Vladimir Shevchenko's final Chernobyl footage

[Mindfield]

I've read all about the Chernobyl disaster, and have seen various pictures, but this is the first time I've seen actual footage filmed from ground zero so soon after the disaster. Filmed by Vladimir Shevchenko, Severe Days (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGLRrQEBqAs) features soundless footage of the first days during the disaster, when the liquidators and "biorobots" were attempting to stabilize the reactor's foundation and clean up the radioactive graphite. It's pretty stark stuff, seeing all of these people working at the site with little or no protection against radiation in the tens to thousands of roentgens that they weren't even made aware of, not knowing that most if not all of them would be dead within weeks. Vladimir himself died weeks after making this footage, having gotten a lethal dose when he filmed atop the roof where the graphite cleanup was currently taking place. He had no protection at all.

[Ruffian]

YouTube is very slow for me now, and I've only seen about two minutes' worth so far.

It is eerie to see the faces of men who likely suffered a miserable death not long after this was shot--like watching ghosts. I also find it so hopelessly, disastrously naive (or just uninformed by those who sent them) to see them walking around in masks, as though that would protect them.

[The Hamster King]

Chilling. Such heroism. And so sad.

[Moirai]

Oh my God... those poor men. My skin crawled watching them slog through all that dust, etc.

I feel sick.

Those men died horribly because their government was too scared and stupid to ask for help.

[Mindfield]

Seeing the masks was the first thing that made me shake my head -- going in as though trying to protect themselves against pathogens, either totally unaware of the true danger or not understanding that radiation doesn't work that way. Seeing people working without protection right around the cauldron is chilling. Their very skin must have been prickling. *shudder*

[dangermom]

Oh, so sad. Those poor people.

[liirogue]

Could someone more familiar with the layout of Chernobyl give me an idea of what I'm looking at in certain spots? I mean, I understand it's bad to be that close, but I don't know enough about the layout of nuclear plants or Chernobyl to understand some of the shots.

[ralph124c]

..these men's bravery was in vain-far from helping things, these guys made it worse (shoveling debris off the roof). Not only did they die horrible deaths, but they made things worse. They had no protection, and no treatments were available for them.
A totally sick ,stupid waste of human life!

[Taters]

That film was both eerie and sad.

I well remember the whole debacle and it was so sad that the government over there basically handed out death sentences.

[aruvqan]

Could someone more familiar with the layout of Chernobyl give me an idea of what I'm looking at in certain spots? I mean, I understand it's bad to be that close, but I don't know enough about the layout of nuclear plants or Chernobyl to understand some of the shots.
I am not overly familiar with Chernobyl, but having done plant refits in the US I can give you a rough idea.

Randiation is bad for living organisms, but very useful in generating heat. We need to find some way of turning heat into electricity.

Chernobyl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster)

You see the crater that was the reactor containment?

You put the reactor in a building that is heavily built to keep any radiation inside, and you have a system of pipes and coolant tanks called the primary coolant system. It was a RBMK system, running light water [they were skimming off the heavy water and selling it] This primary coolant circulated into contact with the secondary coolant system that was also water. This water produced steam to spin the turbines that actually made the electricity.

The main problem was that the plant was shut down [production wise, they were actually running a test.] and they caused a condition where there were bubbles of air in teh coolant system, letting the reactor [more or less] run hot. This caused a steam explosion, the graphite rods caught fire and the whole place more or less turned into a science project steam volcano hosing radioactives around the area.

In the youtube clip there was a scene of him standing on top of a building looking sort of down [iirc just before the poor helicopter crashed] that was the reactor containment about 10-14 days after the accident. The fires had been put out, and the russians had been dumping sand and other dry chemicals in an effort to control the whole problem so it is sort of difficult to see many details. THe biorobots moving the graphite rods by hand? they maybe had a lifespan of a few hours once they started carrying the rods. The poor reclamation brigade had a lifespan of a few days to weeks, depending on ther jobs. Tee poor miners had a lifespan of days. Changes in the blood start at 10 hours of exposure at that level, after 40 hours you just need to tell them where to ship your body and pick out the lead lined coffin you want it shipped in.

