The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag
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41 Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 2015 for her “polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.
42 Les Silences de Tchernobyl. Autrement, 2004.
1. NESTERENKO’S CHOICE
We met Vassili Nesterenko in May 1998, on our second mission to the Chernobyl area for Swiss Television in Lugano. Our curiosity was aroused by the sudden volte-face made by the Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, who renounced his faith in the development of the atom, renounced the privileges of a brilliant career and, putting his own life in peril, entered into conflict with the Kremlin. What had happened to him? Where was he from? Who was he? In extreme situations, there is a moment for decisive action and we are greatly troubled by it. Either the moment defines us, or we ignore our conscience and pass by on the other side.. He was the only witness to this turning point. Nesterenko talked to us about his decision with neither affectation nor reticence, as a man, loyal to his own people, to whom he felt indebted. It almost seemed as if he had not needed any special courage to make this break. In fact as we shall see later, he practised courage every day for over twenty years, in his fight against the nuclear lobby and against the physical injuries to his body that resulted from the radioactivity. He was one of the 800,000 Chernobyl liquidators (some say 1 million) who exposed themselves to radiation to protect us, the people of Europe.
V. Nesterenko.—There’s an old Russian saying that “The bringer of bad news will always have his throat cut”. But I have no choice; a sense of duty is ingrained in the Russian intelligentsia. Even if it’s no longer fashionable today. When I was dismissed from my post as director in 1987, I carried on working in radioprotection in a laboratory at the Institute of the Academy. But I faced continual harassment, with people saying that it was not my job, that the appropriate ministries were dealing with it, that I should devote myself to science. I disagreed because I owe a lot to the people—whether Belarusian, Russian or Ukrainian, because it was they who paid for my education and for my standard of living, they subsidised us, the brains, the elite of the nation. I grew up in Ukraine, I studied for twelve years in Moscow and I’ve lived here in Belarus for 35 years. At the age of 33–34, I defended my doctoral thesis and was made a professor. In 1972, I was elected to membership of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, was given an apartment and a magnificent standard of living. Whatever the people could give, they gave. Since this tragedy at Chernobyl, people are suffering; it’s obvious that our duty is to use our skills and expertise to assess the situation properly and help them to protect themselves against the radiation.
That was what I wanted to devote myself to but at the Academy I was prevented from doing so. One day, Andrei Sakharov telephoned me to ask me to publish the data I had collected from the Mogilev region because the authorities were refusing to accept the levels of contamination. “Send us your data; they must be published, because Professors Israel and Ilyin are telling Moscow that they knew nothing about the contamination in the Mogilev region”. “What? I sent them our maps as soon as they were produced. And I keep copies of all of my classified ‘top secret’ correspondence with the government on the subject!” I had four volumes of correspondence with the political authorities, each about 250 pages long. I asked Sakharov who was a deputy at the Supreme Soviet at the time, to get information about Chernobyl declassified. In May 1989, the Supreme Soviet declassified a number of state secrets and I presented my documents to the newspaper Rodnik for publication. In summer 1989, I was summoned to the Central Committee and told to withdraw them from publication; otherwise it could bring about the fall of the government. I told them that people needed to know the truth and I refused to withdraw them. Soon afterwards, I started getting threatening phone calls: “Get out of Belarus or you’ll get what’s coming to you!” I didn’t take it all that seriously. This was during the euphoria of perestroika and I thought no-one could stop me saying anything. A little bit later, I got a phone call from the Procurator-General of Belarus, Nikolai Ignatovich, who we had known for a long time—the laboratory had nominated him as a candidate at the elections to the Supreme Soviet. He said: “Did you give your data to the newspaper?” “Yes”. “You go to work at the institute every day in your car, don’t you? Don’t drive for a few months”. “Hold on a minute, Nikolai Ivanovich43, I know you’re a politician now, but that’s bit far fetched, isn’t it?” “It’s my duty to warn you”, and he hung up. That was on the 25th August.
