In the article we will tell the reader the history of Chernobyl before and after the accident. At the beginning of the 12th century, the first mention of this place is found. Historical sources describe the hunting of a noble prince in the forests near the future city.

It is believed that Chernobyl (wormwood) growing everywhere gave the city its name. They overgrown all the fields in the district. Representatives of various beliefs lived in Chernobyl at that time, and until the end of the 18th century the county town was part of the Principality of Lithuania. It went to Russia in 1793, having a population of about ten thousand people. Two-thirds of the city's inhabitants were Jews.

The history of this nation is tragic. They constantly became victims of pogroms and were subjected to repressions. Many died during the First World War. The Jewish community became very small and the few survivors chose to leave Chernobyl. In 1921, Chernobyl became part of Ukraine.

Two legends of the birth and curse of the city

First legend. Kievan Rus wanted to occupy the lands where completely different peoples lived. They prayed to their gods and did not want to accept Orthodoxy. Kievan Rus wanted to oust them from their habitable places. Indigenous people, in order to avoid massacre, left their lands. As they left, they cursed the conquerors. Their curse “Where we are not, there is no one there, and it is impossible to live on these lands”, unfortunately, has been confirmed more than once.

Second legend. It is believed that Vanga herself foresaw the fall of the "wormwood star". Then not everyone understood her words. Now it is clear that she predicted the death of the nuclear city.

Chernobyl and the Great Patriotic War

Peaceful Chernobyl was a city with an organized way of life and a well-developed infrastructure. Worked enterprises, kindergartens and hospitals, cafes and shops. Standing on a hill and surrounded by the Pripyat and Uzh rivers, it was all buried in the greenery of parks and gardens.

For the fascist troops, its location was very advantageous and allowed to control all directions of approach to the city - water and land. Two months after the start of the war, the Germans entered the city. The occupation lasted more than two years and brought only grief and blood. Many residents died, someone was shot, and someone was taken to concentration camps and destroyed there.

In the city, in memory of the dead civilians and soldiers of the Red Army, a memorial sign was erected in the Park of Glory.

Recovery after the war

Engineers, specialists and builders were sent to restore Chernobyl destroyed by the war. The military arrived at work and permanent residence together with their families. The city was strategically important for the country. Factories urgently returned from evacuation, residential buildings and kindergartens were rebuilt. Schoolchildren studied in new schools, the hospital and the sports palace were rebuilt. For several years, Chernobyl was raised from the ruins of devastation.

Before the accident at the nuclear power plant

Before the tragedy, a little more than 12 thousand inhabitants lived in a small town of regional significance. Picturesque, all immersed in greenery with fields and pastures stretching nearby, the city lived a peaceful and calm life. Average age its inhabitants was 25 years old, there was everything necessary for a happy and peaceful life: clinics and a hospital, Kindergarten and a school, a library and a palace of culture.

Construction of the city of nuclear scientists

Pripyat (Chernobyl) has been leading its history since February 1970. The builders of the new city and nuclear specialists were supposed to live here. The construction site met all the requirements: large water resources and a significant clay content in the soil made it possible to build a nuclear power plant and provide a sanitary protection zone. Pripyat became a grandiose construction site, where people went from all over the country. During the construction, only new materials and the latest technologies were used. The planning of buildings and streets was carried out taking into account the direction of the blowing winds. The building of the city administration, a new cinema, a palace of culture and a new hotel were rebuilt. Before the tragedy, it already had 47,000 inhabitants.

The building plans were grandiose. It was necessary to build more sports facilities, youth palaces, large scientific centers and new schools.

The engineering project developed by our specialists was unique for that time. By new technology a triangular building of the city was carried out, when buildings with a different number of floors were combined. In the center were low-rise buildings, taller buildings stood at the edges. New town with a well-developed infrastructure attracted many nuclear specialists to work at the nuclear power plant.

Amusement park in Pripyat

All residents were proud of the new amusement park. The main attraction of the park was the new Ferris wheel. On the May holidays of 1986, its grand opening was planned.

The tragedy crossed out everything: celebration, celebration, expectation of joy and hope.

Chernobyl: the history of the accident

The day of April 26, 1986 began, like all previous days, there was nothing unusual and nothing could warn of impending disaster. The evening shift took over the station in a stable mode. The people went back to their normal work. Test tests of the fourth power unit were scheduled for this day. It was necessary to check how the station would behave in case of an emergency and how long it could be in operation during an emergency power outage. The stability of the operating mode in the event of an accident was supposed to ensure the residual rotation of the generator turbine.