Now, most times you are reasonably safe working in nuke plants, at least in the US. THere are a serious amount of safety regulations in place, and you have to train for about a week before badging in to work [or at least back in the late 80s when i was a rad whore] and it can be seriously cool the first time you see thecherenkov radiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation) So far, I have never suffered any adverse issues from my working in teh field, but you can be sure that I was incredibly careful working safely!

[liirogue]

aruvqan thank you, that is very helpful!

Perhaps you could also answer this - the text at the top says the biorobotss bodies would begin to "fall to pieces" after forty minutes. What, exactly, would have happened after such a short period of time?

[aruvqan]

aruvqan thank you, that is very helpful!

Perhaps you could also answer this - the text at the top says the biorobotss bodies would begin to "fall to pieces" after forty minutes. What, exactly, would have happened after such a short period of time?
Well this [not graphic, just word descriptions] (http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/radeffects.shtml) in general.

Graphic yuckiness (http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html) Hiroshim is a bit different, but scroll down to #16 for the subcue hemmoraging and cataract effects, and on this page (http://www.ndt-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/RadiationSafety/introduction/health.htm) the poor man just wanted to stay warm and used a discarded spent fuel cannister to do so.

I would say that 'fall to pieces' is not entirely correct, though obviously from the text the person providing it is russian, and english is probably not his first language. Idioms can be odd sorts of things, and when we say 'fall to pieces' it may not mean the exact thing he[or she] meant but they picked it out as sounding close to the original russian idiom. I would say that vomiting and shitting blood, stomach and intestinal lining and having ones hair fall out can count as falling to pieces though. I can say that it is pretty safe to say that every person that you saw on that footage had their hair fall out, had cataracts and subcutaneous bleeding like in the japanese picture, and died vomiting and shitting out pieces of themselves. On the other hand, they were also probably so tranked on morphine the doctors gave them they may have died of respiratory failure before the worst could happen. I would personally hope that someone would take pity on me and euthanize me if I was hit that badly.

[Argent Towers]

So the Soviet authorities basically knew that all the men would die without proper protection, and sent them in anyway?

What about these guys? (http://www.belarusguide.com/images/chernobyl/Massimo_Bonfatti_images/01Liquidator1.jpg) Were those type of protective suits used after the first wave of guys had all died and they realized that the men had to be adequately equipped?

[Ruffian]

I watched a BBC documentary from 1996 yesterday that shocked the crap out of me when it said 5,000 people were still working at the other, non-asploded reactors. Are you fucking serious?? The end of the documentary discussed the conundrum the Ukraine was in...it desperately needed the power provided by Chernobyl reactors, but of course there was also the nearly universal WTF?!? SHUT IT DOWN!-reaction they were getting from Europe and much of the rest of the world. Their response was described as in effect being, "Sure. But you pay the $4 billion it's going to cost us to shut it down and then come up with another energy source."

I checked Wikipedia, and stunningly, Chernobyl wasn't entirely shut down until 2000. I can't believe they kept it up and running that long. I can't believe they didn't need to replace workers on a weekly basis. Eeeeeeeep.

[aruvqan]

So the Soviet authorities basically knew that all the men would die without proper protection, and sent them in anyway?

What about these guys? (http://www.belarusguide.com/images/chernobyl/Massimo_Bonfatti_images/01Liquidator1.jpg) Were those type of protective suits used after the first wave of guys had all died and they realized that the men had to be adequately equipped?
Yes and no.

keep in mind that for the most part [speaking from US experience, I no almost nothing about the soviet nuclear program and policies] our exposure [heh] to nuclear illness came primarily from 2 places. Hiroshima and industrial accidents during the manhattan project and other industrial incidents. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were good for bombs, but the industrial accidents [and the bombings for that matter] were nothing like what happened exposurewise at Chernobyl. Anti-Cs like in that picture are not really protective against ionizing radiation (http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiationionizing/index.html) There are 4 types. Alpha, beta, gamma and xray.

Alpha can be stopped with paper. Literally. beta can be stopped with sunglasses, or tinfoil, or water or lead lined undies=) Gamma needs a lot more to protect, and xrays can be stopped with a layer of metal. I am really not a physicist, so I really don't know they whys at all.

That (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazmat_suit) type of hazmat suit isnt really good for chernoble unless it is lined with a significant amount of lead. Remember the narrator saying that the minister had been protected with about 30 pounds of lead and he still died? Reat the wiki on it, it is pretty good.

