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Vol. 78/No. 24 June 23, 2014
Chernobyl: Tale of two
opposite class responses
(front page)
BY FRANK FORRESTAL
AND JOHN STUDER
CHERNOBYL EXCLUSION ZONE, Ukraine — Few live within the 1,000
square-mile area surrounding the world’s worst nuclear disaster that
occurred here nearly three decades ago. Passing through what used to be
cattle ranches, wheat and potato fields and small villages now abandoned
and overrun with vines and weeds, two contrasting images come to mind.
On one hand, the brutality and contempt for working people by the Soviet
government in Moscow. The carelessly flawed design of the nuclear
reactor that led to the meltdown. The decision to skip construction of a
containment vessel that would have impeded the release of radiation. The
refusal to immediately evacuate the area or take any measures to prevent
residents from consuming contaminated milk and vegetables. The callous
and bureaucratic displacement of hundreds of thousands, treating working
people like cattle. The paltry resources to treat victims of radiation
and assist those whose lives were turned upside-down. And the
indifference for the lives and livelihoods of Ukrainian and Russian
workers who risked their lives to contain the disaster and clean up the
mess — which continues to this day.
In contrast is the image of unparalleled and selfless medical aid and
humane care given to more than 25,000 victims of the disaster by the
revolutionary government on the small island of Cuba — which continues
to this day.
The April 26, 1986, disaster unfolded during a test of the control
system as reactor No. 4 was being shut down for routine maintenance. A
sudden power surge led to a meltdown of the reactor core and an intense
10-day fire that released large amounts of radiation, which were carried
far by winds. More than 130 workers at the plant were sickened by high
doses of radiation, according to the United Nations Scientific Committee
on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Twenty-eight were dead within three
months. Another 19 died over the next two decades. And more than 6,000
children and adolescents contracted thyroid cancer from iodine-131,
which was inhaled or ingested, mostly through contaminated milk and
vegetables.
The town of Pripyat, built one mile from Chernobyl’s reactors to house
the facilities’ 50,000 workers and their families, was not evacuated
until 36 hours after the explosion. Residents were told they only needed
clothing for three days and then they could return. They never went back.
About 115,000 were evacuated from the surrounding area and 220,000 total
from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Visitors approaching the crippled Chernobyl plant are stopped at
checkpoints marking two exclusion zones, the first at 30 kilometers
(18.6 miles), the second at 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). To enter the
zones requires government-issued passes and accompaniment by an approved
guide.
25,000 treated in Cuba
As cases of thyroid cancer started growing, which takes several years to
develop, the Cuban government responded in a manner consistent with its
unbroken record of internationalist working-class solidarity. The first
group of 139 children arrived for treatment in Cuba on March 29, 1990.
When the Ukrainian government didn’t have planes to transport them, Cuba
sent two planes, one just finishing repairs in Uzbekistan that had not
yet been painted. The children were greeted by Cuban President Fidel
Castro when they landed.
Over the past 24 years Cuba has treated more than 25,000 people affected
by the disaster, including at least 21,340 children, at a special clinic
established at Tarará, near Havana. Cuban doctors have also been working
in Ukraine.
Even at the height of what Cubans call the “special period” of economic
hardship when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no letup in the
program providing free medical treatment to all who needed it.
“I knew about the Cuban program for the children,” said Mikhail
Remezenko, a union official of the Nuclear Power Workers union and
former worker at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant who accompanied
Militant correspondents. “Children with serious radiation illnesses came
back with greatly improved health. So many were cured. We are very
satisfied with what the Cubans did.”
Olga Svyntytska, who lives in Prybirsk and works resettling former
residents from the exclusion zone who want to move back to the region,
said her cousin went to Cuba as part of the program. Viktoria Babek, who
lives in Slavutych, and is vice chair of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power
Workers union, said many knew about the program from watching TV. “We
were glad to see how the Cuban government took the really sick kids and
how their stay there improved their health,” she said.
At the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev, the solidarity from Cuba is featured in
a large display panel, with photos, letters from family members, and a
copy of the Cuban daily Granma from March 31, 1990, showing a gathering
of Ukrainian mothers with their children. Irina Ivasenko, president of
the Ukrainian Association of Children of Chernobyl, tells Granma she is
struck by how such a small country has such a huge heart.
Workers fight pay, pension cuts
The authors of this article hooked up with Remezenko at Chernobyl Park
in the exclusion zone, which was opened on the 25th anniversary of the
explosion. A long row of signs carry the names of the 187 towns in
Ukraine and Belarus that were evacuated. Another monument marks the
murderous effects of Washington’s nuclear assault on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945.
“Twenty-eight firefighters from the plant and from two fire departments
in Chernobyl and Pripyat were killed fighting the fires after the
explosion,” Remezenko told us. In their honor, firemen donated money to
build a life-size monument in front of their fire station. The
government refused to pay for it.
Like many of the nuclear workers, Remezenko lives in Slavutych, a town
of 25,000 built to house workers forced to abandon Pripyat.
“We are among the lowest paid and worst-treated nuclear workers,” Sergey
Akamovych, an executive committee member of the union, told us. “We
don’t produce any energy to sell so we don’t make them any profit.”
But there is still room for corruption, he said. Only 60 percent of the
government’s allocation for Chernobyl makes it to the plant each year.
The rest, he said, “disappears.”
Some 2,700 workers from Slavutych work at Chernobyl, dismantling the
remaining reactors, processing leftover nuclear fuel and preventing new
radioactive leaks. It is a slow and dangerous process. All four reactors
are closed; the last shut down in 2000. Two reactors — No. 5 and No. 6 —
were under construction at the time of the explosion and still stand,
partially built and surrounded by a gaggle of cranes.
Approximately 200 tons of fuel, plutonium and other highly radioactive
fission by-products remain in the bowels of the destroyed reactor No. 4.
Somewhere between 600,000 to 800,000 workers — known as liquidators —
were involved in the cleanup effort. Thousands of coal miners were
drafted from across Ukraine to dig a tunnel under the wreckage and
install a coil to cool the concrete floor and reinforce cracks.
At first they were granted special government benefits because of the
danger of the work, including two years of pensions for each year they
worked. But nuclear workers more and more had to fight successive
Ukrainian governments over wages and pensions. In February 1999, workers
set up tent camps outside government offices in Kiev and the country’s
five nuclear plants demanding they be paid more than $15 million in
outstanding wages.
The fighting example of workers who have been involved in the cleanup
and maintenance of the Chernobyl nuclear site is part of the political
struggle taking shape in Ukraine today. Protests by liquidators took
place from 2011 through 2013 from Kiev to Kharkiv to Luhansk, opposing
the pension cuts ordered by President Viktor Yanukovych, who was
overthrown in popular anti-government demonstrations in February.
Related articles:
‘Challenge to Ukraine has brought us together’
Bosses target workers, separatists sow chaos in east
Calif. socialist: ‘We should back workers in Ukraine’
Contribute to ‘Militant’ reporting team to Ukraine
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