Tolling bells mark Chernobyl disaster
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — Bells tolled across Ukraine and mourners carried red carnations and flickering candles to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident today, a disaster that continues to scar this ex-Soviet republic.
Dozens gathered in the town of Chernobyl, about 10 miles from the plant, for reunions with old friends, and parliament opened a special session dedicated to the accident.
"Let God not allow this to be repeated, let God not make our grandsons relive this," said Valentyna Mashina, 55, standing near a monument to the victims in Chernobyl, where 4,000 people still work in the most highly contaminated zone — but for no more than two weeks at a time.
The April 26, 1986, pre-dawn explosion and fire became the world's worst nuclear accident, spewing radiation across vast stretches of Europe. It cast a radioactive shadow over the health of millions of people; many believe it contributed to the Soviet Union's eventual collapse.
In Kiev, hundreds carrying red carnations and flickering candles filed by memorials early Wednesday, as bells tolled and sirens sounded at 1:23 a.m. — the exact time that Reactor No. 4 exploded at the power station.
Mykola Malyshev, 66, was working in the control room of Chernobyl's Reactor No. 1 at the time of the explosion. He said the lights flickered and the room shook. The workers were ordered to the destroyed reactor, but when they got there, their co-workers ordered them to flee and save themselves. "They told us, 'We are already dead. Go away,"' Malyshev recalled at the Kiev ceremony.
The explosion tore off the plant's roof, spewing radioactive fallout for 10 days over 77,220 square miles of the then-Soviet Union and Europe.
At least 31 people died as a direct result of trying to keep the fire from spreading to the plant's three other operating reactors. One plant worker was killed instantly and his body has never been recovered. Twenty-nine rescuers, firefighters and plant workers died later from radiation poisoning and burns, and another person died of an apparent heart attack
Death tolls connected to the blast remain hotly debated, as do the long-term health effects.
Thousands have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, one of the only internationally accepted illnesses linked to Chernobyl, and the U.N. health agency said about 9,300 people were likely to die of cancers caused by radiation.
Some groups, however, including Greenpeace, have warned that death tolls could be 10 times higher and accused the U.N. of whitewashing the long-term effects of the accident in order to restore trust in the safety of atomic power.
The shelter, or "sarcophagus," that was hastily erected over Reactor No. 4 is now crumbling, and a $1.2 billion project to replace it remains on the drawing board. Yushchenko has said he expects work to begin this year, and be completed around 2010.
