It’s been over 30 years since one of the reactors exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, near the city of Pripyat in what is now Ukraine.
While an acclaimed HBO/Sky miniseries has renewed interest in the accident, how it happened, and its historic importance, Harvard University history professor Serhii Plokhy has written an hour-by-hour account; Chernobyl: History of A Tragedy.
The HBO miniseries sparked new interest in the events in Chernobyl Photo: HBO
The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 came during the Cold War.
As a result, the construction of the nuclear reactor, the way the industry functioned, and the fallout from the disaster was shrouded in secrecy.
With the final days of the Soviet Union, in late 1991, came the first public admission about the power plant's major construction problems from the Commission for Academy of Sciences.
The Soviet Union's culture of secrecy trumped the culture of safety, Plokhy says.
“The accident, in technological terms, of the same kind that we had in Chernobyl in 1986, happened also ten years earlier in 1975 at the nuclear powerplant in the city that is called today St Petersburg, it was called Leningrad back then."
While not at the same level as in Chernobyl, there was a release of radiation.
“The problem with the control rods and some other issues with the reactors, they were already obvious back then, but that information was kept secret, even from the people in the industry, the nuclear industry in the Soviet Union.”
Decontamination at Chernobyl Photo: CC 3.0 BY-SA / IAEA Imagebank
In 1986, Plokhy was 500km from the reactor. He says he didn’t even know about the accident until 29 April, three days later, when Swedish media started to report on it, and the Soviet media followed suit.
“But talking in a way that didn’t provide information, assurances, or any advice on what the people in the close neighbourhood to the nuclear powerplant, or further away, should do.”
People were getting their information from foreign media, he says.
“Everyone understood that something serious had happened because normally Soviet media didn’t talk about accidents.
“Even if they were saying that everything was under control, that everything was taken care of, everyone knew that something big happened otherwise there would be no mention of it at all.”
But they didn’t know what exactly happened and people were suspicious of the government, he says.
Things are different now though; the Chernobyl exclusion zone is shared by Ukraine and Belarus.
“The country that built the reactor, the Soviet Union, doesn’t exist anymore but the problem with the fallout and issues with the damaged reactor, will continue for generations to come."
The construction of a new shelter has just been completed, but its lifetime is 100 years, which means a different generation will also have to deal with Chernobyl, he says.
“The more international cooperation, international standards and international control we can have, the better because at the end of the day, it’s the international community, the G7 in particular, that foots the bill.”
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