I can personally attest to them being very uncomfortable. Being female, I wore a bathing suit under mine, but in an all guy work crew tehy are worn with underwear. You dress in them and slog to where you are working, then do a very CAREFUL strip trease out of them so that you never come in contact with the outside of them at all, nor do you step with bare feet where the suit has touched down... sort of a twister between where you are in a tape box onto a 'stepoff' pad, a safe area to stand.

[Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party]

This film is horrifying in so many ways. It's like viewing a nightmare. Even words used to describe people, "biorobots", are sickening. Does there exist a more depraved ideology than communism?

[liirogue]

aruvqan Thank you again!

[aruvqan]

aruvqan Thank you again!
NP =)

rad worker is an odd sort of profession =) and IIRC when I was working [i was technically working as a valve mechanic but i worked on pumps, filtration units, hell I even painted now and then. When you work 13 12hour shifts for 1 2 or 3 months they work you hard as they *need* to get the refit done and the plant recertifiedd and back online] there were maybe 20 women tops working as mechanics and another probably 50 as health physics techs in an industry of a few thousand people. The industry changed a lot since I was in, instead of us being independent contractors working for a company like Henze Movats or Firmanite on a contract by contract basis now they prefer keeping the same people so it isnt as nomadic=)

[frex I made mad cash one shutdown taking my $65 taxfree per diem and living in a campground for $10 a night instead of a hotel or short term apartment=). the KOA kamping kabins in Barium Springs rock!]

[aruvqan]

This film is horrifying in so many ways. It's like viewing a nightmare. Even words used to describe people, "biorobots", are sickening. Does there exist a more depraved ideology than communism?
Communism isn't depraved. Communism through the filter of humans interpreting it for their own ends can be depraved. There were just as many normal and nice people under communism as here in the US, or over in Britain, or in Japan. When the few in power at the top are self serving, and upon occasion mentally ill [I have no other way to describe Iron Felix] then you have depravity.

As far as it goes, they were sacrificing people for the greater good of the people, the mechanical robots of the time were incapable of performing any of the tasks the people could perform. The most robots of that period were sent to Chernobyl - they wiped out in under 45 seconds from the radiation affecting the electronics. They were the top of the line tech from the US. Not a single person in that film survived, An entire brigade died. The CO of the brigade [who was an engineer and fully understood he was going to die] stayed with his men. Even though he didnt physically work in the containment area [he remained at the admin area] and saw his men die fast. He took about a year and a half to die. Granted they were conscripted and not volunteer, but I could say that without a doubt that in the US you could find a brigade of people willing to die in the same situation. Hell, I would have volunteered. I know mrAru and the previous mrAru would have as well. Most of the people I worked with would have gone.

The primary plume caused significant contamination in Iceland, Scotland, Britain, Greenland *and* the continental US. The sub Rob was based on at the time was in *Groton, CT* and the rad techs were pulling air samples as a routine out side the boat and got solid readings. The boats in Faslane Scotland had to decontaminate the outside of the sub to meet US safety standards.

[ralph124c]

I was in Holland when Chernobyl blew up-and the Dutch were scare shitless. All green vegetables were thrown out-and people were told NOT to drink fresh milk . In Sweden, thousands of reindeer were slaughtered and buried in pits. The Russians didn't say ANYTHING for 10 days! The only reason we knew was that workers at a Swdish nuclear plant had heir radiotion monitors pegged at the limit (fallout). ill the Chernobyl area ever be habitable again?

[Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party]

Communism isn't depraved. Communism through the filter of humans interpreting it for their own ends can be depraved.


Oh bull. Wherever there's communism, there's untold suffering. Present day communists trying to distance themselves from the likes of the Soviet Union has to be the greatest exercise in backtracking ever. Communists throughout the 40', 50's and 60's were only too eager to associate themselves with the likes of the USSR (look at the Cambridge spy ring, for instance - highly educated men willing to give secrets to the Russians), and now, when the horrors of mass starvation, GULAGs and purges cannot be brushed off as Western propaganda quite so easily, they're desperately trying to distance themselves from it.

If every attempt at employing communism has resulted in disaster, then shouldn't that imply something about communism itself?


