1991: A LOOK BACK: Chornobyl: Five years after (12/29/91)

1991: A LOOK BACK

Chornobyl: Five years after

1991 marked the fifth anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident - the April 26, 1986, explosion at reactor No. 4 of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. An astounding amount of information about the accident came to light during the year, much of it in advance of fifth anniversary commemorations, which included world-wide rallies, conferences and memorial services.

The Ukrainian and all-union governments enacted numerous Chornobyl-related legislation in 1991 and initiated criminal proceedings against those involved. UNESCO and the World Health Organization (WHO) brought international recognition to Chornobyl by endorsing aid packages for its victims, and the International Atomic Energy Agency published its long-awaited Chornobyl report.

In the beginning of the year, the WHO endorsed an international plan to aid Chornobyl victims by adopting a resolution on January 22 to set up an international center for radiation monitoring and treatment in Obninsk, 60 miles southwest of Moscow. The plan was jointly initiated by the Soviet government.

In February, Kievtourist, a Soviet tour company, began offering tours of the Chornobyl zone to Soviet and foreign travelers which included the city of Chornobyl, a radioactive waste dump at Kopachi, the concrete sarcophagus built around the reactor, and the city of Slavutych.

On February 5, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to accept the first reading of a draft law on Chornobyl which comprised a package of three proposals dealing with problems encountered by residents living in contaminated areas and resettlement programs. Volodymyr Yavorivsky, chairman of the Parliament's Chornobyl Committee, also presented two draft laws: "Concerning the status of the territories which were affected by the catastrophe of the Chornobyl Nuclear Energy Station" and "Concerning the status of the citizens who suffered as a result of the Chornobyl catastrophe."

On February 7, Nikolai Trubin, the USSR Procurator General, announced that he had initiated a criminal investigation into the handling of the Chornobyl explosion, assigning the case to a special team of investigators from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Mr. Trubin charged that an unspecified number of officials involved in the clean-up had failed to evacuate people as quickly and safely as they should have, had ignored dangerous radiation readings, had used slipshod methods to bury contaminated waste, and had built resettlement homes in contaminated regions. The officials faced criminal charges of negligence, abuse of authority, and violation of health norms.

On February 11, fashion designer Pierre Cardin was appointed UNESCO's honorary ambassador for its campaign to raise funds for Chornobyl victims. In his capacity as honorary ambassador, Mr. Cardin designed a medal and jewelry commemorating the disaster's fifth anniversary. The pieces, bearing the inscription "Priority Environment," were priced from $50 to $500; proceeds benefited the UNESCO-Chornobyl program.

On April 12, UNESCO Director General Federico Mayor pledged $100,000 for the creation of an international UNESCO laboratory in Kiev for the psychological rehabilitation of Chornobyl children. Mr. Mayor also outlined future UNESCO-Chornobyl program projects at a press conference in Kiev: fellowships for radiobiology and radioecology research; recommendations on the preservation of folklore, folk traditions, monuments of culture and cultural heritage in the Chornobyl zone; and the study of safe water supply and land use in contaminated regions.

On April 14, Vladimir Chernousenko, the scientific director in charge of the 20-mile exclusion zone surrounding the Chornobyl plant, announced that the Chornobyl explosion claimed between 7,000 and 10,000 lives. Mr. Chernousenko said that the fatalities included the reportedly 229,000 miners and military men exposed to radiation during the clean-up and that he had come forward, in part, because he himself was expected to live only two to four more years because of his exposure to radiation.

Dr. Yuriy Spizhenko, Ukraine's minister of health, in an April interview with TASS, provided the latest Chornobyl statistics: to date, 93,500 people had been evacuated from contaminated regions; 1.5 million people continued to live in contaminated regions, 460,000 of which were children; 40,000 people were expected to be resettled from the contaminated areas of Kiev, Zhytomyr and Rivne oblasts.

In advance of Chornobyl's fifth anniversary, Yuri Samoilenko, general director of the Soviet Spetsatom organization, appealed for funds to seal reactor No. 4 of the Chornobyl plant, claiming that radiation was still leaking from a 15,000-square-foot area of the reactor and that it was feared that a 2,000-ton piece of reactor debris hanging inside the reactor casing, or sarcophagus, could fall.