43 Nesterenko is referring to the Procurator-General mentioned five lines above.
On the 8th September, I was driving, as usual, to the Institute (in the new town of Sosny) taking the shortest route—through the Drazhnia quarter on the outskirts of Minsk—the road had three lanes in one direction and three going in the other. I was in the right hand lane, the other lanes were empty. At the crossroads the lights were red, so I braked, and out of habit, I glanced into the rear view mirror. I saw an ambulance driving up behind me in the right hand lane, going very fast. It didn’t have its flashing lights on and it didn’t look as if it was going to stop or move into the other lane. I took off the handbrake, put the car into gear and accelerated. I just had time to move forward a few metres into the crossroads when the ambulance hit me at high speed. The impact pushed me about thirty metres beyond the crossroads. If I had not moved a little bit further forward, I would have been hit by the traffic coming the other way which had already started moving. People would have said “the professor wasn’t paying attention, he braked too soon and it cost him his life”. I suffered whiplash and still feel the effects of it.
A few days later, the telephone rang again: “Maybe you’ll shut up now”. I hung up.
Ilsa Nesterenko , Vassili’s wife, intervenes at this point.
I. Nesterenko.—I feared for his life. I don’t know how many threats we received! They telephoned the house; I would pick up the phone. They made threats: “Anything might happen…Stop interfering!” I can’t remember the details now. I just remember the phone ringing and their voices. I’d put the phone down before they finished, I’d throw the receiver down and I’d be shaking inside. And of course, anything could happen. An accident for example. It’s not a time we like to remember. One day, much later, when everything had calmed down a bit and we felt a bit easier, Vassili told me, “I was in such a state I felt like driving the car into a wall and to hell with all of it. It was only the thought of you, left to bring up Aliosha all by yourself that stopped me”. At this time, what struck me most was him returning to the house, pushed to the limit, and, at a loss, saying: “They might as well be deaf. I might as well talk to the wall. They don’t react to anything I say. You’d think they’d be curious at least, ask questions, express some objections, tell me I’m wrong… Nothing. They are deaf. Like this wall”.
V. Nesterenko.—The same thing happened recently. Last year, in 1997, I was preparing a speech to Parliament protesting against the construction of new nuclear power stations in Belarus when the telephone rang. “Don’t forget 1989”. Again, I didn’t take much notice. My speech to Parliament was on the 15th. On the 16th, I had to go to a garage about 20 kilometres from here. I had an old 1984 Peugeot. As I started the engine I heard a strange noise and the steering wheel started to shake. I thought it was coming from the right wheel. I tested the bolts, they were nice and tight. I drove off again and as I got onto the motorway, suddenly the left wheel came off and rolled in front of me.
I used to think physics was the most advanced of all the sciences, because so much had been achieved for humanity in this domain. But… that was before Chernobyl. Before I understood that this technology was not compatible with humanity’s level of morality at the present time. What should the government do in these situations? They need to tell it how it is. The following proposition should have been put to the United Nations: “The accident that happened to us, unfortunately, won’t be t
he last; there will be other accidents in other countries. We need to set up an insurance fund. Help us today and in return, we will help other countries, should the need arise”.
Those who failed to take this decision at the time have a moral duty towards the victims and should have to answer before a court why they did not take necessary precautions to protect the population. Even today, they still maintain their silence so as not to lose face and to avoid the accusation that they have stayed silent for all these years. But then again, if the State told the truth today, people would expect them to take necessary measures, and they cannot afford to do that, which explains their ostrich-like behaviour: “You can live in this area, it’s not dangerous”. I can understand why older government officials allow themselves to lie because when the serious consequences happen they will no longer be in power, they won’t be alive. But there are many young people in the hierarchy and I don’t understand them. Sometimes I get the impression that the information I send, my letters and bulletins, to government, never reach the high-level politicians, that it gets blocked by these older civil servants.