Explosion at a nuclear power plant

Immediately with the start of technical tests, problems began to arise that led to the destruction and death of all living things. The power of the reactor dropped sharply - to 500 megawatts, which was unacceptably low. The tests had to be urgently stopped, which was prescribed by regulations. The second tragic mistake was that there were not enough graphite rods to control the reaction. They left too few, only four. The reactor overheated and there was a thermal explosion. A modern and powerful defense weighing almost five hundred tons was torn off, flew into the air and then collapsed back. The scale of destruction was enormous.

Information about the catastrophic scale of the accident was concealed by the country's leadership until alarm messages appeared. Neighboring countries were worried and demanded explanations for the reasons for the sharply increased level of radiation.

As the story of Chernobyl tells, the explosion immediately took the lives of two employees, another 31 employees died from terrible radiation a few days later.

Arriving fire crews stood like a wall near the blazing fire. They were well aware of how terrible radiation was, but continued to fight the fire. Six firefighters died, having received terrible burns and radiation sickness that developed almost instantly.

Helicopter pilots, at the risk of receiving a lethal dose of radiation, dumped sand and abrasive material (boron carbide) on the wreckage of the reactor, capable of absorbing neutrons in nuclear reactors.

Scientists, realizing the danger of the release of radioactive substances, did not stop working on radiation measurements. The data was required to organize decontamination work.

The robots brought in for work simply failed. They burned all the microcircuits.

Soldiers had to throw debris into the collapse of the core using conventional shovels.

Evacuation of Pripyat

In the morning, treatment and disinfection was carried out in public places and the treatment was repeated hourly.

All schoolchildren were checked for the level of radiation received and, having distributed iodine tablets to everyone, they were sent home to their parents.

The police instructed the population, and an urgent evacuation of residents began.

Everything - life, familiar and calm, with its joys and difficulties, collapsed overnight and, perhaps, will never return.

What happened after the Chernobyl accident

Chernobyl residents, not knowing anything about the disaster, continued to live their usual lives. Schoolchildren were at school, and the townspeople had a rest, worked on their plots or went shopping. Young and happy couples of newlyweds were registered in the wedding palace.

AT scary stories about Chernobyl, people say that they knew about the accident, but how terrible and large-scale it was, what trouble it brought, no one has yet told them. Those who were able to assess the situation hurriedly left the city. Citizens became infected with anxiety only when they noticed the cars continuously pouring water on the sidewalks. This was supposed to reduce the level of radiation.

The next day it was announced that people should leave the city. There has never been an evacuation of this magnitude in the USSR. A thousand buses took half a million people out of the infection zone. The city in a matter of hours became empty and deserted.

The evacuation was also carried out in the nearest villages. Trying to avoid panic, people were explained that the resettlement was temporary and they would soon be able to return. Experts and the military, knowing the true state of affairs, understood: there is no return here.

Construction of the sarcophagus and exclusion zone

In the autumn, when the debris was removed and decontamination work was carried out, the construction of the shelter began. Soon everyone began to call him a sarcophagus. He covered the radioactive debris of the fourth reactor.

Strengthening of protective structures and decontamination of the territory have been carried out all these years since the accident.

Scientists from all over the world come here for research and work. They study the consequences for humans and animals from the resulting radioactive contamination.

Three zones were formed around the station: the first - the nuclear power plant itself and Pripyat, the other - the villages around the station, and the last zone passed through Chernobyl.

Explosion victims

Everyone who took part in the work to eliminate the consequences of the accident suffered. From the received high doses of radiation, tens of thousands of people died and became disabled. All subsequent years after the tragedy, there has been a sharp increase in the number of cancer cases and a deterioration in the health of the nation. All these are the consequences of lost time for the evacuation of the population and attempts to hush up the truth about the disaster.

Life in Chernobyl

Now the history of the city of Chernobyl continues. No more than five hundred people can be counted in the city. They come for a short period of time to work:

• At the enterprises of the city, people work on a contract basis, on a rotational basis. Nobody lives here permanently.
• Ecologists and biologists are studying the anomalies that have occurred in the territory of exclusion.
• Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. They guard the entrance to the closed territory.
• The zone is also visited by numerous tourists who are attracted by the tragedy, and the desire to find out: “What is happening there?”.

self-settlers

These are residents of the zone unsuitable, as it is written in the documents, for permanent residence. They settled and live permanently in the villages around the station and in Chernobyl. They grow vegetables and fruits, gather mushrooms, hunt and fish. Sometimes scholars and tourists visiting the zone provide assistance to the settlers.

