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ANTONY BUTTS |
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ADVENTURES IN THE DEATH ZONE :: PART TWO |
 HUGE VODKA CONSUMPTION ...part of the Chernobyl legacy |
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In the aftermath: Slow death, alcoholism, ruins
Special for TheColumnists.com
The men who triggered the Chernobyl disaster almost exactly 20 years ago were clearly unqualified for the work they had been assigned. The director of the power station, V.P. Bryukhanov, was not even a specialist in nuclear energy. His experience and training were in a coal-fired power plant. Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer of reactors No. 3 and No. 4, had spent some time working with small nuclear power plants but had never dealt with the intricacies of a large reactor complex.
The accident ensued from a combination of ignorance, curiosity and blatant disregard for the safety rulebook. Bryukhanov and his comrades were running experiments that ultimately would make the reactor dangerously unstable and lead to the meltdown. As the safety systems would have interfered with the experiments, they were simply switched off.
Those in charge seemed to think that a nuclear reactor is no more dangerous than a coal-fired power station, and the result was inevitable. At his trial, Dyatlov said, with stunning understatement: ''With so many deaths, I cannot say I am completely innocent.'' He was sentenced to seven years in prison. The real death toll may be unknowable, given the latent effects of radiation. But estimates range between 4,000 and 15,000 depending on the source.
Fresh from London, I was in the Death Zone shooting my first documentary and trying to make sense of the damage 20 years on.
A statue of some communist hero stands
mute overlooking the scene. It seems strange that there should
be a shop here. Upon entering, one is immediately thrust back
to the time of the Soviet Union. Two women with permed hair and
skin that has seen too many harsh winters stand around in chequered
aprons. A selection of dubious looking sausages lie on a refrigerated
shelf together with bits of processed albino cheese. Apart from
a few biscuits, rice and other essentials, the shelf space is
devoted to alcohol. I never knew there were so many brands of
vodka, most of it available at bargain prices.
At the far end of the shop there is a metal grill with a cage-like
door that separates the shop from a small canteen area. Some
plastic tables and chairs were scattered about. A few empty plastic
cups betrayed the room’s purpose--drinking. The only sign
of modernity in the shop was a large refrigerator to the left
of the door, stocked with many different brands of beer. My fixer,
Andriy, made straight for the fridge and quickly filled a bag
with beer. Turning to one of the aproned shop assistants, he
rumbled in Russian: “Auntie, my dearest, be so kind as to
give me that bottle of vodka over there.” Ordering some
cigarettes for good measure, he moved back from the counter a
few paces so I could pay the bill.
I speak usable Russian but for this visit I needed a translator. She was Rimma, a woman of about 50 with a bizarre, curly-blond, ginger-dyed hair-do, a slightly patronizing fixed expression and a camouflage jacket. As she speaks good English I asked her if she would help with the documentary and speak on camera. She was willing but first wanted to apply a layer or two of pancake makeup. Finally dolled up, she joined us as we all set off to Pripyat, the former home to 50,000 people and within an easy commute to the power plant, less than two kilometres away.
A large cloud of radioactivity had fallen on and around Pripyat. An accident of the wind direction meant that the smaller town of Chernobyl, being in the opposite direction, escaped comparatively unscathed. At least people could continue to live there. We drove up to the checkpoint guarding entry to the town. A couple of dogs slunk between the buildings in the city beyond. A militiaman came out of his little kiosk, checked our papers and we drove in.
Trees and bushes blocked the roads and scraped at the paint as we zigzagged through the overgrown streets. Everywhere there was leaf litter and self-seeded saplings. I looked up past the brownish bushes and trees to see steely grey communist-era tower blocks, broken windows, paint long since flaked off, steps reduced to crumbling slopes. A covering of moss bore witness to the advance of nature.
We pulled up into a wide open area dominated by low trees. It was the former football stadium.
In the early years after the accident, the Soviet government pumped serious money into research and decontamination efforts. Despite being evacuated, parts of Pripyat had been cleaned and de-contaminated by workers allowed to live there. Even the swimming pool was kept in working order. But as funding waned, the town was again abandoned and eventually comprehensively looted.
