The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  —Was it local officials that put obstacles in your way, or did it come from higher up, from people like the scientist Leonid Ilyin?

  —No. I don’t think it came from Ilyin. It was just the political climate here in the Mogilev region. “Nothing serious has happened. There’s no problem here, we mustn’t alarm people, we’re quite a distance from the reactor, etc”. When I first arrived, Kostiukevich, the vice-president of the executive committee, kept a close watch on me. So I decided that there was only one thing to do and that was to invite him to the guest house in Cherikov where I was staying. It was already midnight when I unfolded the maps to show him. “Think about what you are doing! Why are you stopping me doing this? Just have a look at this”. He listened very attentively and then he left. The next day there was another phone call. I was invited to the plenary meeting of the local party committee. The meeting was in progress. The secretary Leonov—a very interesting man—introduced me: “You need to listen to this man”. They listened. The facts speak for themselves. All of them—after all, not everybody is an enemy of the people—were very worried.

  —They were acting in this way out of ignorance?

  —Simply, they did not understand the real situation. The meteorological service and all these people from Moscow like Ilyin kept telling them that there was nothing seriously wrong, everything was normal, that the local people would not be contaminated etc.

  —How is it that you knew this area so well?

  —I knew this area, the Polessie plain, very well because for a number of years I studied, for economic reasons, the effects of industry on ecology and sanitation in the Pripyat river basin, where the accident happened. I knew that it was a very vulnerable region, because there are a lot of marshes, a lot of underground water and surface water and great hydrometric mobility throughout the region. In addition this basin is directly linked to the Southern drainage basin, where 40 million people live, right down to the Black Sea, along the Dnieper where there are a series of dams at hydro-electric power stations. And naturally, because the water is so abundant, any contamination will move through the landscape very easily. Today the radioactive silt is being transported into the Dnieper by its tributaries, the Pripyat river, the Sozh, the Nesvich, the Iput’, the Bessiad’, the Braginka, the Kolpita and the Pokot’. The Kiev reservoir is a “time bomb”. The water is clean but the silt ‘glows’; 60 million tonnes of silt.

  I studied this area for twenty five years. I knew about everything except the radioactive contamination. True, I had the data about radioactive contamination from global fallout before the accident but I was only interested in them up to a certain point. I was mainly interested in chemical pollution and its impact on the water supply in this area. When the accident happened, and it happened right in the middle of this area, nobody invited me here. However I knew that no-one knew this basin and these migration channels better than me. For example, the flood plains form a perfect route for migration: all migration will pass through them. The laws of geochemistry are immutable. They last for centuries. These laws will govern the migration of radioactive isotopes.

  Of course, when I arrived, there was even a certain amount of incomprehension about my work. What was the point of all these survey reference stakes? Why bother to take measurements when the really urgent thing was the evacuation of residents and saving the animals? The evacuation of the inhabitants was very moving. They didn’t understand what was happening to them. They all had this lost look. It was terrible. First, they loaded up the children, then the old people, and then the animals. They took them away…. At the same time, a helicopter brought me the survey stakes, threw them down, they were put in place, and I traced out my map. No-one was interested in the map, but I knew that it would come in use, that we would have a basis from which to work, that we would know where the fallout had been in the first few days, in the next few days, ten days after, and that it would make our calculations easier. I knew how important it all was.

  —What do you think of the attitude of the USSR scientists?

  —I have to say that many of the scientists showed an interest, in their own particular field—especially biologists, ecologists—we shouldn’t underestimate it.

  —But did they have any idea what had happened?

  —Not at all. They had no experience of this problem. For that matter, nor had I. But out in the field, when I started to study every square metre of land, I realised the seriousness of the situation. I began to realise that not even the USSR Academy of Sciences had maps like the ones I had made. I showed them mine….

  —Did they welcome you straight away as a colleague?

  —Not at all. They completely ignored me. There were times in fact when they banned me from the area. Because I had started to go public with my information.

  This area is very radioactive. I’ve measured all of it. Here, near the abandoned school where we are standing at the moment, it measures 200 curies. That’s more or less the level around the Chernobyl power station. Over there they’ve got plutonium and other heavy substances derived from uranium, like strontium etc. Here, we’ve got caesium-137. The same caesium that they have around the power station. We discovered paradoxically that areas far away like this one, 200 or 300 kilometres from the power station are contaminated. That means there could be radioactive areas that we know nothing about. We’ve already lost four years. To protect the children, they removed the surface soil three times but children need space… they can’t stay on a piece of ground the size of a pocket handkerchief. They move, they run, they go to the woods to get blackberries, they play ball, they go everywhere. You can’t clean up a patch of land and say everything’s alright. The whole place is dangerous. The school will stay empty for ever: 200 curies!