People do not want to leave the places where they lived, to which they are accustomed. They think that it is quite possible to live here. The places are productive, hunting and fishing are rich, animals are not frightened. Each of them has their own reasons, but the authorities are not trying to evict them.

When will life return to Chernobyl

The history of the Chernobyl disaster is very grim. For more than two decades, it has been disturbing the consciousness of people. But when will it end? When will life return to this city? Cesium and strontium, which were released into the atmosphere during an explosion at a nuclear power plant, have a decay period of 60 years. And theoretically, life can be returned to the city by 2046. Official Ukraine is confident that restoration can begin even now.

Experts suggest not to rush. A short stay in the accident zone is not life-threatening, but agriculture should be forgotten for several centuries.

Excursions around Chernobyl

Entrepreneurs have organized a new business and conduct excursions to the area where the man-made disaster occurred. The business brings good profits.

Tourists stroll through the villages, inspect the infamous sarcophagus and visit the deserted Pripyat. They get acquainted with the place where the largest catastrophe in the history of the 20th century took place, examine the sculptural composition, which was installed as a memory of the heroes of the firefighters.

Tourists can visit the St. Elias active church. They want to know how people live here and what is happening in the abandoned zone. Some people are interested in just listening to people's stories about Chernobyl. Many come to remember the dead, to visit native home and do not forget how much grief this terrible accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant brought.

In 1986, as a result of a fire and explosion, the reactor of the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was damaged. The consequences of this were a significant radioactive release, the resettlement of people from the 30-kilometer zone around the station and the creation of a concrete "sarcophagus" around the damaged power unit. However, even today the public does not know everything about this accident.

About a hundred employees of the power plant and firefighters who fought the fire died within a few weeks. However, it becomes more and more difficult to associate specific cases of cancer with the effects of radiation. The only exception is one rare case of a tumor of the thyroid gland.

Various international structures estimate the number of victims differently. Thus, Greenpeace believes that the number of direct victims of the accident exceeds 90 thousand, while the UN calls a much more modest number - 4000. There are also many people affected by the crisis to a lesser extent. Some estimate their number at almost 3 million 350 thousand people were evicted from the 30-kilometer zone.

Ukrainian and foreign researchers note that the lack of human pressure has led to a sharp increase in the number and diversity of wildlife in the zone. Among other things, the zone now serves as a kind of "reserve" for wolves and birds of prey. In some species (in particular, in mice), cases of the appearance of congenital malformations have become more frequent, but still there are no mutant monsters in the zone. It seems that a person is much more dangerous for “his smaller brothers” than radiation.

Yes, the 30-kilometer zone is not deserted at all. Some time after the evacuation, a number of people returned home. Basically, these were older people who did not want to die far from their homeland.

Now the population of the zone is made up of old people, more precisely, mostly old women. They live in their own homes, keep cattle, cultivate vegetable gardens and are not very worried that the earth from which they dig up potatoes will be radioactive for thousands of years. Women believe that they made the right choice. They saw the conditions in which their evacuated relatives and friends found themselves. For their age, the old women are quite healthy and active. From time to time, essential goods are brought to them.

There is also such a "sightseeing". Indeed, immediately after the accident, some forest areas became “red”, the foliage and needles turned red from exposure to radiation. Now some of these trees have come to life and are green again. And the dead also stand, do not rot, do not fall and do not decompose.

Scientists explain this by the fact that radiation destroyed not only the trees themselves, but also a significant part of the fungi and microorganisms that should process dead wood. Insects also try to stay away from the danger zone, which is why dead trees persist for so long. The Red Forest is now considered the most radioactive place on Earth. In this regard, forest fires in the station area (like those that took place last year) are of great danger, since clouds of dangerous smoke reach Kyiv and other large cities.

It is also reliable that a routine x-ray examination in a hospital provides a person with a much higher dose of radiation than a short excursion to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone. Indeed, otherwise there would be no "Chernobyl grandmothers" for a long time, and scientists would not be able to regularly visit the zone. Meanwhile, scientific and control missions are constantly in the zone and in its immediate vicinity.