With the influx of ambitious young scientists
after the accident, the most immediate environmental threats
had been dealt with. And time had played its part. The worst
of the radioactivity had decayed, and with it the funding. Hence
the loss of amenities and the descent of Chernobyl into a town
of middle-aged alcoholics. Andriy explained that it was not just
archaeological relics like Chernobyl that had been frozen in
time. Life in the Zone had also become a living museum of Soviet
culture.
The bar where we had sipped beer and vodka was located in one
of the monolithic concrete blocks that characterise almost every
former Soviet town. In the dimly lit hallway we opened a door
and might have stepped straight onto a 1970s film set. It looked
like a cross between the Chernobyl shop and an eastern European
miners’ dive. It was still early--about 8 p.m.--but one
of the revelers, a 40-year-old man in a boiler suit, decided
that it was time to go dancing. He lurched up, staggered forward
a few feet and then proceeded to sway back and forth to the Russian
pop music with all the skill and confidence that an afternoon’s
vodka drinking gives you. He looked, it must be said, in the
most dreadful condition. His jumpsuit was so dirty I did not
know what colour it was. With the day’s shovelling of nuclear
waste over at 4 p.m., there is nothing else to do in Chernobyl.
There are few girls, and these guys were making the most of it.
“It’s still early.” Andriy drily remarked. “Later
is much more dancing.”
I had shot some atmospheric footage in the bar but was interrupted by the SBU police, the Ukrainian successor organization to the KGB, and forced to erase it all. I had no specific permission to use my camera there.
The next day at breakfast fixer Andriy greeted me with the words: “Now we have lots of problems all connected with last night at the bar”. I rubbed my head and ordered some strong coffee. “Oh dear,” I thought. “That may turn out to be an expensive mistake.”
But I wanted to film the reactor, so presently we were off again in search of ground zero. On Andriy’s instructions we detoured down some side streets and picked up Igor, a jolly little chap with a moustache. Andriy said he would be the SBU’s eyes and ears on me today. He didn’t look much like an SBU agent but I decided to play it safe and apart from a “Hello, how are you?” in Russian, I ignored him.
We soon reached the checkpoint to the inner zone--an area within a 10-kilometer radius of the destroyed reactor. Looking out of the car I could see giant fields of pylons in the distance. A few minutes later and they filled the entire left hand view. A factory-like structure with red scaffolding and a chimney dominated the right. The Chernobyl power station was made up of six reactors but it was No.4 that exploded. Reactors 5 and 6 were still being built when the blast occurred so work on these had been suspended. Their cooling towers now stood unused, grey and crumbling, half completed, the rusting iron frame upon which concrete would have been sprayed.
Even after the accident the Ukrainian government kept the first three reactors going until in 2001 international pressure finally forced them to decomission the entire site-- once a major producer of the Soviet Union’s electricity. Giant lengths of aluminum pipes line the roadside linking building to building. Driving past a long concrete wall covered with barbed wire we eventually arrived at the site of the destroyed reactor.
In the days, weeks and months after the accident there had been a mad scramble to control the radiation streaming out of the reactor ruins and into the atmosphere. The Soviet Union’s neighbors, especially Scandinavia, recorded alarming doses of radiation falling from the sky in the first few days. The accident was out of control.
Inside No. 4, nuclear fuel, melted by the heat of the runaway reaction, had formed a sort of molten lava that flowed through the reactor rooms, melting with and mixing with the concrete of the building. With this lava exposed to the elements and the entire building irradiated, it too became instant nuclear waste and had to be covered.
It was an unprecedented task in the brief history of nuclear power stations. The world watched in horror.
©2006 by Antony Butts All rights reserved. TheColumnists.com wishes to acknowledge the special assistance of EYE ON EUROPE Columnist Michael Johnson in arranging the publication of Mr. Butts' series on this website. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This chapter first posted May 10, 2006.
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