Granted they were conscripted and not volunteer, but I could say that without a doubt that in the US you could find a brigade of people willing to die in the same situation. Hell, I would have volunteered. I know mrAru and the previous mrAru would have as well. Most of the people I worked with would have gone.


The two situations aren't even remotely analogous. The USSR used conscripted men, with no idea of what they were getting in to. Even in the film it states that the cameraman was allowed right next to the reactor without any protective clothing - do you seriously think this would have been allowed in the UK or America, for instance?

You're talking about American volunteers, who likely would know exactly what it is that they're getting themselves in to, likely briefed on the dangers beforehand, especially if they were radiation workers, such as yourself.

[Argent Towers]

aruvqan, I'm sure you had no intention of coming across this way but I found your post kind of sexy, actually. Women who do dangerous jobs appeal to me, I guess. Sorry if I'm coming off like a creep! I just had to say it.

[aruvqan]

aruvqan, I'm sure you had no intention of coming across this way but I found your post kind of sexy, actually. Women who do dangerous jobs appeal to me, I guess. Sorry if I'm coming off like a creep! I just had to say it.
LOL whatever flips your pancake=)

[Argent Towers]

Also I can't believe you're UP right now! What time is it where you are?

[aruvqan]

Oh bull. Wherever there's communism, there's untold suffering. Present day communists trying to distance themselves from the likes of the Soviet Union has to be the greatest exercise in backtracking ever. Communists throughout the 40', 50's and 60's were only too eager to associate themselves with the likes of the USSR (look at the Cambridge spy ring, for instance - highly educated men willing to give secrets to the Russians), and now, when the horrors of mass starvation, GULAGs and purges cannot be brushed off as Western propaganda quite so easily, they're desperately trying to distance themselves from it.

If every attempt at employing communism has resulted in disaster, then shouldn't that imply something about communism itself?



The two situations aren't even remotely analogous. The USSR used conscripted men, with no idea of what they were getting in to. Even in the film it states that the cameraman was allowed right next to the reactor without any protective clothing - do you seriously think this would have been allowed in the UK or America, for instance?

You're talking about American volunteers, who likely would know exactly what it is that they're getting themselves in to, likely briefed on the dangers beforehand, especially if they were radiation workers, such as yourself.

How many americans of the time would actually understand the *real* dangers of chernobyl? What do you know about the nuclear power industry and radioactive materials that you *didnt* get out of the newspapers and magazines? Do you even realize the radiation dose you get from common household items? Did you know that granite has 10-20 ppm of uranium and you can get an infinitesimal dose hanging out in Grand Central Station waiting for your train? You get 4 mSv from our favorite SDMB procedure - a lower GI radiographic dye image. you get about .1 mSv sleeping next to another human for a year. We got fed a steady diet of nuclear horror stories by the media and people more interested in their agendas rather than truth [that nuke power is actually pretty safe.] Near as I can tell, soviet media never fed into the horror stories about how unsafe nuke power was.

And again I reiterate, the common Ivan iin the street is just like you and me. The problem comes when a perfectly good principal is put into practice by people. There is no doubt that pure communism is a nice idea, but people are only human. We have the urge for *more* Everybody would like to have a nice home, plenty to eat and drink, nice clothing, books and music [access to live musicians, a killer stereo and records or whatever format is common in your age] The problem with ANY form of government is human nature. Why the hell should a senator or congresscritter get multiple retirement packages? Why should they be able to vote themselves payraises, and whatever perks they have? Why shouldnt *I* get $50,000 a year instead of my social security of under $12000 a year + whatever I can manage to scrounge out of my income and put into savings. I bet I work at least as hard as a congresscritter, and I *don't* have a staff to help me do my job. I would love to have the ability to junket off to investigate something and not show up at the office in person.

The average Ivan in Soviet era russia worked a job like any of us, hung out with his buddies, lived in crappy housing and didnt really get time off other than a state sponored vacation to a state sponsored resort once a year. Cars and phones were luxuries and expensive.

In our version, we worked, lived near our job - many people in what we today would consider crappy housing, we were LUCKY to actually take planned vacations to a resort - we would do something like in dirty dancing, head off to a small motel for a week or two and they were definitely not state sponsored. Cars were still expensive, we frequently had a party line rather than a private phone until into the late 60s. Multiple phone lines? That wasnt even common until the 90s and the proliferation of computers and the internet.