But, if you know that an X-ray of the pelvic organs provides a radiation dose of 700 μSv, before the accident, the workers of the power plant received a dose of 100 μSv of gamma radiation per day, and staying in the zone today gives only 5-7 μSv, then the behavior of these people ceases to seem suicidal heroism.

Chernobyl accident- one of the blackest pages in the history of mankind. This catastrophe is still the only one with the assigned 7th (maximum) level of danger. Thousands of crippled destinies and billions of dollars to prevent terrible consequences. All this could not have happened, but ... On April 26, 1986, the irreparable happened.

5 Terrifying But Interesting Facts About Chernobyl

Of all the people who worked in the Chernobyl emergency unit, during the first day, 134 people were found to have radiation sickness, 28 of them died within the first month after the accident. At the same time, due to high level radiation, all the dead were buried in lead coffins.

To prevent further leakage radiation, a shelter was built over the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, better known as "Sarcophagus", worth 2 billion dollars. However, the construction erected in 206 days is gradually being destroyed, which can lead to new emissions, since, according to scientists, about 95% of the radioactive radiation remained under the sarcophagus from the amount that was at the time of the accident.

The level of radiation at the site of the accident was so high that eyes liquidators changed their color from brown to blue.

microscopic "black mushrooms", growing on various radioactive residues in the zone of the Chernobyl accident, are able to use the energy of radioactive decay for their development. As it turned out during the research, mushrooms absorb radioactive radiation with the help of the melanin pigment, which is present in both animals and humans.

radioactive clouds, formed after the accident, were besieged by the military with the help of artillery charges supplied with silver iodide. The introduction of a small amount of iodide is used today to form pockets of condensation in the clouds, which leads to precipitation.

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Myths and facts

On April 26, 1986, there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Experts from all over the world are still eliminating the consequences of the largest catastrophe in the history of the peaceful atom.

A modernization program was carried out in the Russian nuclear industry, obsolete technological solutions were almost completely revised and systems were developed that, according to experts, completely exclude the possibility of such an accident.

We talk about the myths that surround the Chernobyl accident and the lessons learned from it.

DATA

The biggest disaster in the history of peaceful atom

The construction of the first stage of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began in 1970, the city of Pripyat was built nearby for the maintenance personnel. On September 27, 1977, the first power unit of the station with an RBMK-1000 reactor with a capacity of 1 thousand MW was connected to the power grid Soviet Union. Later, three more power units were put into operation, the annual power generation of the station amounted to 29 billion kilowatt-hours.

On September 9, 1982, the first accident occurred at the Chernobyl NPP - during the trial run of the 1st power unit, one of the reactor's technological channels collapsed, and the graphite laying of the core was deformed. There were no casualties, the liquidation of the consequences of the emergency took about three months.

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It was planned to shut down the reactor (at the same time, the emergency cooling system was turned off as planned) and measure the generator performance.

It was not possible to safely shut down the reactor. At 01:23 Moscow time, an explosion and fire occurred at the power unit.

State of emergency has become biggest disaster in the history of nuclear energy: the reactor core was completely destroyed, the building of the power unit partially collapsed, and there was a significant release of radioactive materials into the environment.

Directly during the explosion, one person died - pump operator Valery Khodemchuk (his body could not be found under the rubble), in the morning of the same day in the medical unit, Vladimir Shashenok, an engineer adjusting the automation system, died from burns and a spinal injury.

On April 27, the city of Pripyat (47 thousand 500 people) was evacuated, and in the following days, the population of the 10-kilometer zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Total during May 1986 out of 188 settlements about 116 thousand people were resettled in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the station.

The intense fire lasted 10 days, during which time the total release of radioactive materials into the environment amounted to about 14 exabecquerels (about 380 million curies).

More than 200 thousand square meters were subjected to radioactive contamination. km, of which 70% - on the territory of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

The most polluted were the northern regions of the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions. Ukrainian SSR, Gomel region Byelorussian SSR and Bryansk region. RSFSR.

Radioactive fallout fell in the Leningrad region, Mordovia and Chuvashia.

Subsequently, pollution has been noted in Norway, Finland and Sweden.

The first brief official message about the emergency was transmitted to TASS on April 28. According to former general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev in a 2006 interview with the BBC, the May Day holiday demonstrations in Kyiv and other cities were not canceled because the country's leadership did not have a "full picture of what had happened" and feared panic among the population. Only on May 14, Mikhail Gorbachev made a televised address in which he spoke about the true scale of the incident.