  After I had measured the levels of radioactivity emanating from children’s bodies with a spectrometer, I decided to tell the truth to everyone, to every doctor. The Polessie region is very rich genetically, with people of Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian origin. The children are really beautiful. And there’s no problem of alcoholism here. People have still got work here. We are in the West. When I saw all these children arriving in their thousands to have their levels of radioactivity measured…Their Mums had dressed them up beautifully, the little girls were so pretty with their dark eyes and ribbons in their hair… They took their turn on the spectrometer and I would read the verdict on the screen, “radioactive”, “radioactive”… For me it was a real tragedy. I looked into their eyes and I could not bear the thought that we were lying to them, that we were saying nothing. It was a tragedy in the making and no-one was taking responsibility. I was very upset by it. It was at that moment, looking into their sad eyes—because those children knew they hadn’t come for a party, that I made a pledge that I would never betray them and I would make the truth known whatever the price. And I said to the doctor “Make a thorough examination, see if there are any who are not contaminated, but above all, try to get these children away from the contaminated zone, and save their genetic heritage”. Because we could lose everything. A day could come when there is no-one left, just monsters, instead of these beautiful people that have always flourished here.

  A peasant woman who lives in the countryside here came to talk to me. She said: I get no pleasure any more from raising pigs. I take meat and sausages to my children in the town, but as soon as I have gone, they throw them out. My daughter-in-law throws it out straight away, my daughter waits till I’ve gone. My meat is no use to anyone. I never see my grandchildren here in the village. They don’t bring them here. They’re frightened. If I can’t hear children’s voices, then it means that there’s no future here”. This is what she said, this peasant woman, who can’t read or write. She never hears children’s voices now. “Before, the place was full of children, running here and there, in the gardens, to school, there was always the sound of their chatter. Their voices disappeared. Life stopped”. Those were her words.
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  One day an old woman called me into her khata (cottage).11 She complained of constant headaches. In her stove which she stocked with wood from the forest the level of radioactivity was 300 milliroentgens per hour. All the forest in these contaminated areas is radioactive. The wood shouldn’t be used for anything, constructing houses, making furniture, or even for firewood. The peat ‘glows’ as well. What can they heat their houses with?

  11 Ukrainian peasant house. In Russian, isba.

  I’ve been to the ‘dead zone’ several times (the zone within a radius of 30 kilometres of the power station where entry is forbidden) which has been transformed into a nuclear dump. Everything’s been piled in on top of everything else—agricultural machinery, contaminated clothing, furniture. The abandoned houses “glow” like candles. When fires break out in the peat, it makes the problem worse. The smoke carries the radioactivity to other places further away. How do you fight against this sort of evil?

  —There seem to be two attitudes. There’s yours: all the people must be evacuated, no-one can live with even 1 curie, as you say: and then there’s Ilyin’s theory, which says the opposite, that not only can you live here, you can live a good life here.

  —I’d like to see Ilyin live here himself. I know him very well. He’s part of the mafia that should have been sacked a long time ago. They have really damaged our country, these Chazovs, Ilyins and the others. The country’s medical profession has shirked its responsibilities. Only the military helped me because they saw the absurdity of the decontamination. I had this heavy heart. I kept saying “Be careful. Don’t deceive the people, because they haven’t got any power, they don’t know anything”.

  —But while they were misinforming the public, they were also making huge efforts and spending enormous amounts of money on decontamination measures. What did you think of these measures? What did they do? What was the outcome?

  —I want to emphasise again, that more than anyone else, it was the military that helped me in my work. Without reservation. The generals, the colonels, anyone who could, helped me without any discussion. I want to express my gratitude to them for that. They were in charge of the clean up operation, but they knew perfectly well how useless it was. They could see it achieved nothing. Right from day one I told all the assembled officers that it was useless. I said “Send a regiment, do your work, and afterwards I’ll measure the levels. I’ll show you that even if you worked here for a thousand years you would never achieve anything”. It’s a huge area, it’s impossible to remove all the earth, impossible to carry it away. Burying it all somewhere else is just as dangerous because you are just concentrating the radiation in one place. It was only after two years that the military thanked me for showing them the uselessness of this work that had cost millions: 28 million roubles (the equivalent of dollars) were spent every year just in the area around the nuclear power station.

  This useless work cost them their lives. Hundreds of thousands of contaminated “liquidators” are ill, tens of thousands have died and continue to die. In 1986, their average age was 33.

  —What useless things did they do?

  —Washing the roads. Then they would take up a layer of soil near the houses and cover it with sand. But a little further on, it was just like before…. They washed the roofs and the houses, the radioactivity flowed into the streams, then into the river. It accumulated in the silt. It became concentrated in other places. They would take down a roof, bury it somewhere, and the concentration of radioactivity would be in a new place. In short, someone had to show how absurd this work was and that’s what I did. People understood and now they’re not doing it any more.

  —They buried the pines from the “red pine forest”.

  —I know the story of the “red pine forest” very well. Look, I’ve even got it marked here on my map. These were pines that were very close to the power station that turned red through the effects of the radioactive fire. I recommended doing nothing and letting nature do its work. But they brought in powerful machines from America, felled it all and chain sawed it. They dug trenches and buried the trees. This wood prevented humidity from reaching the surface layers and so there was a problem of sand erosion. There is sand all around here. This area is the delta of the river Pripyat, and it is a very large alluvial plain, there are even some sand dunes. Nothing grows any more. They tried to reforest the area, but the trees grow poorly because the humidity can’t rise up through the buried wood. It wasn’t the right thing to do.