The common ivan didnt send people to Lubyenka or a gulag. The common ivan didnt get up in the morning and try to figure out a way to destroy the US and democracy. The common ivan didnt even covertly think about how to spy for the US.

The common american didnt keep the blacks and hispanics in a ghetto, apply double standards of law to blacks and hispanics and be so scared of the idea of communism that we broke constitutional law.... um, wait a minute, yes we did. Oops.

I guess democracy sucks. Maybe we ought to try monarchy again.

[aruvqan]

Also I can't believe you're UP right now! What time is it where you are?
<points at location in the heading> eastern US.

i cheat, how else :p

Actually I am diabetic, and we work best on a stable schedule so 7 days a week I am up at 5 am for meds and breakfast. On weekends instead of schlepping off for work at 630 I slack around reading the dope and playing WOW =)

[fessie]

Fascinating posts, aruvgan!

I guess democracy sucks. Maybe we ought to try monarchy again.

:p I happened to catch some '70s-era footage talking about the horrors of WWII, specifically how our POWs were treated. In this day of waterboarding, it's impossible to muster righteous indignation.

Indignation, yes. Sorrow, yes.

But the righteous part has been taken away by our current Administration. All it took was for us to get truly afraid and the principles went out the window, didn't they.

[Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party]

aruvgan, I'm struggling to see what relevance any of your last post has to my previous one.

Yes, I'm aware many otherwise innocuous objects are radioactive, including granite.

However, are you seriously contending that medical information on lethal doses of radiation were unavailable to the Russian government in the 1980's, that Russian authorities were incredibly reckless in their handling of the crisis (they wait ten days to tell the rest of the world (!), allow cameramen on the roof without protective clothing etc.), that had such an incident happened in the UK or USA, authorities there would have handled it in the same way, sending uninformed conscripts to their deaths?

I think not.

[olivesmarch4th]

I'd like to view the video, but I'm kind of a pansy when it comes to human suffering. Is there anything graphic in it?

[Mindfield]

ill the Chernobyl area ever be habitable again?
It has been said that Pripyat and the surrounding villages may not be habitable again for several centuries yet. Even the wider exclusion zone may take a couple hundred years for the radiation to dissipate enough for human habitation, possibly more depending on where in the exclusion zone you are. From what I have read there are areas where pockets of radiation in the thousands of rems have settled where the immediate surrounding area is only a few hundred rems.

There is also the question of when they are going to get off their butts and shore up the sarcophagus. It's falling apart as it is, having been hastily slapped together, and if a breach develops or, Og forbid, it collapses, it could further irradiate the area.

As for communism -- it is a nice ideal on paper. The two main problems are that A) It works against parts of human nature which makes it an unrealistic ideal to implement on the basis of people being willing to curtail that nature, and B) it has never been implemented properly, most likely owing to that very nature. Communism offers fewer freedoms than a capitalistic democracy does, and that makes it wholly unappealing to anyone born into a capitalistic democracy.

I'd like to view the video, but I'm kind of a pansy when it comes to human suffering. Is there anything graphic in it?
Nothing graphic, no. It's mostly just a bit creepy. There's one scene that shows a helicopter breaking its rotors against a crane and falling to the ground, but the film cuts before it hits the ground. That's about as close as it gets.

[olivesmarch4th]

Nothing graphic, no. It's mostly just a bit creepy. There's one scene that shows a helicopter breaking its rotors against a crane and falling to the ground, but the film cuts before it hits the ground. That's about as close as it gets.
Okay, thank you. That was a very interesting thing to watch. I was three years old when it happened and it's been interesting learning the truth vs. the sensationalist stuff you just hear about. I wonder how many of those men had a pretty good idea they were going to die.

ETA: For anyone who remembers the news breaking... what was the general feel about it? Was it downplayed or really treated in the media as a major disaster? Also, I know nothing about Soviet Russia or how they handled the issue, so it'd be interesting to learn what it was like at the time.

[jjimm]

Was it downplayed or really treated in the media as a major disaster? Also, I know nothing about Soviet Russia or how they handled the issue, so it'd be interesting to learn what it was like at the time.Major disaster. Particularly in Europe. There was fallout dropping on Wales and northern England - not anything like as much as other parts, but some foodstuffs had to be destroyed.

