What is the cost of lies?

By Alyson

What happened at Chernobyl? And how did it shock the world?

On April 26 1986, Reactor number 4 in the Chernobyl (near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR.) power plant exploded. The explosion caused a huge amount of radiation to be spread across Ukraine and other neighbouring countries (Belarus, west Russia). The soviet government tried their best to hide the fact that this disaster occurred but according to ‘untamedscience.com’- ‘the first westerners to know were Swedish Nuclear plant workers whose sensor's read high levels of radiation. Sweden sent out the first alert that something was happening.’

Let’s start from the beginning, a safety test was being conducted (back up of cooling system. by the beginning of the day, the power level of the reactor had reached 50% following this, randomly, one of the regional power stations went offline. It was then requested that further power reduction be postponed, you see if the technicians waited for 24 hours without reducing power, they would have avoided a nuclear disaster but despite this request Anatoly Dyatlov demanded the test to be continued- this ‘poisoned’ the core and then all of a sudden reactor number 4 faced a huge power increase, and then it exploded.

In the reactor there are these control rods which are graphite tipped these rods control the temperature of the uranium inside the core. Once the reactor exploded these extremely radio active graphite blocks were found on the grounds outside the reactor.

Who was Anatoly Dyatlov? And why was he the main blame?

Anatoly Dyatlov (March 3,1931- December 13,1995) was a deputy chief-engineer of Chernobyl nuclear power plant and he was the supervisor of the ‘catastrophic’ safety test which was conducted on April 26, 1986. Anatoly was sentenced to 10 years in prison (he served 3 years only) for violating safety regulations, although he was released as part of general amnesty in 1990.

Anatoly Dyatlov bullied the technicians to violate safety regulations- he demanded them to continue the test. He threatened to fire them, eventually all the technicians died due to extreme radiation exposure, Valery Khodemchuk was a Soviet engineer who was the night shift circulating pump operator at the Chernobyl power plant and was the first victim of the Chernobyl disaster-  it's thought he was killed instantly when the number 4 reactor exploded.

His body was never found and it is presumed he is permanently entombed under Reactor Number 4.

Who was Valery Legasov? And why was he a hero?

Valery Legasov was a Soviet inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He is now mainly remembered for his work as the chief of the commission investigating the Chernobyl disaster. Legasov saved the Soviet Union from complete embarrassment he managed to help stop the reactor core from burning. Legasov’s work till this day remains the most heroic in the world of science. During the Chernobyl trials in 1987 Legasov was a witness he had to explain how reactor number 4 exploded- he exposed the Soviet government for the usage of faulty reactors. He said the soviets used these reactors because it was a cheaper way unlike the west. Legasov’s testimony was not aired it was deleted. Legasov expressed his testimony in tapes which he personally recorded and till this day the name of the person who found these tapes remains unknown. Legasov recorded 5 tapes in total after he recorded the tape’s, he hung himself and this was on April 27,1988-exactly two years after the Chernobyl disaster. Legasov’s most famous quote is “What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.”

The victims of Chernobyl

The total amount of deaths of Chernobyl are not known. Many people died from radiation and those who survived (people evacuated from the town of Pripyat) In 2018, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) reported that the accident also was responsible for nearly 20,000 documented cases of thyroid cancer among individuals who were under 18 years of age at the time of the accident in the three affected countries including Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation. This was due to the high levels of radioactive iodine released from the Chernobyl reactor in the early days after the accident. Radioactive iodine was deposited in pastures eaten by cows who then concentrated it in their milk which was subsequently ingested by children. This was further exacerbated by a general iodine deficiency in the local diet causing more of the radioactive iodine to be accumulated in the thyroid. 

Fire fighters-

It was a long night for the fire fighters. There was graphite on the grounds they were working on, keep in mind that the graphite was the most reactive substance on earth and there were humans standing right next to it and holding it thinking it was some concrete. The fire fighters faced harsh radiation burns and their fire fighter gear still remains in the basement of the Pripyat hospital till this day and it is highly radio active, if you were to stay in that basement for one hour you would a years’ worth of background radiation. Almost all firefighters died after 2 weeks after the explosion. It is said that their death is the worst possible way to die, the Chernobyl fire fighters were told that they had to clear up a small fire but instead they were exposed to 16,000Msv radiation (which is fatal) none of them survived.

So, what is the cost of the lies? The soviet government lied about the faulty RBMK reactors. When the technicians pressed the AZ-5 (stop the reactor completely) the reactor exploded. The safety button did not work. Because of this lie, thousands and thousands of people died, till this day Chernobyl is still reactive. The people of Pripyat were told that they were being evacuated for only 3 days but they never returned to their homes. Their belongings still remain at Pripyat.