  —Is there a risk of contamination of underground water?

  —The contamination could end up in underground water. There are large geological faults near the power station and it could end up in the underground water. We should never have interfered in the natural process. We should have left the pine forest as it was. Nature would have sorted itself out. This area should be reforested as soon as possible to avoid any further wind erosion. In April and in October, we have very powerful storms. Cars have to have their headlights on because of the dust. So of course the radioactivity is dispersed over long distances and contaminates other areas.

  —Are the ditches where the radioactive waste was dumped dangerous?

  —It wasn’t properly thought through. In countries that have nuclear power stations, nuclear waste dumps have stone foundations, or a concrete or lead base, etc. Here, we simply selected large natural ravines and threw all the waste in there. From there, the radioactivity can filter through. In the Polessie region the soil is very light and the water table is very close to the surface so contamination is possible. So yes, the ditches present a danger too.

  We absolutely have to tell the whole truth. Our newspapers always reported that 50 million curies had been emitted. The same figure as the IAEA. But it was around a billion curies! A billion curies! Nothing like this has ever happened before anywhere in the world. Even during the most serious accident in Great Britain, only 20,000 curies were emitted. There’s no comparison.

  —It’s because the USSR didn’t want to acknowledge the full extent of the disaster to the rest of the world?

  —Of course. The figures speak for themselves.

  At that time neither I nor Anatoli Volkov knew that in August 1986, at a conference held in Vienna behind closed doors12, the West had forced the Soviets to divide their estimates of the health consequences of the disaster by 10.

  12 See Chapter VI, p. 65

  Q.—They sacrificed their inhabitants.

  A. Volkov—That’s what I believe. They wanted to allay the so-called “radiophobia” by building new houses, farms, take people’s minds off the subject in whatever manner they could. But I had made all these measurements. I could see. Eventually, I couldn’t hold out any longer and I published the map. And when the local people saw the map they said: “Get everyone here now, meteorologists, all the best brains, all the people responsible and bring Volkov. The people will decide who is right”. I came but no-one else did. I showed them my map and I said: “Take the map—I’m giving it you for free. It cost me three months work, I’m giving it to you”. Later, my data was recognised. They closed the sovkhoze (Soviet state run farm).They began evacuating people. So, step by step… The situation is completely different now. I can say this in all confidence because I am a Member of Parliament. I was elected. People voted for me because I behaved honestly.At Chernobyl, no-one knew me, and I only learnt... that I had been elected deputy over the phone. When I became deputy I made the same pledge—that I would not go back on my word. I would only speak the truth.

  —Do you think the scientists who come from abroad are objective, or do they represent the interests of the nuclear industry?

  —I’ve worked with the IAEA. They are highly qualified specialists but they represent the agency. They cannot deviate from the agency dogma. There’s no doubt they are high level experts, but this is a completely new situation for them. Just imagine a reactor stuffed to the brim
with 192 tonnes of radioactive fuel burning for ten days! And then tonnes of lead, gravel and sand is thrown in on top. And then all that evaporates and is ejected into the atmosphere again. We artificially increased the radioactive emissions. And no-one says a word. But I’ve seen it all, on the surface of the soil near the reactor, in the power station, and throughout the whole area. More than 300 artificial radioactive elements were expelled from the reactor. They did their dirty work and many have now disappeared. All that’s left are the long lived isotopes. Science is mute today in the face of this complexity.

  —Foreign scientists too?

  —The scientists are saying nothing. They’ve never encountered anything like this. They measure the levels someone has accumulated so far, how much external radioactivity there is, ask them how they feel and say “You can live here”.

  —In your opinion, is science capable of dealing with the consequences of an accident on this scale, independently of any interest or pressure?

  —The pressures are enormous at present. I’ll give you an example. I met Hans Blix the director of the IAEA, in an official capacity at the Supreme Soviet. I asked him, “Tell me, are you aware, as director of the IAEA, that 17 million people, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, including 5 million children are living in the contaminated areas? In Belarus alone, we’re talking about 2 million people, including 500,000 children”. He told me that until 1989 he knew nothing about it. How is it possible that the director of the IAEA did not know about it immediately? He told me: “I only knew about the technical aspects of the accident”. They always pretend they know nothing about it.

  You’re asking me if it is possible to deal with the problem scientifically. I think the answer is yes. If all the scientific capability of the world, all the honest scientists came together, and if we created a study centre here. It would require an enormous amount of work, in depth research. At present, we have scarcely begun to look at the problem and the little we have achieved is frankly pretty mediocre. Whereas what is needed here is scientific research in all fields, research on humans, in agriculture, detailed knowledge of the radioactivity in each area, and to draw conclusions from it for the whole world. No-one will give us the necessary finance. We need the technical equipment, we need to buy the best in the world. We need money. Here in the Soviet Union, no-one will finance us.