Monday, April 4, 2011

Chernobyl Disaster Documentary

If you have an hour, sit down and watch this amazing documentary about the Chornobyl disaster - with interviews with Hans Blix, Gorbachev, government and military workers, journalists, scientists, and Prypyat refugees.

We watched this documentary on the train out of Kyiv, heading out to Odessa to do some sightseeing after our big adventure to Chornobyl. It made me realize just what I had been walking through, what I had witnessed 23 years later, that I was now a part of nuclear experience in the Exclusion Zone. I don't think I will ever forget my time there or what I witnessed.

To this day, the term "The Liquidators" is one that I will always associate with radiation and death - even though these approximately 800000 young men were heros for going in without true knowledge of what they were getting into. The most heroic to me are the team of coal miners, who used their expertise to pump out the contaminated water to prevent its entrance into the groundwater. Although they were given suits and masks to wear, it was so dark and hot under the reactor, most chose to go in unencumbered by these ineffective security measures in order to work faster and breathe properly. They truly had no idea what working so long with so little protection under the reactor would do to them.

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