Our memory is very short: just a little over 30 years ago we were at the epicenter of the largest technological disaster in the recent history of mankind, and today these events have moved for some to the periphery of consciousness. Then, no one knew if we had a chance to live, whether our children and grandchildren had a future. Of course, the perception of events is different in families where Chernobyl invalids suffer, or in those who buried their Chernobyl heroes. But who can hear them?
The events of recent years pushed Chernobyl pain and problems. There are many reasons for this. This is our unconscious desire to get rid of annoying anxiety, and new social disasters, and new painful problems of mankind. Many will agree that the unfortunate pandemic of the coronovirus today is much more terrifying than the accident in Chernobyl in 1986.
The coronovirus epidemic, having become the major planet’s topic today, infects people not only with its deadly virus, but also threateningly penetrates the subconscious of almost every person. Caution! Virus! Wash your hands! Quarantine! We hear these phrases from all sides. You must admit that, on the one hand, such an open, close and comprehensive attention to the next pandemic allows a person, at least, to be aware of the problem, which was so critically missed in 1986.
But on the other hand, it paralyzes attention, distracting from more global environmental problems. All that today can be considered an information space cultivates coronovirus fear, warns against consequences, terrifies the growing number of deaths, identifies the coronovirus pandemic with the planetary apocalypse. This is a massive blow for people with an easily excitable psyche.
But didn’t you try to recall the primary sources and strain your memory?
- Blackpox flashing up on different continents of the planet, starting from the 10th century, affected 40% of the population only in the second half of the 19th century. Moreover, it claimed the lives of 300 to 500 million people in the 20th century.
- The three most widespread outbreaks of the plague pandemic, which were in the X, XIV, XIX and XX centuries, claimed a total of millions of lives.
- Seven pandemic cholera, which is one of the most common and deadly diseases on the planet, claimed tens of millions of lives.
- About 30 million people were ill from typhus during World War I alone in Russia and Poland, of whom 3.5 million died.
- Modern statistics indicate that from 250 to 500 thousand people die every year of all strains of the influenza virus during seasonal epidemics in the world. Only the Influenza Pandemic (or the Spanish flu) claimed the lives of 50-100 million people in 1918-1920.
- About 100 million people died of tuberculosis during the 20th century.
- 350–500 million cases of malaria are registered each year, of which about 3 million end in death.
- 25 million people died of diseases related to HIV and AIDS from 1981 to 2006.
Over time, scientists systematize the accumulated experience and find a vaccine against the most serious diseases. But not in the case of radiation sickness arising from radiation exposure.
Unfortunately, there is no vaccine for the diseases caused by the Chernobyl disaster. It is impossible to get vaccinated against oncological diseases, such as smallpox or malaria, it is impossible to recover by quarantine itself. Cancers are considered the second leading cause of death in the world. 18 people die every minute from cancer, oncological diseases, including those caused by technological disasters, such as the Chernobyl accident, take the lives of about 10 million people. In connection with these, the question arises:
But aren’t we too early to forget about Chernobyl?
There is no guarantee that the invisible, inaudible, elusive for our senses Chernobyl beast does not stretch its terrible tentacles to subsequent generations through gene mutations. We do not know what black hole of the universe hid in a dilapidated sarcophagus, where tons of radioactive substances are concentrated.
What are the dangers posed by the waste from nuclear power plants whose neutralization technologies have not been developed by specialists yet? There are a lot of questions for which there are no answers. Therefore, it is important to comprehend the catastrophe and its consequences again and again.
In fact, it was not Chernobyl that defied humanity, this man defied nature.
Atom is a “twisted universe”, infinity facing inward. A man, without thinking about the consequences, “woke up infinity,” but it turned out that this is not the infinity of life with its constructive transformations, but the infinity of death with its pathological mutations.
An atom cannot completely isolate itself, but it is capable of devilishly disintegrating all living things. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant named after V.I. Lenin, as a chain reaction of communism, was intended to become the emblem of the “unsurpassed achievements” of the Soviet system, and became its sinister symbol. A ruined reactor can be covered with at least a dozen sarcophagi, but the “communist death factory” will continue to operate.
