The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  —These are the official advisers?

  —They are scientists. Professor Leonid Ilyin is a qualified scientist, an expert in his field. When we were investigating the responsibility of individual politicians, we asked who had advised them. In all states there are always advisors. A politician is not required to understand radiology. We know just how important this advice can be. Look at, say, Lysenko, the famous academic who advised Stalin. We know who Khrushchev turned to for advice and what resulted from it. So, these are the men who advise Gorbachev and Ryzhkov. So we need to look very carefully at the role they play. They play a very important role. And Ilyin’s role today is so obvious and clear to us that our Green movement has declared him persona non grata in Kiev and in Ukraine. We won’t tolerate his visits and we organise demonstrations against him.

  —Does he still have influence?

  —Certainly. He was awarded the title Hero of Socialist Work for the Chernobyl affair. It’s Leonid Ilyin and his staff who set the norms for external radiation that people can, according to them, safely receive over a lifetime. The 35 rem10 allowed during decontamination work, is the norm they set. It was they who developed this theory of 35 rem over a lifetime, a theory which has provoked passionate feelings and unheard of tensions in the contaminated areas where residents were not evacuated. It is a political theory. Ilyin has acknowledged that when he set these levels his calculations were not based on medical evidence but on political and economic considerations.

  10 Former unit of measurement for absorbed radiation dose by a living body (100 rem = 1 sievert). See Glossary.

  —Isn’t this limit of 35 rem the level recognized internationally for workers in nuclear power plants who have no direct contact with sources of radiation?

  —Yes, exactly. Recently this dose, introduced by Professor Ilyin following the accident had been adopted in Great Britain but there, they reduced the annual dose from 1 to 0.5 rem per year. In other words, it’s alright for children from Polessie to receive the same annual dose as workers in English nuclear power stations. With this enormous difference, the workers in England eat food that is absolutely clean and uncontaminated. They are subjected only to a short exposure to external gamma rays. The really serious problem around Chernobyl today is internal radiation. The two are not comparable. The Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Minister of Health in Ukraine, the Minister and the Academy of Sciences in Belarus are categorically opposed to this theory. And there are also many radiologists in Moscow who know this theory does not stand up to criticism.

  —What is his theory and what is your opinion of it?

  —According to Ilyin’s theory, a man who receives 50, or even 100 rem will not suffer any consequences...

  —Is that true?

  —No. Because there is no strict rule like this in medicine. In medicine and biology, there is a very wide range of different individual responses. There is no single response. This is one of the reasons why it isn’t true. It is also not true because we now have data on the action of low doses of radioactivity. At Sellafield (Windscale) in England, for example, at the nuclear reprocessing plant, there are data on the harmful effects of even one rem!

  —What is this theory of 35 rem? To begin with, they ignore any previously absorbed doses and claim that over an average seventy year life span, people can receive 0.5 rem every year. They will accumulate the 35 rem dose over a lifetime. Thus, someone living in the contaminated territories, consuming radioactive products can continue living there and will not need to be evacuated as long as they receive no more external radiation. Beyond 35 rem, they need to be evacuated. This reasoning is totally abstract. It completely ignores another aspect. If the children who live in these peasant communities can’t go into the forest, walk in the grass, swim in the river, drink milk from the cow, if they live in a sterile world so as not to exceed this threshold, if the land they live on cannot even be cultivated, because the level of radioactivity of the soil is too high, then all these arguments about 35 rem are completely absurd, it is not a normal life. And anyway we can’t simply put aside the fact that there are regions in Ukraine where people received anything up to 10 rem in the first year, maybe 5 rem the second. They could have already accumulated an enormous dose in the two or three year period following the accident. It’s a very different situation when a young man in good health goes to work in a nuclear power station—special medical measures are in place. Applying this reasoning about 35 rem to a child who has received this dose of radioactivity, it’s unacceptable, it’s simply criminal.

  —What is the attitude of the International Agency of Atomic Energy? Do you share their view?

  —We have a very negative opinion of the IAEA. We said this to Hans Blix, the director, and to Mr. Gonzales. They met the members of our Green movement here and we expressed all our discontent. Of course, they explained that the agency is there to serve the governments that fund it, including the USSR, so they can’t interfere in the internal affairs of different countries. In other words, they are perfectly aware of the dreadful things that go on in these different countries, but can not say anything. Even so, we did ask them why they believed the lies told by those in power. Why did they never conduct in depth studies of the nuclear power stations that were still in use? Why have they still not made any assessment of the situation following the accident at Chernobyl? They sent specialists to collect soil samples and to assess the health of the population. We suggested they call in independent experts, people that we can trust, who have no connection with any nuclear mafia. They agreed to this in theory but so far I do not know of anyone we recommended that has been called to serve in their commission. There is currently in Ukraine and Belarus great mistrust, I would even say hostility, towards them.

