26.4 DEDICATED TO THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INTERNATIONAL CHERNOBYL DISASTER REMEMBRANCE DAY
On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl tragedy, the team of “Unlimited Democracy” went to the exclusion zone of Chernobyl to show the public the current development and the changes since the explosion. We invite you to watch the video and honor the many victims of the most terrible man-made environmental and humanitarian catastrophe of the 20th century.
Short Info & Basic Facts
On 26 April 1986, the Number Four reactor at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union during improper testing at low-power, resulted in loss of control that led to an explosion and fire that demolished the reactor building and released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. As safety measures were ignored, the uranium fuel in the reactor overheated and melted through the protective barriers.
The initial explosion resulted in the death of two workers. Twenty-eight of the firemen and emergency clean-up workers died in the first three months after the explosion from Acute Radiation Sickness and one of cardiac arrest.
The highest radiation doses were received by emergency workers and on-site personnel, in total about 1000 people, during the first days of accident, and doses were fatal for some of the workers. In time more than 600 000 people were registered as emergency and recovery workers (‘liquidators’).
An area spanning 30 kilometres around the plant is considered the “exclusion zone” and is essentially uninhabited.
Although some of the radioactive isotopes released into the atmosphere still linger (such as Strontium-90 and Caesium-137), they are at tolerable exposure levels for limited periods of time. Some residents of the exclusion zone have returned to their homes at their own free will, and they live in areas with higher than normal environmental radiation levels.
Disagreement continues over how many people died as a result of radiation released by the explosion in Chernobyl reactor four.
Source: IAEA
