Recalling Chernobyl

As a journalist born and raised in Russia, Viktoria Mitlyng interviewed and wrote about first responders to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.

“I had the honor of spending a significant amount of time with the firefighters who were involved in still trying to put out fires later on as the situation developed,” she said Wednesday.

“The initial brigade of firefighters was from the plant. Three of those who died had bodies so radioactive they had to be buried in lead coffins.”

The most serious accident in the history of the nuclear industry to date, the explosion took place on April 26, 1986, at Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. The plant was located in the former Ukrainian Republic of the Soviet Union.

The explosion ruptured the reactor vessel. The fire that followed burned a good 10 days, and forced large amounts of radioactive materials into the environment. About 116,000 people near the plant were evacuated that spring and summer. They were followed later by another 220,000 evacuees.

The cloud from the burning reactor spread numerous types of radioactive materials like iodine-131 and caesium radionuclides over much of Europe. Iodine-131 has an eight-day half-life and mostly disintegrated within weeks. Casium-137 has a 30-year half-life, and can still be measured in the soil and some foods in parts of Europe.

Viktoria’s family lived about 100 miles from the town of Chernobyl. She was in school when the accident occurred. She returned to Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart, and was invited by the Moscow Times, an English language daily, to work at the newspaper in Moscow. She wrote a lot about post-Soviet politics, and many of her pieces received worldwide distribution.

She began on the news desk, then was assigned a feature page to fill with what she pleased, as she was a native Russian who spoke the language and knew the country and many, many people.

“I got in touch with what the Russians and Chernobylites called the Chernobyl Liquidators. This was the term they used for the thousands of people who responded to the disaster, from the first group of firefighters — the first wave or crew who went onto the roof of the turbine building that was on fire, and the roof of Reactor No. 3, to make sure there would not be another explosion,” she said.

Reactor No. 4 had blown in the disaster. Reactor No. 2 was adjacent to No. 4. The first wave of firefighter crews were company workers. They were fighting fires on the building in efforts to prevent another explosion or accident at Reactor No. 2.

“The original crews went onto this hot tar roof. It was a highly radioactive environment. The crews weren’t suited up — they didn’t have decontamination suits on, or have breathing apparatuses,” Viktoria said.

“They were not protected in any way. They just went onto the roofs and put out the fires. They died of acute radiation poisoning. Some of them collapsed on the roof, and some were taken to the hospital. The end result is a number of firefighters died of acute radiation poisoning.”

Plant personnel were sent into an exclusion area not open to the public. Certain workers were told to clean up basically what had happened at the reactor. They were to remove the radioactive debris near the reactor.

“It was a huge explosion. There were huge pieces of graphite on the ground emitting radiation, and they needed to be removed. Some folks were sent in to build shelters for the cleanup crews. Others were working to build sarcophagi around the reactors,” she said.

“There were thousands of these people, but the Soviets did not keep records, so we don’t know how many. But I have seen where about 70,000 or so were involved in the cleanup.”

The second wave of firefighters came from Pripyat, others from the town of Chernobyl, and from Kiev, about 60 miles distant from the reactors. Viktoria worked with members of the crews from Chernobyl.

“At the time they went, they had no idea of what they were going into,” she said. “They didn’t know how severe the accident was, or how much danger they were in. But they knew if it wasn’t a kamikaze mission, they were putting their health on the line because it was an accident at a nuclear power plant.”

The stories she wrote from the interviews went to a number of different publications, including the New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

Reliable information about the Chernobyl plant and the release and spread of radioactive material was unavailable to citizens of the Soviet Union at first, and was inadequate for years after. This led to widespread public distrust of official information and wrong attribution of many other health conditions to radiation exposure.

Today, Viktoria lives in America with her husband and children. Professionally, she serves as senior communications spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Region 3 at Lisle, Ill.

“I don’t mean to put on my NRC shoes, but the major reason I took the job with the NRC is that I believe being informed and having opportunity to demand information from your government is your first line of defense,” she said.

“The people in Chernobyl were exposed to radiation for a day and a half without their knowledge. Their children played on radioactive streets and didn’t know it. Here, I feel like I work for an agency where if there is a safety violation, it’s made public. We are required to report it. The public here has a right to know and be informed.

“I come from a country where no one knew anything, while the government sat and sat on this information because it was an embarrassment to the Soviet Union. The citizens had no access to anything that has to do with nuclear. There was not a system for providing any kind of information. Evacuation plans? There were none. There was no evacuation plan, no escape route. The government just told you to leave.”