As for Soviet Russia... difficult to sum up in a post. I visited Moscow and Leningrad in 1984, and it was bleak and grim, and I was followed everywhere by the KGB (secret police). It was a vast, oppressive, scary dictatorship with fucked-up ideological objections to the west, and armed to the teeth with nukes. Of course the west wasn't totally innocent either, and it seriously looked at points like we'd end up literally obliterating each other. The Cold War was a frightening thing; I'd go so far as to say it was way scarier than today's terrorism; full of skullduggery and evil deeds. (I recommend you read the Smiley series of books by John le Carré for some fictional background; also Graham Greene's later novels.)

By the way, for anyone who's interested in what Chernobyl looks like now, I recommend KiddofSpeed (http://www.kiddofspeed.com/), a woman who claims to ride through the vast restricted zone, the last time being in 2004. Apartment buildings stand as they have done for twenty years like the Marie Celeste, mail still in their mailboxes and toys still in the living rooms. (I gather there's some controversy over her site, or that she's been discredited in some way by being accompanied rather than riding alone as she claims to have done, but the pictures appear to be genuine.)

[GoneTheSun]

This film is horrifying in so many ways. It's like viewing a nightmare. Even words used to describe people, "biorobots", are sickening.

Actually, биоробот (biorobot) is a Russian word meaning something like "android" and the workers and soldiers themselves used this term to describe each other, in typical Slavic black humor fashion.

To quote NuclearNo.ru, a Russian citizen group anti-nuclear website (http://nuclearno.ru/text.asp?10778) (translation by me - forgive any small mistakes):

"It was difficult to collect all debris from the roof, more precisely, what remained of it. However, it was necessary to complete. But how? Technology refused to work: radiation killed the batteries quickly. I tried to use robots, but they do not even succeed in reaching the reactor. So, people had to clean the debris - specifically soldiers.

"Liquidators [name for those cleaning the radioactive debris] came running from the shelter, shoveled debris onto stretchers or into buckets, carried to the nearest proloma (storage) and dropping their cargo in the collapse. Only a few minutes of work at a time, due to the dangerous situation. Still, as the radioactive background declined, the risk for the people who have worked here grew.

"To defuse the situation, the soldiers described as a joke each other as biorobots; 'biorobot Vasya', 'biorobot Fedya' ..."

So the term "biorobot" was used by the liquidators themselves as a dark joke in a deadly situation.

[Broomstick]

It has been said that Pripyat and the surrounding villages may not be habitable again for several centuries yet. Even the wider exclusion zone may take a couple hundred years for the radiation to dissipate enough for human habitation, possibly more depending on where in the exclusion zone you are.
It depends on what you mean by "habitable".

There ARE people living near and even in the exclusion zone. They all seem to be elderly folks. They're past reproductive age so what it might do to offspring is not a worry and old enough that they are likely to die of something else before radiation-induced cancer gets them. In that sense, the area is habitable in that it will not kill you immediately.

That said, there are hot spots that WILL make you immediately ill and might well kill you quickly. Those will be around a long, long while.

There is also the question of when they are going to get off their butts and shore up the sarcophagus. It's falling apart as it is, having been hastily slapped together, and if a breach develops or, Og forbid, it collapses, it could further irradiate the area.
THAT"s what I'm most concerned with - keeping the worst of the mess contained indefinitely is no small problem.

[GoneTheSun]

By the way, for anyone who's interested in what Chernobyl looks like now, I recommend KiddofSpeed (http://www.kiddofspeed.com/), a woman who claims to ride through the vast restricted zone, the last time being in 2004. Apartment buildings stand as they have done for twenty years like the Marie Celeste, mail still in their mailboxes and toys still in the living rooms. (I gather there's some controversy over her site, or that she's been discredited in some way by being accompanied rather than riding alone as she claims to have done, but the pictures appear to be genuine.)

There is no controversy over Elena Vladimirovna Filatova aka Kidd of Speed ... her former website describing a motorcycle ride through the restricted zone is a hoax. She didn't and couldn't ride her motorcycle through the restricted zone. She made her photos on a typical tour of the restricted zone, which anyone can do if they are so interested.