  —Do you think they are under pressure from the nuclear lobby?

  —Naturally! It is a nuclear lobby in the truest sense of the term. It is an international nuclear lobby. That’s why we believe it is absolutely essential to undertake independent assessments with independent experts.

  —We can assume, for example, that they work closely with Leonid Ilyin’s group?

  —Of course! It’s a direct link. They are colleagues... I’ll tell you something else. Representatives from the nuclear industry, from the United States and France, have visited us here and many of them share Ilyin’s ideas. It’s understandable. They received their training in their own military-industrial nuclear complex. They think the same way. I asked a French professor what he considered the most important aspect of the accident, and he said. “It’s very interesting! I could never have set up this sort of experiment in my laboratory, but now I can observe it”. You can imagine the cynicism and behaviour of these people!

  —So the people who live here in the contaminated territories are just guinea pigs?

  —These are poor people, brought low by fear. They don’t care what happens to them, it’s their children they’re worried about. These people don’t know what to believe—because they have always been lied to. They are helpless. They don’t even know what a neutron is, or a white blood cell. They are lacking the most basic information. You can’t blame them for that. They are peasants living off the land. Now they feel threatened by everything around them. A threat that you can’t see, hear or touch. And they are confused.

  Chernobyl has shown that it is possible to destroy the world and life on earth in a totally peaceful manner. Dropping bombs or making nuclear weapons—it is generals and politicians who make that decision. It’s their choice, their decision. But in this case, no one intended any harm. And yet if we look at the consequences and the scale of the disaster, it’s proved to be a very successful way of wiping out humanity, destroying the genetic heritage of a nation, of many nations. It’s a bomb launched into the future. It’s very serious. The world has not really grasped it yet. As long as it doesn’t actually affect anybody personally, it’s very hard to understand. It’s ver
y hard to understand that nature can become hostile to man. Nature has become our enemy. The grass, trees ... The forest that has always protected man has become a threat, a danger. Water can also present a danger. For people born into this natural environment and who feel so close to it, it is very difficult to see it from this angle. Everything has suddenly changed. It’s very serious.

  We have to bear in mind constantly the enormous concentration of power in a nuclear reactor, which can combine with unforeseen circumstances. For example, Europe and the world do not know that two people, two firefighters who were on the roof, and to whom I talked later, rescued the whole gigantic structure, which makes up the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, from the fire. Because on the roof of the engine room where the turbines are located, the bitumen caught fire. And they extinguished the fire. Two people. If it had carried on burning, the turbines would have exploded. There was a lot of oil and hydrogen. It’s hard to imagine what the consequences would have been for the whole world. In other words, a series of unforeseeable events can create a catastrophic event. Humanity should take a much more serious attitude vis-a-vis the accident at Chernobyl. It’s a problem for the whole of mankind, but in particular for the highly industrialised areas. Because it is possible to imagine a sequence of events over which we lose control. If by chance damage occurs in an energy unit, for example, and is transmitted to a chemical unit, then the situation becomes uncontrollable. What happened here was the first real manifestation of a force beyond our control capable of destroying life on the planet.

  The sarcophagus is a cause for alarm because of the way it was constructed. It was built under very difficult conditions, with the constant threat of high levels of radioactivity. It was impossible really to build a completely secure structure. For the moment it’s holding. But there are a lot of cracks, a lot of movement. And inside there are 35 tonnes of radioactive dust, highly radioactive. If the building collapses, it will release a new cloud of radioactive dust with very serious consequences and there will be widespread panic. So there are problems with the sarcophagus. And they have to be resolved. How? Either we dismantle the whole thing—but this is something of which we have no experience—or build a huge sarcophagus over the existing sarcophagus, which would cost between 1.5 and 2 billion dollars. A sarcophagus that could last two hundred years.

  If we lived in a normal European country, I would be optimistic. But the situation in the Soviet Union at the moment is so unstable that it is hard to imagine a future without bloodshed, violence, or totalitarianism. Democracy ... we are realising gradually that society needs to mature before it will become democratic. We have not reached that level of maturity. Our democrats lack culture. I had a conversation with someone today. They fight amongst themselves just like the previous politicians from the totalitarian era. Democracy is a self imposed inner discipline. We haven’t got it. In the heat of the political struggle, the struggle for power, all these problems of survival have been forgotten. The old reactionary forces will fight for power by whatever means. At the moment they’re trying to get rid of Gorbachev. In Moscow, the situation is very worrying…

  That was November 1990. Today, the situation is a lot worse. Here is a report from the Novosti Agency in Moscow dated April 29, 2005:

  “The experts are sounding the alarm. The sarcophagus covering the damaged reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is in disrepair, the walls are cracked, and the concrete roof has subsided, according to the daily newspaper Troud.