The international community hasn’t done anything either and I find that completely incomprehensible. I am absolutely convinced that the United Nations should be directing at least half of the IAEA’s activities towards radioprotection. Today that organisation spends all its time on nuclear arms non-proliferation, and it does not do that very effectively either. The Indian nuclear weapons tests proved how useless it was. As for radioprotection, the IAEA does nothing. In 1989, the UN launched a financial appeal for Chernobyl. They expected to get 700 or 800 million dollars in aid for Belarus. That would have been an appreciable sum. But Japan gave 10 million and that was it. The famous conclusions of the international panel of experts that claims there have been no serious health consequences, came at exactly the right time to show that no aid was necessary. Countries with nuclear power have no interest in recognising the health effects of the catastrophe. Here, the victims have not been compensated, but if one of those countries had the misfortune to have a similar accident, they would have to pay millions in compensation to the victims. They have to avoid a legal precedent. In the West, the population density around nuclear power stations is five times higher than in the USSR. According to German experts, if an accident like Chernobyl happened in the Hanover region, more than 8 million people would be affected and the economic damage to Germany would be enormous. These are not my figures, these are estimates made by German experts, but I don’t think the public is kept informed about these issues. In my opinion, the international nuclear lobby does not want to recognise the true scale of the disaster here, because if they did, nuclear energy could no longer rightfully be pursued.
2. A VOICE IN THE DESERT
V. Nesterenko.—I came up against two dramatic situations that changed my view of things radically: the general level of irresponsibility and the contamination of children.
I was in Moscow… the accident happened on Saturday 26th April. It had been hushed up. Even I didn’t know about it and I was the director of a nuclear energy institute. On Sunday, I took the plane—I did this frequently, every week I went to Moscow on assignment—and I had a little Geiger counter, a dosimeter that I always carried with me. Suddenly I saw something: what the hell was that? I thought it must be broken, and I put it in my pocket and forgot about it. I landed at Moscow, arrived at the Kremlin, went to see Petrovich (who worked for the military industrial commission) and said “I need to see the head of department, he has to see me. I need to speak to him, to sort something out”. “I haven’t got time, Chernobyl is on fire”. It was Monday 28th. I said to him, “Seriously, Yury Petrovich, it’s Monday, remember; yesterday was our day off”. “No. Really. The reactor is on fire”. When I realised, I understood the seriousness of the event, because I knew about the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States. There had been the accident at Cheliabinsk that I knew well professionally, with the problems of radioprotection that it had posed. I also knew the reactor at Chernobyl, I knew that it did not have a protective concrete covering, that everything was exposed to the open air. I grabbed the telephone and called the president of the Academy in Minsk. They did not know what had happened, but our Geiger counters had been registering high levels of radioactivity and they were worried that it could have been caused by our Institute. Secrecy had already been imposed on the subject of Chernobyl. I said to him: “Don’t bother looking for a fault there; it’s in the south, our neighbours in the south”. That’s all I could say to avoid jamming the line with the word Chernobyl. “There’s been an accident, you need to inform the authorities, and evacuate the inhabitants in the south”. He replied “You know our Sliunkov. I won’t be able to convince him. Call him yourself”. He was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Belarus; in fact he was president at the time, the number one. OK. I telephoned his office. I called once, twice, three times. His secretary answered: “He’s busy! He’s busy! He can’t talk to you”. “Tell him that it’s urgent!” I was shouting. Finally someone put me on the line. I said to him: Nikolai Nikitovitch, there’s been a bad accident. In the south, on the border; there is an emergency situation, you need to immediately relocate residents; you must distribute preventive iodine to the inhabitants within a 300–400 km radius of the nuclear power station”. “What are you getting so upset about? I know all about it. I’ve been told all about it, there’s been a fire, and it’s been put out”. “That’s not true, the graphite will keep burning for months; if it isn’t put out, it will burn for a long time”. “Alright, come back tomorrow, we’ll have a look”. Our conversation took place at about ten, ten thirty in the morning, Monday 28th. I called the Institute straight away: “Inform the schools immediately, and our colleagues, so that they can pass it on to their families. You need to close all the windows, wash with water, don’t let the children go outside, don’t send them to school”. In short, simple protective measures. And distribute iodine as a preventive measure. Everyone who worked at the Institute always carried an assortment of iodine tablets. Everyone needed to take them straight away.