She mixed fiction with some reality and presented it as non-fiction on the internet. She has admitted as much. The website that you cite isn't actually her website, but represents some of her original materials.

You can catch her website here. (http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/)

[Broomstick]

ETA: For anyone who remembers the news breaking... what was the general feel about it? Was it downplayed or really treated in the media as a major disaster? Also, I know nothing about Soviet Russia or how they handled the issue, so it'd be interesting to learn what it was like at the time.
This is MY recollection, based entirely on memory:

The first news was the Swedes finding contamination on workers coming into a plant. Extrapolating based on winds lead to the rapid conclusion the source was inside the Soviet Union. At that point the world know Something Really Bad had happened, but not exactly what.

The Soviets basically said "Radioactive cloud? What radioactive cloud? We don't see any radioactive cloud. " which answers your question on how they "handled" the issue from the point of view of the outside world. After a few days they admitted to an accident at a nuclear plant, but by then the West had figured out that the most likely source was a really bad accident at the Chernobyl complex so it wasn't so much news as admitting to what a lot of outside nations already knew. (I expect our government had satellite and surveillance photos of the affected are pretty quickly)

Meanwhile, it was only somewhat scary, living in the US Midwest - the radiation was distributed world-wide by the weather although we were far enough away that we weren't throwing out fresh vegetables. Europe was in an uproar, understandably, given that someone else's toxic waste was blowing into their backyard. My concerned thoughts at the time had more to do with the impact on Europe's and the world's economy, and the issue of scarcity of foods imported from affected areas, as well as the fact that some areas affected would need all their food imported for some time, affecting world wise distribution and supply of certain commodities. I suppose there was some concern initially for just how bad this was going to get, but although the damage was horrific locally, and bad enough over a wide area, it was limited and wasn't going to be some sort of mass extinction event.

There was also concern about casualties. We knew a lot of people had died, but we didn't know if that was measured in dozens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands. That was actually typical for the Soviet Union - everyone knew lots of people had died in various accidents, disasters, and catastrophes in there, but never exactly how many. We knew the Soviets were low-balling the numbers, but had no way to know by how much. So the speculation ran all over the place.

We also kind of wondered how they planned to clean the mess up. Well, that became apparent soon enough, as word of the firefighters dying and clean up crews dying did get out. Several countries offered aid that was refused. Armand Hammer, a US businessman who had had dealings with the Soviets, did manage to arrange a group of US doctors to go over and assist with treating some of the injured, but they certainly didn't see everything there was to see or know anything more than was necessary to do the work they were there to do. Some information about the clean up came from them, from what their patients told them, but it was very spotty stuff.

More information came out with glastnost, and more still after the Soviet Union broke up. Earlier this year I re-visited the information available and found several sources published in the past few years that filled in many of the gaps in my knowledge.

[Broomstick]

By the way, for anyone who's interested in what Chernobyl looks like now, I recommend KiddofSpeed (http://www.kiddofspeed.com/), a woman who claims to ride through the vast restricted zone, the last time being in 2004. Apartment buildings stand as they have done for twenty years like the Marie Celeste, mail still in their mailboxes and toys still in the living rooms. (I gather there's some controversy over her site, or that she's been discredited in some way by being accompanied rather than riding alone as she claims to have done, but the pictures appear to be genuine.)
The pictures are real. Her stories about riding through the area are not. Pictures of her on the motorcycle in the area were staged in the area.

People certainly do go into the area whether they should or not.

[GoneTheSun]

People certainly do go into the area whether they should or not.

There are many tours of the restricted area. (http://www.tourkiev.com/chernobyl.php) I believe you can approach as close as 200 meters or so to the destroyed reactor #4 on these tours.

You certainly CANNOT do an independent tour on a motorcycle of the restricted area, as presented in the original Kidd of Speed website. It was Ukrainians that were familiar with the restricted zone that pointed out the various inconsistencies in her story and photos that first pointed out her story was a hoax.

[Baron Greenback]

There was fallout dropping on Wales and northern England - not anything like as much as other parts, but some foodstuffs had to be destroyed.



From here (http://www.food.gov.uk/scotland/safetyhygienescot/chernobylmonscot) as of 2006 there were still ten farms in Scotland under restrictions requiring that animals were tested before being sold to market. I imagine such restrictions were still in force in parts of England and Wales too.

