Four years ago, on April 26, 2016, the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster was commemorated in Ukraine and around the world.
In the early morning hours, sirens sounded in Ukraine to mark 30 years since the moment that the first explosion blew the roof off the building housing a reactor at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant that sent a cloud of radioactive material high into the air, drifting into Russia and Belarus, and across northern Europe.
In 2016, President Petro Poroshenko attended a commemorative ceremony at the Chornobyl plant, which is located in the “exclusion zone” that extends to include approximately 1,000 square miles. Mr. Poroshenko stated “the consequences of the catastrophe” have not been resolved, adding that the disaster has been “a heavy burden on the shoulders of the Ukrainian people” and that the country was “still a long way” from overcoming the tragedy.
The Embassy of Ukraine in the United States issued a statement about the legacy of Chornobyl, calling it “the world’s worst accident at a nuclear power plant due to the number of its victims and the scale of its effects,” adding that it will take “many more years and huge resources to finally overcome its effects.”
The blast of radiation from Chornobyl was equivalent to 30 to 40 times what was released by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the second world war, with recorded radiation spikes in Western Europe, as well as the East Coast of the U.S.
The initial fires from the explosion lasted more than 10 days and were finally extinguished by 240 firefighters who received high doses of radiation. Thrity-one of those responders died of exposure. Those “liquidators” as they were known are credited with managing to prevent a strong hydrogen explosion that could have resulted in an even more tragic accident. In 2016, there were 1,961,904 citizens of Ukraine who had the status of victims of the Chornobyl disaster, including 108,530 disabled and 418,777 children. More than 35,000 families receive benefits due to the loss of a breadwinner whose death is related to the Chornobyl disaster.
This year, a forest fire in the exclusion zone that began on April 3 was not completely extinguished by April 17, based on satellite imagery from NASA, and it caused radiation levels to increase to 16 times above normal. A 27-year-old local resident was arrested for intentionally starting the fire, but no additional details could be confirmed. Kyiv was blanketed in a haze of smog from that fire, but because of the coronavirus quarantine measures, most residents were unaffected. Authorities said radiation levels in the capital were within norms.
Source: “30th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster,” The Ukrainian Weekly, May 1, 2016.