April 16, 2011

Zone of Alienation: Chernobyl 25 Years Later

By Mary Mycio

  When comparing Chernobyl to Fukushima, the explosion and graphite fire are cited as a big differences that makes Chernobyl worse.   But by lifting the radiation over a mile up into the air, the graphite fire did much to spare the local population -- much the same way that the winds are blowing radiation out to sea at Fukushima.  As for explosions, there have been   three at Fukushima: two hydrogen explosions in Reactors #1 and #4 and a third explosion at #3 that seemed much more powerful.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported that the explosion came from the   spent  fuel ponds and sent radioactive debris at least a mile away. Strangely, this event is not receiving much media attention.

 

When nuclear fuel -- be it in a reactor core or spent fuel cooling pond -- explodes or burns, some of the radioactive atoms or radionuclides vaporize and get carried by the wind. At Chernobyl, radionuclides also got carried by dust and in bits of the core called "hot particles". Here, hot particles coat pine needles in the first year after the disaster.    Such surface contamination is the main problem in the lands around    Fukushima now. I can be pretty cavalier about radioactive zones      after going to Chernobyl 25  times, but I would not go to Fukushima without a respirator.

 

In this map of cesium contamination during Chernobyl's first year, the darkest color shows the highest levels.  These are from reactor debris expelled in the initial explosion.  Note the two lobes extending north and west. They contain much of the plutonium as well. 

 

The Chernobyl clean-up required 800,000 "liquidators" who were    ordered and in many cases forced to work in the zone on short tours    of duty to limit radiation exposure.  

 

All of these vehicles were used in the Chernobyl clean-up are too radioactively contaminated to ever leave.

In the early years, workers had to change into progressively contaminated vehicles as they approached the power station.

It took 90,000 liquidators to build the Sarcophagus to house the     ruined 4th reactor. It is not hermetically sealed and was never meant to be.  Parts of the structure are held together only by friction and it is riddled with cracks and gaps. Birds nest inside, carrying bits of    radiation out. My dosimeter shows background radiation levels              90 times normal. 

 The visitors center has a nifty model of what is inside.  The brown sphere in the middle is the reactor core. The so-called Cascade Wall    on the left is filled with radioactive debris from bulldozing the plant's grounds. The melted fuel melded with sand and dripped like lava into the rooms below the core and hardened.   

 

This bleak photo was taken by Richard Wilson in the winter of 1987 and it is it is how I imagined  the zone when I moved to still-Soviet Ukraine     in 1991 --   like a giant radioactive parking lot north of Kiev; dead,      like a moonscape. 

 

When I finally did go in 1996, I was shocked to find that the lifeless     radioactive desert I imagined had actually become a wildlife sanctuary the size of Rhode Island.  Nature proved more resilient than anyone had thought.  Today, more than 95% of the radionuclides are no longer on surfaces  but a few inches deep in the ground. Radiation is no longer "on" the zone but "of" the zone.  It is part of the food chain.

Note the radiation symbol at the bottom. This is a nuclear waste dump.

 

The Pripyat swamps are Europe's largest wetlands, though the       Soviets drained them for agriculture. But when 135,000 people were permanently evacuated from the 18 mile zone around the reactor -- almost exactly the same number that had been living within 18 miles     of Fukushima before the disaster -- the lands started returning to     their primordial state.   After many years, the vast majority of radionuclides are fixed inches deep in the waterways' sediments.

 

This pine is displaying radiomorphism, a change of shape due to  radiation. Instead of growing straight up with branches perpendicular    to the trunk, the radiation disorients the pine, which grows more like      a bush.   Radiomorphism was common in the early years, when     radiation levels were higher all around the zone.   Now, you'll only find    it in the so-called Red Forest, which sits atop the western lobe of     very radioactive debris from the initial explosion, and also atop radioactive waste that was just bulldozed into the ground, without     any containment.  

 

Some plants especially concentrate radionuclides, such as moss,     which takes its nutrients from the air and the radioactive dust that    kicks up on windy days.   Mushrooms are also very radioactive     because their mycelia are like sponges in the most contaminated     layers of soil.

Pripyat, the Chernobyl plant's company town, was located less than   two miles away. It was billed as the "youngest  city on the planet" but it was surely its shortest lived. 

Pripyat's 45,000 residents were evacuated on April 28. They were told it was for three days. It turned  out to be  forever. Prypiat.com is a website that brings together the city's former residents.

 

In the abandoned and completely looted apartments, you can find    Communist junk and old Izvestia newspapers proclaiming the tired   Soviet propaganda of pre-perestroika.   By 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev    had already called for reforming the USSR and opening it with glasnost, but neither concept was any more than just words before Chernobyl. After the disaster, Moscow revealed more to Western governments -- and  nuclear industries -- than to the affected  people.  Such      secrecy has been endemic to the international nuclear industry from     its very origins and is currently being dramatically displayed in the   dosing of the bad news in Japan.