The Soviet State Commission for Investigation of the Causes of the Emergency placed responsibility for the catastrophe on the management and operational personnel of the station. The Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee (INSAG) established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its 1986 report confirmed the conclusions of the Soviet commission.

Tassovtsy in Chernobyl

One of the first journalists to the scene of the accident in the Ukrainian Polissya, to tell the truth about a man-made disaster unprecedented in history, was Vladimir Itkin from Tassov. As a real hero-reporter, he showed himself during the disaster. His materials were published in almost all newspapers of the country.

And just a few days after the explosion, the world was shocked by photographs of the smoking ruins of the fourth power unit, which were taken by TASS photojournalist Valery Zufarov and his Ukrainian colleague Vladimir Repik. Then, in the early days, flying around the power plant in a helicopter together with scientists and specialists, fixing all the details of the atomic release, they did not think about the consequences for their health. The helicopter from which the reporters filmed hovered just 25 meters above the poisonous abyss.

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Valery already knew that he had "grabbed" a huge dose, but continued to fulfill his professional duty, creating a photographic chronicle of this tragedy for posterity.

Reporters worked at the mouth of the reactor, during the construction of the sarcophagus.

Valery paid for these pictures with an untimely death in 1996. Zufarov has many awards - including the "Golden Eye" awarded by World Press Photo.

Among the Tassov journalists who have the status of a liquidator of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident is Valery Demidetsky, a correspondent in Chisinau. In the autumn of 1986, he was sent to Chernobyl as a person who had already dealt with the atom - Valery served on a nuclear submarine and knew what the radiation hazard was.

"Most of all," he recalls, "people were amazed there. Real heroes. They understood well what they were doing, working day and night. Pripyat struck. The handsome city where the nuclear power plant workers lived resembled the Tarkovsky Stalker zone. houses, scattered children's toys, thousands of cars abandoned by residents.

- According to TASS

Hiking in hell

One of the first who took part in the liquidation of the accident were firefighters. The signal about a fire at the nuclear power plant was received on April 26, 1986 at 01:28. By morning, 240 people were in the accident zone. personnel Kyiv Regional Fire Department.

The government commission turned to the chemical defense troops to assess the radiation situation and to military helicopter pilots to assist in extinguishing the fire in the core. At that time, several thousand people worked at the emergency site.

Representatives of the radiation control service, the Civil Defense Forces, the Chemical Troops of the Ministry of Defense, the State Hydrometeorological Service and the Ministry of Health worked in the accident zone.

In addition to liquidating the accident, their task included measuring the radiation situation at the nuclear power plant and studying the radioactive contamination of natural environments, evacuating the population, and protecting the exclusion zone that was established after the disaster.

Doctors monitored the irradiated and carried out the necessary therapeutic and preventive measures.

In particular, at different stages of liquidation of the consequences of the accident, the following were involved:

From 16 to 30 thousand people from different departments for decontamination work;

More than 210 military units and subdivisions with a total number of 340 thousand military personnel, of which more than 90 thousand military personnel during the most acute period from April to December 1986;

18.5 thousand employees of internal affairs bodies;

Over 7 thousand radiological laboratories and sanitary and epidemiological stations;

In total, about 600 thousand liquidators from all over the former USSR took part in fire fighting and clearing.

Immediately after the accident, the work of the station was stopped. The mine of the exploded reactor with burning graphite was covered from helicopters with a mixture of boron carbide, lead and dolomite, and after the completion of the active stage of the accident - with latex, rubber and other dust-absorbing solutions (in total, by the end of June, about 11 thousand 400 tons of dry and liquid materials were dumped).

After the first, most acute, stage, all efforts to localize the accident were focused on creating a special protective structure called a sarcophagus ("Shelter" object).

At the end of May 1986, a special organization was formed, consisting of several construction and installation departments, concrete plants, departments of mechanization, motor transport, energy supply, etc. The work was carried out around the clock, in shifts, the number of which reached 10 thousand people.

In the period from July to November 1986, a concrete sarcophagus with a height of more than 50 m and external dimensions of 200 by 200 m was built, covering the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, after which emissions radioactive elements stopped. During construction, an accident occurred: on October 2, the Mi-8 helicopter caught on the cable of a crane with its blades and fell on the territory of the station, killing four crew members.

