Thinking back to 20 years ago, it’s the splashing in
yellow rainwater that Antonina Sergieff vividly recalls.
The third-year graduate student didn’t know it then, but
the unnatural color of those puddles in her hometown of Gomel,
Belarus were due to radioactive particles spewing from a nuclear
explosion 80 miles away.
Surrounded by ancient pine forests, the Chernobyl nuclear power
station exploded during the early morning hours of April 26, 1986,
setting off a raging radioactive fire that expelled over 190 tons
of toxic material into the atmosphere.
Today, on the 20th anniversary of the incident, the Russian
languages and literatures student can look back to the explosion
and accept a childhood surrounded by radioactive contamination.
“We all jumped in the puddles with the yellow stuff. …
You don’t see (it in) the air, it doesn’t materialize.
But when you see the yellow dust, you see radiation,”
Sergieff said.
The accident was originally caused by a small testing error that
resulted in a chain reaction in which highly pressurized steam
literally blew the top off of a nuclear reactor.
The result was the release of 100 more times radiation than the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to the
United Nations issue brief on Chernobyl.
Among the unstable elements released were iodine-131,
caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239. Scientists say that
exposure to such elements, especially in such high doses, impairs
critical cellular functions and damages DNA.
When these elements first reached Sergieff 20 years ago, they
came in the form of yellow rain.
It was not long after that residents in her hometown knew it
wasn’t simply “pollen” ““ which is what
government officials assured them, she said.
Soon, people started losing their hair, pictures of deformed
animals sprouted up in independent newspapers, and incidences of
cancer in Belarus skyrocketed, Sergieff said.
According to the U.N. brief, cases of breast cancer in Belarus
doubled between 1988 and 1999, among other increases.
Tatyana Abrazhevich, Sergieff’s mother, said she and
friends would periodically try to make and develop photographs, but
“it was all blank: the level of radiation was so high in
those days, that it was impossible to photograph,”
Abrazhevich said, as translated from Belarusian by Sergieff.
Rumors soon started to spread about the radiation and people did
what they could to protect themselves.
“For me, the big thing was that my mother always wanted me
to wear a handkerchief. Protect your head! Protect your head! I
would put it on, and then when I turned the corner I would take it
off. The good kids would always wear their handkerchiefs,”
Sergieff said.
Abrazhevich told her daughter that the government’s
explanation was given in such a “calm voice” that no
one recognized the danger.
“They told us not to worry. Not to go nuts. But then a
very popular English radio station started broadcasting about the
radiation. (The government) told us not to worry, that it was
American propaganda to undermine our spirit,” Sergieff
said.
The practice of downplaying the severity of such disasters, and
at times refusing to discuss any information at all, was common
within the Soviet’s sphere of influence, said Richard
Anderson, a UCLA political science professor who also studies
Russian politics.
The reality of the situation revealed that Soviet officials had
cut corners when building the power plant and that now they
weren’t quite sure how to deal with the ramifications.
The nuclear power station was built without any sort of
contamination dome, an integral part of every American reactor
being built at the time.
“The accident wouldn’t have endangered
anyone’s health if the Soviet state had built a containment
dome. Their policy of building nuclear plants without containment
domes is typical of a dictatorship’s complete disdain for
people,” Anderson said.
The gloomy clouds of radioactive particles that made their way
through Europe and Asia left an impression on everything from the
vegetation in the region to the halls of the Soviet parliament.
In fact, Anderson cites the Chernobyl accident and the political
implications of its cover-up as a determining factor in the
eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
The 10 days during which the radioactive fire raged were by far
the most lethal, scientists say, but millions of Russians,
Belarusians and Ukrainians went about their daily business without
knowledge of the true danger.
In fact, six days after radiation began falling from the sky,
the region’s residents marched with signs reading
“Workers of the World Unite” in mandatory festivities
praising the communist system.
While such parades are no longer obligatory in Belarus,
radioactive contamination is still a part of people’s
lives.
Staples in the Belarusian diet include blueberries and
mushrooms, both of which “soak up radiation like a
sponge” and which people now try to stay away from, Sergieff
said.
“What can people do? People tried to protect themselves
for the first couple years, but then you just give up,” she
said. “Nothing is ever normal; everything is just a little
bit abnormal.”