  Rain and snow, falling onto the solidified nuclear fuel could provoke a nuclear chain reaction, say scientists. The walls of the sarcophagus are permanently hot, glowing can clearly be seen inside. If the roof collapses, tonnes of radioactive dust will be ejected into the atmosphere up to an altitude of 2 km, with fallout in Ukraine, Russia and neighbouring Belarus.

  As early as April 2004 the Ukrainian nuclear scientist Valentin Kupny, the former deputy director at the Chernobyl power station, said that the reactor covering could collapse at any moment. The academician Dmitry Grodzinski who has been the general supervisor of the plant for sixteen years, says that the nuclear fuel inside the damaged reactor is getting hotter, and instruments have detected an increase in neutron currents and leakage of radioactive dust; there are 170 tonnes of nuclear fuel under the sarcophagus which is fissured with more than 1 square kilometre of holes and cracks. The structure was built very hurriedly and the concrete was laid without steel reinforcement. According to Dmitry Grodzinski, there are more than 800 deposits of radioactive waste in the area. There are hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of radioactive material. The material dates from the accident and was supposed to remain there only for five or six years. Now americium is escaping. It is more dangerous than strontium. The Pripyat and Dnieper River whose waters are used to irrigate the surrounding agricultural land contain strontium.

  There are increasing numbers of mutations in the area. Piglets are being born, blind or dicephalous (two headed). We see monsters hatching, not chickens. More and more children with Down’s syndrome are being born. Cases of childhood thyroid cancer are a thousand times higher than before the accident. Levels of radiation are now insignificant but the genetic instability is continuing—said Academician Grodzinski.

  Today plans have been finalised for a second sarcophagus to cover the first. It will enclose the reactor for another hundred years. But it cannot be constructed just yet because the levels of radioactivity are too high and there is not enough money to fund the project, which will cost an estimated 750 million dollars”.

  3. ANATOLI VOLKOV

  I came across Anatoli Volkov in the newspaper Izvestia, which took advantage of Gorbachev’s policy to publish information that was almost subversive in the opinion of communists, painfully enduring glasnost. The article recounted the passionate struggle against official disinformation of a solitary man in the contaminated forests and fields of Belarus. He came up against the hostility of the local authorities, but gained the support of the local people and of the military that had been drafted in to “decontaminate” the territories.

  We had little time to meet Anatoli Volkov, when I finally got hold of him on the telephone late one evening in Pinsk, 450 kilometres from where we were staying. The next day we were leaving Belarus to continue our work in the Ukraine. Travelling overnight, he met up with us at dawn on Monday 19 November at the station at Krasnopolie, a little town near the Russian border, about 250 kilometres north of Chernobyl. It was rumoured that when the radioactive cloud had passed over Bryansk, travelling in a north easterly direction, chemicals had been fired at it from helicopters (in a process called cloud seeding) to cause it to rain and, by so doing, avoid radioactive fallout over Moscow. Volkov knew this highly radioactive area. Right up to the beginning of 1990 the Moscow radio-protection service, directed by the eminent specialist Ilyin, had maintained an almost complete news black-out on the extent and the exceptional intensity of the fallout in the Bryansk region and on the way the exposed population had been forced to remain in situ.

  Anatoli Volkov—The meeting had been fixed for the following morning. I got up early, at 7 o’clock, and within two hours I had taken measurements of the whole village. I went into the flood meadows, then here near the school, then to the petrol station which had the highest level of radioactivity. I transferred the information quickly onto a map. My map was ready. I arrived at the meeting well armed to demonstrate that the reality was very different from what they were being told.

  Q—They didn’t know what you were doing?

  —Nobody knew. We went into the office of the president of the area executive committee. He was a good man, ready to deal with all of this. The person in charge of the decontamination brings me up to date. “We’ve already done all that, we’ve sent the report to the centre. Everything’s OK here”. Without saying a word, I unroll my map, read out the figures and go on the offensive. “What do you think you’re doing?!” He says “But it’s
far away from the houses!” “The people here don’t know where you’ve dug up the soil and where you’ve spread sand. They live here, they move around!” The truth was there in front of them: “You think you can solve the problem by lying about it. You’re deceiving people. You have no right to do that!” I’ve sworn an oath to the people of Belarus and I will never betray them. “You can do what you like to me but I’m going to tell them the truth”. The tractors belong to the people, the earth belongs to the people, the people paid for my education. How can I lie to them? I could never bring myself to do that. I told them how it was. That’s all.

  Then, one day, a secret service official contacted me out of the blue, a soldier from the army. He said: “Anatoli Grigoritch, is there anything you need? We have given orders that no-one is to cause you any trouble”. Because people were already trying to intimidate me with phone calls, but I carried on with my work and these people gave me a lot of help with my measuring. No-one bothered me after that. I made radiological maps of the region.