Inside the "Shelter" there is at least 95% of the irradiated nuclear fuel from the destroyed reactor, including about 180 tons of uranium-235, as well as about 70 thousand tons of radioactive metal, concrete, glassy mass, several tens of tons of radioactive dust with a total with an activity of more than 2 million curies.

Shelter under threat

The world's largest international structures - from energy concerns to financial corporations - continue to assist Ukraine in solving the problems of the final cleanup of the Chernobyl zone.

The main disadvantage of the sarcophagus is its leakage (the total area of ​​the cracks reaches 1 thousand square meters).

The guaranteed service life of the old Shelter was calculated until 2006, so in 1997 the G7 countries agreed on the need to build Shelter-2, which would cover the outdated structure.

At present, a large protective structure "New Safe Confinement" is being built - an arch that will be pushed over the "Shelter". In April 2019, it was reported that it was 99% ready and had undergone a trial three-day operation.

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Work on the construction of the second sarcophagus was supposed to be completed in 2015, but was postponed more than once. main reason the delay is referred to as a "serious cash shortage".

The total cost of completing the project, integral part which is the construction of the sarcophagus, is 2.15 billion euros. At the same time, the cost of building the sarcophagus itself is 1.5 billion euros.

675 million euros provided by the EBRD. If necessary, the bank is ready to finance the budget deficit for this project.

Up to 10 million euros (5 million euros annually) - an additional contribution to the Chernobyl fund - decided to be made in 2016-2017 by the Russian government.

180 million euros were pledged by other international donors.

$40 million intended to provide the United States.

Some Arab countries and the People's Republic of China have also expressed their desire to make donations to the Chernobyl Fund.

Myths about the accident

There is a huge gap between scientific knowledge about the consequences of the accident and public opinion. The latter, in the vast majority of cases, is influenced by the developed Chernobyl mythology, which has little to do with the real consequences of the disaster, the Institute for the Problems of the Safe Development of Nuclear Energy notes. Russian Academy Sciences (IBRAE RAN).

Inadequate perception of radiation hazard, according to experts, has objective specific historical reasons, including:

Silence by the state of the causes and real consequences of the accident;

Ignorance by the population of the elementary foundations of the physics of processes occurring both in the nuclear power, and in the field of radiation and radioactive impact;

The hysteria in the media provoked by the mentioned reasons;

Numerous problems of a social nature of a federal scale, which have become good ground for the rapid formation of myths, etc.

Indirect damage from the accident, associated with socio-psychological and socio-economic consequences, is much higher than the direct damage from the action of Chernobyl radiation.

Myth 1.

The accident had a catastrophic effect on the health of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people

According to the Russian National Radiation and Epidemiological Registry (NRER), radiation sickness was detected in 134 people who were on the emergency block on the first day. Of these, 28 died within a few months after the accident (27 in Russia), 20 died of various causes within 20 years.

Over the past 30 years, NRER recorded 122 cases of leukemia among the liquidators. 37 of them could be induced by Chernobyl radiation. There was no increase in the number of diseases with other types of oncology among the liquidators compared to other groups of the population.

In the period from 1986 to 2011, out of 195,000 Russian liquidators registered with the NRER, about 40,000 people died from various causes, while the overall mortality rates did not exceed the corresponding average values ​​for the population of the Russian Federation.

According to the NRER data at the end of 2015, out of 993 cases of thyroid cancer in children and adolescents (at the time of the accident), 99 could be related to radiation exposure.

No other consequences for the population were recorded, which completely refutes all the prevailing myths and stereotypes about the scale of the radiological consequences of the accident for public health, experts say. These same conclusions were confirmed 30 years after the disaster.

Curie, becquerel, sievert - what's the difference

Radioactivity is the ability of some natural elements and artificial radioactive isotopes spontaneously decay, while emitting radiation invisible and imperceptible by a person.

Two units are used to measure the amount of a radioactive substance or its activity: the off-system unit curie and unit becquerel adopted in international system units (SI).

The environment and living organisms are affected by the ionizing effect of radiation, which is characterized by the dose of radiation or exposure.

The higher the radiation dose, the greater the degree of ionization. The same dose may accumulate over different time, and the biological effect of irradiation depends not only on the magnitude of the dose, but also on the time of its accumulation. The faster the dose is received, the greater its damaging effect.

