James Haines-Young| The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Thirty years after the devastating Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Ukraine’s interim ambassador to Lebanon described his memories of the event and the long-term effects that the country still feels today. “It wasn’t just a power station it was a huge atomic nuclear facility, with a town of 50,000 people, they were all moved in two days,” Vitalii Borovko told The Daily Star in an interview at the Ukrainian Embassy in Baabda Tuesday.

In the early hours of April 26, 1986, sirens at Chernobyl power station screeched out a warning, and marked the beginning of the worst nuclear disaster in human history. Over the next 10 days, radiation would poor out of the decimated fourth reactor, sending plumes of contaminated dust across Ukraine, the surrounding countries and as far as Russia and Northern Europe. As the Soviet authorities tried to battle to control the blast, 250,000 people were relocated within the first 48 hours and a 30-kilometer zone in all directions would isolate the site for the next three decades.

While Ukraine paused Tuesday to commemorate and remember the events of 1986, they also know that the impact of the disaster is still being felt today. Thousands live with the long-term effects of having worked on the cleanup or simply having been near the site at the time. The broader environmental impact on the country also remains significant.

“Even now there are some areas of the exclusion zone that have very high levels of radiation that we can’t do anything about; the half-life of some of the elements is up to 24,000 years,” Borovko said. The Ukrainian government estimates that the zone will be safe for human habitation again in around 20,000 years.

Since 2007, the Ukraine has been building a new structure around the decimated power plant to contain the radiation and begin deconstructing the facility. At a cost of over $1.5 billion, the ambitious project was only possible with significant help from the international community. Even with funding, however, they don’t expect to finish dismantling the site until at least 2068.

Borovko has his own memories of the disaster, “I was [around] 10 years old and we drove past the international airport in Kiev and I remember thinking, ‘Why are there so many planes taking off’ – one by one by one.” The aircraft were carrying children from the immediate area around the site to other regions of the country, he explained.

In the aftermath of the disaster, thousands of soldiers and workers were sent into the zone to control the blast and organize the evacuations. In total, Borovko says that around 840,000 “liquidators” were involved in the cleanup operations. “[The liquidators] are considered heroes because during the first years, months or even weeks, people were going in with levels of radiation so high that it was obvious they would be harmed,” he said. “They get social allowance and assistance for what that did and of course many were decorated, there’s a special medal.”

For a long time after the incident, the Soviet authorities tried to keep the accident a secret, no news broadcasts reported it and photographs were tightly controlled.

Since independence in 1991, the Ukraine has been trying to spread the word of the Chernobyl disaster, partly to encourage the international community to assist the country in the cleanup operation. “Ukraine’s economy was suffering and we couldn’t confront this problem alone, so we did our best to [raise awareness],” Borovko said.

Thirty years later, Borovko explained that despite the long-term dangers, the threat of radiation didn’t loom over the heads of the Ukrainian people. “Kiev, the capital, is just 100 km from the site of the explosion, but people still live there, I’m from Kiev, I lived there all my life,” he said. “No one experienced this kind of thing before, but I wouldn’t say that people are generally that concerned,” he added. Borovko also pointed out the Chernobyl wasn’t the only reactor they had in Ukraine, indeed there were several other nuclear power stations in the country – although he said the safety procedures have improved a lot since the soviet period.

There remains significant environmental monitoring across Ukraine to make sure that crops and livestock reared in the country didn’t contain high levels of radiation from the fallout, Borovko added. After all these years, he said the levels have fallen somewhat. Just across the border in Belarus the radiation is still being felt. The AP Monday reported that milk in the country contained high levels of Chernobyl residue.

Despite the wide-reaching impact of the disaster, Borovko remained up-beat about the progress made in the cleanup despite the incredible costs his government estimated it spent – draining the economy of some $180 billion to date.

Borovko also discussed the wide-ranging changes his country has faced over the past few years – from a revolution in 2014 that saw a reforming pro-European government enter office, to the recent annexation of territories by Russian and Russian-backed militias in the Crimean peninsula and the east of the country. “The Ukrainian leadership believes the only way [to reunify the country] is a political solution, we’re not promoting a military settlement,” explained Borovko. He added that as well as international sanctions on Russia for their actions, the government in Kiev saw economic prosperity as the path to reunification.

 http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2016/Apr-27/349448-ukrainian-envoy-discusses-chernobyl-disaster-30-years-on.ashx