[Mindfield]

It depends on what you mean by "habitable".

There ARE people living near and even in the exclusion zone. They all seem to be elderly folks. They're past reproductive age so what it might do to offspring is not a worry and old enough that they are likely to die of something else before radiation-induced cancer gets them. In that sense, the area is habitable in that it will not kill you immediately.
Yeah, I'd heard about people living in parts of the habitable zone -- something like 3,000 people refused to evacuate after the incident. I don't know where they're all situated, but they must be in areas of relatively low radiation -- maybe few hundred millirems. Even then I wouldn't want to live in that kind of environment. Besides its effects on reproducing cells it can't make you feel too good.

That said, there are hot spots that WILL make you immediately ill and might well kill you quickly. Those will be around a long, long while.
Those are the bits that concern me most and would be the main reason the area as a whole wouldn't be habitable for centuries. While you might be able to find places of low enough radiation to be more or less habitable, you'd have to be very aware of where those hot spots are lest you run afoul of them, and there's no good way to deal with them either.

Plus, I shudder to think what the groundwater is like there.


THAT"s what I'm most concerned with - keeping the worst of the mess contained indefinitely is no small problem.
No it isn't, but it's only going to get worse if they don't get something done about it, and something must be done soon. They reinforced the west end with a huge steel structure a little over a year ago (The DSSS) to take some of the roof load off the axis 50 wall, but that's just a stop-gap.

[olivesmarch4th]

Holy crap, Broomstick. Thank you for that enlightening response.

[aruvqan]

I'd like to view the video, but I'm kind of a pansy when it comes to human suffering. Is there anything graphic in it?
Nothing graphic, unless you object to pictures of people working - he was documenting the work going on onsite.

It is very upsetting if you stop to realize that literally every single person filmed was dead between hours after being filmed [the guys on the roof handling the graphite rods] to weeks or months. IIRC the longest anybody survived was something like 1.5 years for a few people that really didnt get that close in and only came into casual contact with environmental contamination [dirty clothing or dirty equipment.]

Actually almost every single tool shown in use, vehicle and so forth was abandoned onsite. From what I heard from a few health physics techs was that even most of the dirty clothing was simply bagged up and left in barracks, with clean clothing being brought in.

[CalMeacham]

Lest we forget, Chernobyl wasn't the first Soviet nuclear disaster contaminating large areas. Forty years earlier there was Chelyabinsk/Kyshtym. It's still not cleaned up, either, and it's contaminated worse than Chernobyl:


In the late 1940's, about 80 kilometers north of the city of Chelyabinsk, an atomic weapons complex called "Mayak" was built. Its existence has only recently been acknowledged by Russian officials, though, in fact, the complex, bordered to the west by the Ural Mountains, and to the north by Siberia, was the goal of Gary Powers's surveillance flight in May of 1960.
The people of the area have suffered no less than three nuclear disasters: For over six years, the Mayak complex systematically dumped radioactive waste into the Techa River, the only source of water for the 24 villages which lined its banks.The four largest of those villages were never evacuated, and only recently have the authorities revealed to the population why they strung barbed wire along the banks of the river some 35 years ago.Russian doctors who study radiation sickness in the area estimate that those living along the Techa River received an average of four times more radiation than the Chernobyl victims.
In 1957, the area suffered its next calamity when the cooling system of a radioactive waste containment unit malfunctioned and exploded.The explosion spewed some 20 million curies of radioactivity into the atmosphere.About two million curies spread throughout the region, exposing 270,000 people to as much radiation as the Chernobyl victims.Less than half of one percent of these people were evacuated, and some of those only after years had passed.
The third disaster came ten years later.The Mayak complex had been using Lake Karachay as a dumping basin for its radioactive waste since 1951.In 1967, a drought reduced the water level of the lake, and gale-force winds spread the radioactive dust throughout twenty-five thousand square kilometers, further irradiating 436,000 people with five million curies, approximately the same as at Hiroshima.
In the past 45 years, about half a million people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing them to as much as 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl victims.





http://www.logtv.com/films/chelyabinsk/

http://faculty.oxy.edu/richmond/ENVR/chelyabinsk_nuclear_waste_accide.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozyorsk,_Chelyabinsk_Oblast