I took the plane back that evening. My chauffeur came to the airport. I made a quick detour to the house to leave some tablets for Aliosha.
The nuclear power station is 320 kms from Minsk. I took measuring equipment and I left that night. First I went to Bragin, then returned to Narovlia via Mozyr. I examined the situation. At Khoiniki for example, there was about 15,000–18,000 microroentgens per hour (μR/h). At Bragin the level reached 30,000–35,000 μR/h. And at Narovlia as well, the level was 25,000–28,000 μR/h. That is thousands of times higher than background radiation. According to all our criteria, it meant we needed to evacuate the population. All of this happened on the night of the 28th. I picked up some food somewhere, some eggs, took a sample of soil with a bit of grass and took it all back for analysis at the institute. At dawn on the 29th I was already back. And at 8 o’clock in the morning, I was at the Central Committee. I wanted to see the people who made the real decisions. But there was no-one there, no-one… So then I went to the institute, which is in Sosny, about 20 kms from Minsk, to get the spectrometric results of the samples. They revealed that there were high levels of contamination by radionuclides in the soil and in the food products. We needed to take protective measures urgently. I walked across town holding the dosimeter high up and then low down: there was a big difference. The radioactive pollution was falling on Minsk. It was hot. Outside people were selling pirojky, meat, ice creams, everything. I went back to the Central Committee. Kusmin, the secretary at the Central Committee for Science, tried three times to get Sliunkov to see me. But he wouldn’t. So I made my mind up: I went into the antechamber thinking: “This time I’m going in. I’ll force my way into the office”. They might shout at me, they might chase me out but I had no choice. It was about five o’clock. I’d been waiting since eight in the morning! I saw Nil
Gilevich, a well known poet in Belarus. He came out, I was walking round in circles, he recognised me. “Hello, hello, how are you? I’ve had a really good talk with Nikolai Nikitich about developing culture in Belarus: an hour and a half”. “There won’t be anyone left to appreciate culture if we don’t evacuate the population straightaway”. “What are you talking about? Sliunkov says everything’s under control there, everything’s fine”. I went in and I started to tell him about this and then about that. He said: “What are you talking about? You’re wrong. It’s all under control…” I made him listen: “It’s not true, you’ve been misinformed!” and I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes. He put in a call to the Prime Minister. According to the law here, emergency situations, evacuations, etc can only be declared by the president for Civil Protection, in other words, the Prime Minister of the Republic. He picked up the phone and said: “Mikhail Vassilich, I’ve got Nesterenko here and he’s telling me different things from what you’ve been told. Listen to him”. I could hear them in the receiver, one voice in particular, saying: “Why is he spreading panic like this? His people are all over town, sowing panic. Make him stop. Order him to stop”. “At least see him”. “He must get his dosimetrists out of town!” “See him”. I went there, to the Council of Ministers. I arrived at about 6.30 in the evening. Remember it was already the 29th April. A big room, on the third floor, I think. They were sitting there, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Minister, the Chief Officer for Civil Protection, the Chief Medical Officer and also the Mayor of the town. The technicians from my radioprotection services had evaluated the situation, gone all over town measuring the level of radioactivity in people’s thyroid, which is an ideal indicator. You put the dosimeter against the thyroid and you can see how much iodine it has already incorporated. They had convinced the Chief Medical Officer to prepare 700 kg of iodine solution.