The battle of Chernobyl

Hi everybody!

Since the Ukraine is marking the 30^th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster I want to write an article about a video that we watched in our last English lesson. The video is called “The battle of Chernobyl”.

Basically the video says that on 26^th April 1986 the most serious nuclear accident ever in history has taken place.

An explosion and fire occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which is located only three kilometres away from the city Pripyat. The explosion released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere which spread all over the USSR and Europe. The radioactive fallout was 100 times greater than the combined power of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is also said that two men died in this night and 28 in the following months. This were the first victims of Chernobyl.

The first day the inhabitants only were told that they should close the windows and stay inside. The children got iodine tablets at school.

After 30 hours over 1000 buses came to Pripyat to evacuate all the persons concerned. The 43000 inhabitants only had two hours to get all their belongings.

They were told that they will come back home in some days but in reality they could never go home again.

After some days the responsible still didn’t say a word. At the 28^th April radioactive dust of Chernobyl rained down on Stockholm. That’s how the other countries experienced what has happened.

But the fire still burned. So a lot of helicopter flew to the Nuclear Power Plant to extinguish the flames. They threw tons of sandbags to stop the fire and neutralise radiation.

The radiation victims were sent to Moscow. The initial symptoms of radiation sickness are vomiting, and nausea.

It is unbelievable what has happened on the 26th April in Ukraine. We still see the consequences today. Numerous persons fall ill and die.

What shocked me most was that nothing has happened more than 30 hours. The inhabitants of the obvious cities, especially the inhabitants of Pripyat, neither were warned nor evacuated from the city.

Regards,

Julian