reactor in the event of problems.
 
But the experiment went wrong - two explosions blew the top off the reactor building and a fire started in the core. The fire burned for serveral days and a cloud of deadly radioactivity poured into the atmosphere. For ten days the silent killer swept north-west across Belarus and on to other parts of Europe, including the U.K. It was only when abnormal levels of radiation registered at one of Sweden's nuclear facilities that the world learned of this catastrophe, initially concealed by the Soviet authorities.
 

Belarus was the region worst hit by the Chernobyl disaster, with over 70% of the fallout landing on its territory which seriously affected one fifth of the country. A total of 432 towns and villages were heavily contaminated and had to be evacuated. Something like 25% of prime farmland was permanently taken out of production and hundreds of rivers and lakes polluted.
 
Image: Chernobyl Reactor.

 

 
Being a mainly agricultual economy Belarus suffered greatly after Chernobyl. Unable to grow enough uncontaminated crops for self-sufficiency it now has to import large quantities of 'clean' foodstuffs to satisfy its requirements. The people still tend their gardens and small-holdings, eating what they themselves produce even though they are told not to. Many have no choice as they cannot afford to buy all they need. They also still follow time-honoured tradition of eating wild mushrooms from the forests which on analysis in England have found to be very highly contaminated.
 

 

The effect on the population since Chernobyl has been a declining birth rate, high unemployment, low wages and high inflation. As they grow up, children are particularly susceptible to the effects of the contaminated enviroment with higher than the world average for diseases such as thyroid cancer. There is no escape for them. In the very cold winters, when wood is burned on the stove, radiation is released. In the summer, when it's hot and dusty, more radiation is ingested. It's in the air they breathe, the food they eat and the water they drink.
 
Image: Chernobyl Reactor.
 

 
There are 800,000 children in Belarus who could do with respite from this day to day bombardment of background radiation - an exposure which would not be considered acceptable to employees working in a western nuclear power station.  
We cannot change the history of Chernobyl, but we can al least try and help those who have been affected by it. The Chernobyl Children Lifeline gives as many children as it can a month-long recuperative holdiday in the U.K., with the aim of boosting their damaged immune systems and hopefully allow them a healthier future.