At an April 17 press conference in Moscow, Victor A. Gubanov, chairman of the national Chornobyl clean-up commission, stated that the Soviet government had registered 576,000 people contaminated by radiation and was providing medical care to 300,000 of them each year. He also said that the Soviet government had spent 16.3 billion rubles to date in Chornobyl clean-up and resettlement.

On the eve of the Chornobyl anniversary, a new document published as a result of a separate investigation by the State Industrial Atomic Inspection of the USSR, demonstrated that the explosion of April 26, 1986, was due almost entirely to the design of the reactor and control rods. The report also proved that the explosion had occurred not as a result of the experiment, but rather during the course of what was considered a normal post experiment shutdown of the reactor for maintenance work.

On April 22-25, the Euro-Chornobyl II conference took place in Kiev to commemorate Chornobyl's fifth anniversary. V.M. Ponomarenko, Ukraine's deputy minister of health, acknowledged the secrecy and misinformation of the past and provided a detailed report on the current health problems of the contaminated zone, especially among children, pregnant women, and clean-up workers - some of whom now have reduced fertility rates and incurable skin diseases.

The conference did not reach any definite conclusions about these health problems, but rather served as a forum for debate on an international level. It was at Euro-Chornobyl II that Dr. Robert Gale, a bone marrow transplant expert for the University of California, made his infamous statement that "Radiation was less dangerous than cigarettes to the population of Kiev."

The fifth anniversary of Chornobyl was marked by a rally and ecumenical prayer service of 1,200 gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House, conferences and symposiums in New York, Chicago, Berkeley, Calif., and Washington, an art exhibit in Detroit, and memorial services in Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox parishes throughout the United States and Canada.

In Kiev, seminars, press conferences, a telemarathon, a requiem concert - 25 events in all - marked Chornobyl's fifth anniversary April 21-27. As April 26 was proclaimed a day of national mourning, people gathered for meetings and demonstrations; 5,000 participated in a memorial service at St. Sophia's Cathedral. In Parliament, Deputy Chairman Ivan Pliushch reported that a moratorium was issued to any further building of nuclear power plants on Ukraine's territory.

In Chornobyl, Minnesota art instructor Oksana Pawlykowych Yonan began her "Journey of the Heart," a cycling tour encircling, in the shape of a heart, the sites of Ukraine's nuclear power plants. Ms. Yonan planned to gather the stories and artwork of the "children of Chornobyl," compile it and prepare a traveling exhibit and a book.

On May 21, the International Atomic Energy Agency published "The International Chornobyl Project: An Overview." The 57-page report was the result of a formal request from the Soviet government and was viewed as neither definitive nor complete, "attributing every medical predicament resulting from the disaster to psychological problems among an ignorant and misinformed population." ("The International Chornobyl Project: an assessment of the IAEA's report," Dr. David R. Marples, The Ukrainian Weekly, No. 33.)

The report drew angry responses from Ukrainian authorities, Dr. Natalia Preobrazhenska of Zelenyi Svit (Green World), Ukraine's Green Party and Greenpeace.

On October 11, an electrical fire broke out in the generator room of reactor No. 2 at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, causing 1,800 square meters of the generator room's roof to cave in, and the shutdown of the reactor. A special government commission was formed to investigate the fire and supervise clean-up, headed by Ukrainian State Minister Viktor Hladush.

On October 29, Ukraine's Parliament voted to shut down the Chornobyl plant no later than 1993. The Parliament voted to keep reactor No. 2 shut down and taken off line immediately while setting a deadline of 1993 for shutting down reactors Nos. 1 and 3. The Parliament also issued an appeal to the United Nations to initiate an international competition between private and public companies over who could create the safest and most efficient program of shutting down Chornobyl and finding a permanent solution to the "sarcophagus problem."

On December 11, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a resolution demanding prosecution of Soviet leaders for covering up the Chornobyl explosion of April 1986. Mr. Yavorivsky announced that he would submit evidence to Ukraine's Procurator General gathered by two parliamentary Chornobyl commissions implicating the following Soviet and Ukrainian leaders of criminal disregard for the lives of Ukrainian citizens: former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, former Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, former KGB chief Viktor Chebrykov, Soviet adviser Yegor Ligachev, former Defense Minister Dimitri Yazov; Ukrainian former party chief Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, former Prime Minister Oleksander Lyashko, former Parliament Chair Valentyna Shevchenko, former Deputy Prime Minister and Chornobyl commission chairman V. Kachalovsky, former Health Minister Anatoly Romanenko.