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Ukrainians remember Chernobyl

Ukrainians light candles early yesterday at the memorial of those who died in the clean-up after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster during a ceremony in Slavutich, 120km north of Kiev. After the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl station blew apart on April 26, 1986, Soviet authorities sent thousands of ill-equipped men in to try to contain the situation. The clean-up workers barely lasted more than a few weeks and suffered lingering, painful deaths. PHOTO: EPA

Somber vigils and protests marked the 20th anniversary yesterday of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident that continues to scourge this corner of eastern Europe and haunt millions of people.

Hundreds of survivors gathered at monuments to those who died cleaning up after the disaster, holding flowers and candles at overnight ceremonies in Ukraine where the plant is located.

Ringing bells and wailing sirens pierced the cool night air around the time when two explosions ripped through Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 on April 26, 1986, releasing a huge radioactive cloud into the air and bathing the station in an eerie bluish glow.

"This is a night of remembrance and tragedy," Borys Ulavin, a 59-year-old who participated in the clean-up of the disaster said in the northern town of Slavutich, built to house staff and other evacuees after the accident.

"I knew all of these people," said 59-year-old Mykola Ryabushkin, who was on duty that night at the plant, as he wiped away tears and pointed to photographs of firemen and others who died putting out the flames that night.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who attended an overnight church service in Kiev for victims of the disaster, was to fly to the defunct plant later yesterday.

In neighboring Belarus to the north, where a quarter of the land was contaminated by the released radiation, opposition groups were expected to hold what has become a traditional protest rally in the evening against the government's handling of the accident and its aftermath.

The nation's authoritarian leadership has sought to repopulate areas abandoned in the wake of the accident and critics say that the authorities are ignoring serious health risks in doing so.

Memorial services were also to take place in Kiev and Minsk.

The cloud released by the Chernobyl explosion settled mostly in Ukraine and Belarus, but parts of it drifted across Russia and a large swathe of Europe, and its effects were felt from Scandinavia to Greece.

The impact was made worse by the fact that the Soviet authorities concealed the extent of what had happened for several days and did not begin to evacuate people from the area until more than a day and half later.

Some 5 million people are believed to have been affected by the disaster in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, all of which still have regions where the levels of dangerous cesium-137 and strontium-90 radioisotopes are much higher than accepted norms.

Two decades on, millions of hectares of agricultural and forest land remain contaminated from the accident and its death toll is hotly debated.

UN agencies, backed by the three governments, estimate that between 4,000 and 9,000 people could be expected to die overall as a direct consequence of the accident. Environmental groups put the figure at 100,000 and higher.
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