There is a myth that Pripyat is a time capsule of Soviet times, with uncollected mail in mailboxes and other touching signs of lives hurriedly left behind.  But it isn't true.  Yes, the detritus is Soviet, but very little of it is left after 25 years. There is no mail left in mailboxes, except by people who want to stage a scene.

 

What is left of the library.

  

Another commonly staged scene. The objects in this kindergarten     were not left like this after the evacuation. Photos from soon     afterward show neatly made beds, with toys and books lined up on shelves.  Anything you find in the Zone these days is unlikely to be in      the position or place it was left in.

 

Nature is smashing through the concrete and steel of Pripyat.  

The first building collapsed in 2006.

 

Experts predict the rest will be rubble in 100 years.

Outside of Pripyat and the town of Chernobyl, where the Zone's administration is housed, a very common scene when driving along      the potholed and crumbling roads is what looks like a hole in the forest.

 

It is actually an abandoned country road, overgrown with the forest. Though Pripyat was evacuated within two days, the rural areas took much longer.  As more and more contaminated areas were identified,      350,000 people were resettled in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine over the decade after the disaster.  

Some people returned, despite the prohibitions, especially the elderly.   In 1987, there were 1200 so-called "self settlers".   Some left, but    most died from natural causes. These days, there are only about 300 -- and 200 of them are women.  

 

Some are gregarious, and enjoy having visitors.  But I have seen some very isolated and sad people on my zone travels. People who live in radioactive no man's lands don't usually have happy stories.

 

One of the strangest international borders must be the one between Belarus and Ukraine that runs through the middle   of the evacuated region.   Crossing the border is illegal, though, because there are no border checkpoints in the zone.   It is amazing how isolated the two zones are from each other. There is virtually no communication     between them. My trip from Chernobyl to the Belarus side involved quite a bit of derring-do.

 

These swamps in Belarus were drained for farmland in Soviet times      but have been re-flooded, becoming a magnet for aquatic birds.   Thousands of ducks, swans, egrets and rare black storks took off      right before I took the picture. The white speck in the middle is the    last egret.  It is a very radioactive area. The roadside readings were    20 times normal and birds can be very sensitive to strontium-90 because it imitates calcium, concentrating in eggshells and bone.  Reports of strontium around Fukushima are very worrisome.

 

This moose watched us from the other side of the road.   Large     animals have rebounded in the zone. I have seen more wild boars, elk, moose, roe deer, wolves and other animals around Chernobyl than anywhere else in my life. Radiation is affecting them. Small creatures are especially vulnerable. But  because the health of wild animal  populations is  measured by their numbers, Chernobyl's large animals are healthy -- even if the health of individual members suffers from the effects of radiation.  If they live long enough to reproduce, they are biologically successful.

Przewalski's Horses went extinct in the wild in the 1960s but they     have been a captive breeding success story.   There are now so many  of them worldwide that breeders have decided to try releasing them      in the wild. But few populated places are safe for wild horse herds.   Ukraine's Askania Nova is one of the world's largest captive breeding centers. In a a controversial program 21 horses were released into       the wilds of Chernobyl in 1999. By 2003, the herds had expanded to 65. Today they number over 90 and young stallions and mares have     started forming new herds.

 

The Elephants Foot is at the very center of Chernobyl  but belongs to   no creature known before.   It is the nickname for a mass of melted    fuel that melded and solidified in room 217 below the reactor.       Instead of the 180 tons of fuel you would find in an intact reactor,     the Sarcophagus holds 3000 tons of fuel melded with building      materials too lethally radioactive to approach.   Scientists had to shoot the Elephants Foot with an AK-47 to knock off a piece that they could study remotely. It will be radioactive for what may as well be forever.

 

One of the radiation resistant robots developed by Sarcophagus engineers to trundle through the ruin's interior.  Reportedly, Ukraine offered its nuclear emergency assistance to Japan very early on, but  the Japanese declined because they didn't want associations with Chernobyl.  For such a robotically excellent country, it seems odd      that there are no radiation resistant robots being used in the Fukushima emergency.  But that is  evidently because the Japanese nuclear industry didn't want to pay for them so they never got developed.

 

After 25 years, the Sarcophagus itself is radioactive waste. With financing from 26 donor countries, the New Safe Confinement was supposed to have been completed by 2008. But the date keeps getting pushed back. Now it is 2015.

 It is likely that similar tombs await Fukushima, which just doubled the odds of similar worst cases disasters happening at one of the worlds   443 nuclear reactors in the coming decades.

Authors Bio:
Mary Mycio has been fascinated by nuclear issues since her 5th grade teacher said that her misbehaving class would die in a nuclear war because they didn't follow instructions. Her book "Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl" is available on amazon and she recently completed a thriller about nuclear smuggling. She is also an international development consultant specializing in democracy and media.