Experts say that the destroyed Soviet reactor is an extremely complex object that has not been fully studied by science in either technical or radiation terms. We inherited from the past regime 180 tons of nuclear death, enriched uranium and plutonium, which would be enough for tens of atomic bombs, and a long-term prospect from 120 to 150 years of the phased closure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. What about the processes of decay and half-life? For example, tens of thousands of years are needed for the decay of plutonium…
Why did the first IAEA forecast fail so brilliantly?
The rusty five-pointed stars in the Exclusion Zone are a reminder that communism is dangerous even dead, it, like the rust of ideology, causes sepsis in the peoples infected with it. Chernobyl is not a challenge, but a consequence of a challenge to the laws of history, the laws of nature, the laws of human existence. The fatal circle, if you think about it: what is the number of victims of the Chernobyl disaster? Where is the final truth about the impact of the Chernobyl disaster on people?
The Holocaust, and the horror experienced with it, taught mankind a new ethic. Every name, every human life is rehabilitated from the abyss of history. In Jerusalem, at the Yad Vashem Memorial, under the dome of a dark starry sky, the announcer’s voice speaks the names of the dead Jewish children in all latitudes of Europe tormented by Nazism.
The drama of individual human destinies during the Holocaust has become an integral part of the moral consciousness of modern man. And what remains of the Holodomor? In those years, not a single journalist could enter Ukraine, it was impossible to take a single photo ?! It was impossible even to recall this tragedy for more than fifty years to come. The people meekly went underground.
The ban on information about the events in Chernobyl was lifted slowly, in parallel with the steady collapse of the Soviet system itself, from 1989 to 1991. How much real truth came out of the regime’s bloody mud? And how much truth has settled on its muffled bottom?
The Soviet system left man only freedom to die, often without the right to know the causes and extent of death. Chernobyl, the “Soviet-style peaceful atom” is more than 400 Hiroshima bombs. The Chernobyl disaster is the first time that modern humanity has come up against the threat of irreversible changes in the structure of being itself.
Today, some countries are generating a new round of nuclear energy development, which seems to them to be a good alternative to thermal power plants amid a decrease oil and gas reserves in world.
According to the estimates of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in general, the countries of the world will spend over $200 billion by 2030 on the development of nuclear energy, and the share of electricity generated by nuclear power plants will increase markedly. Is this IAEA forecast justified enough? Does society believe in the safety of modern nuclear reactors and the cleanliness of nuclear energy?
This is not the first time the IAEA has made a forecast for the development of nuclear energy. As early as 1974, this agency claimed that 4,500 nuclear power plants would operate worldwide by the end of the twentieth century. However, it happened differently. Currently, thirty-one countries in the world receive energy through 192 nuclear power plants. These stations operate 438 power units. Why did the first IAEA forecast fail so brilliantly? Did this happen solely because of the explosion of the reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986?
As you know, the UN recognized Chernobyl as a world-class problem. According to experts from this organization, the losses caused by the Chernobyl disaster to all countries amount to almost a trillion dollars, of which at least 200 billion US dollars fall to Ukraine. In addition, according to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, over 504 thousand people from those who worked in Chernobyl and those who lived in radiation-contaminated territories died in twenty years.
It’s almost impossible to calculate the exact number of people affected by the consequences of the Chernobyl accident on a global scale. So, aren’t these signs of an atomic pandemic?
The problems of nuclear energy have not been resolved in Chernobyl yet. The scale of the Chernobyl problems is so huge that it is impossible to get rid of them only by the forces of Ukraine itself. For more than 30 years, hundreds of millions of dollars have already been invested in solving these problems, but the state of problems has not improved. Does this not speak about the dangers of nuclear energy and the unreliability of the spent fuel and radioactive waste storage technologies used?
The work on liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster is financed by the G8. They involved companies from the United States and European countries. And if participants in international Chernobyl projects fail to eliminate all the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, then the global nuclear energy industry will completely lose public confidence.