Different types of radiation create a different damaging effect at the same dose of radiation. All national and international standards are set in equivalent radiation dose. The off-system unit of this dose is rem, and in the SI system - sievert(Sv).

Rafael Arutyunyan, First Deputy Director of the Institute for the Safe Development of Nuclear Energy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, clarifies that if we analyze the additional doses accumulated by the inhabitants of the Chernobyl zones over the years since the accident, then out of the 2.8 million Russians who found themselves in the area of ​​impact:

2.6 million received less than 10 millisieverts. This is five to seven times less than the average world exposure dose from natural background radiation;

Fewer than 2,000 people received additional doses greater than 120 millisieverts. This is one and a half to two times less than the radiation doses of residents of countries such as Finland.

It is for this reason, the scientist believes, that no radiological consequences are observed and cannot be observed among the population, except for the thyroid cancer already noted above.

According to experts from Science Center Radiation Medicine of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, out of 2.34 million people living in the contaminated territories of Ukraine, over 12 years after the disaster, about 94,800 people died from cancers of various origins, and about 750 people additionally died due to "Chernobyl" cancers.

For comparison: among 2.8 million people, regardless of their place of residence, every year from cancers not related to the radiation factor, the mortality rate is from 4 to 6 thousand, that is, in 30 years - from 90 to 170 thousand deaths.

What doses of radiation are lethal

ubiquitous natural radiation background, as well as some medical procedures, result in each person receiving on average an equivalent radiation dose of 2 to 5 millisieverts annually.

For people professionally involved in radioactive materials, the annual equivalent dose should not exceed 20 millisieverts.

The lethal dose is considered to be 8 sieverts, and the half-survival dose, at which half of the exposed group of people dies, is 4-5 sieverts.

At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, about a thousand people who were near the reactor at the time of the disaster received doses from 2 to 20 sieverts, which in some cases turned out to be fatal.

In liquidators, the average dose was about 120 millisieverts.

© YouTube.com/TASS

Myth 2.

The genetic consequences of the Chernobyl accident for humanity are terrible

According to Harutyunyan, world science over 60 years of detailed scientific research did not observe any genetic defects in human offspring due to radiation exposure of their parents.

This conclusion is confirmed by the results of constant monitoring of both the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the next generation.

No excess of genetic deviations relative to the average data for the country was recorded.

20 years after Chernobyl, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, in its 2007 recommendations, lowered the value of hypothetical risks by almost 10 times.

At the same time, there are other opinions. According to the research of Doctor of Agricultural Sciences Valery Glazko:

After the catastrophe, not everyone who should have been born is born.

Less specialized, but with a higher resistance to action, are predominantly reproduced. adverse factors form environments.

The response to the same doses of ionizing radiation depends on its novelty for the population.

The scientist believes that the real consequences of the Chernobyl accident for human populations will be available for analysis by 2026, since the generation that was directly affected by the accident is only now starting to start families and give birth to children.

Myth 3.

Nature suffered from the accident at a nuclear power plant even more than man

An unprecedentedly large release of radionuclides into the atmosphere occurred in Chernobyl, on this basis, the Chernobyl accident is considered the most severe man-made accident in human history. To date, almost everywhere, with the exception of the most contaminated areas, the dose rate has returned to the background level.

The consequences of irradiation for flora and fauna were noticeable only immediately next to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant within the exclusion zone.

The paradigm of radioecology is such that if a person is protected, then the environment is protected with a huge margin, Professor Harutyunyan notes. If the impact on human health of a radiation incident is minimal, then its impact on nature will be even less. The threshold for the manifestation of negative impacts on flora and fauna is 100 times higher than for humans.

The impact on nature after the accident was observed only near the destroyed power unit, where the dose of irradiation of trees for 2 weeks reached 2000 roentgens (in the so-called "red forest"). On the this moment all natural environment even in this place, it has fully recovered and even flourished due to a sharp decrease in anthropogenic impact.

Myth 4.

The resettlement of people from the city of Pripyat and the surrounding areas was poorly organized

The evacuation of the inhabitants of the city of 50,000 was carried out quickly, Harutyunyan claims. Despite the fact that, according to the regulations then in force, evacuation was mandatory only in the event that a dose of 750 mSv was reached, the decision on it was made at a predicted dose level of less than 250 mSv. Which is quite consistent with today's understanding of the criteria for emergency evacuation. The information that people received large doses of radiation exposure during the evacuation is not true, the scientist is sure.