Messages from Ludmila

April 26, 2005
Dear Betsy,

Ghost Town of Pripyat. This was the
town where Chernobyl workers lived at
the time of the disaster.

Today is very sad day... April, 26. The Day of Chernobyl accident... Last week many people called me and wrote by email and sent me the names people who died from cancer for last year our radiation territory. Many people who are 50-55 years and 15-22 had difficult operations last year. Our NGO Viola try to make for such people seminars by Deep Ecology. We like very much the book which Joanna Macy wrote and use it very much.

Thank you for your warm and love. It is good to know about your understanding. Thank you very much for your wish and possible to speak with the members of your organization and continium our program and in the future. We will be gratefull very much for your help if it is possible. We understand that one person can help other person only. We don't wait anything help from our governmental.

Thank you very much for your thinks about us, your good feels. We think that it is important to collect money for our program this week. Please, send your sum to name of co-coordinator of our organization: Igor Prokofev.

We are grateful very much for your help us in this important program. We want to make this week like the start of our year's program.

Love,
Ludmila

April 25, 2005
Dear Betsy,

How are you? What do you have interesting in your projects? Two weeks ago I was the participant of the seminar "Alternativ Energy" in Moscow. Fran Macy made this Net for NGO from former-USSR 5 years ago. Viola is the member of this Net. Fran Macy try to be the participant of such seminars every year. But this year Joanna and Fran had difficult trip to Australia and could not to have trip to Russia. I had oral for one hour on this seminar about our programm in the radiation zone. I showed the pictures and maps, which made by teachers in the radiation zone. I showed nucleo-geiders which we boutgh with your help. I said about your big support for this program.

Past year was 19 years after Chernobyl accident. John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D. in 1990 published his book "Radiation-Induced Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure: An independent analysis". Our NGO Viola received this book in 1992. We saw the full picture of our situation with the health in this zone. Terrible picture. And J. Gofman wrote that we will be to have badest situation on 20 year. It is 2005. I said in my oral that Dr.Gofman was right, sorry. Every year we have more problems with the health. But many people have no alternativ and cannot be migrants from this zone.

I live in Bryansk region too. Our scientist and me are sure that clean food, clean house are important for the health. It is important very much to receive nucleo-geider for every house. Now we are planning our spring-summer activity. It contains radiactive-pollution activity too.

We asked our donors for support our activity. You supported us some times. Thank you very much! And your support gave a possibility to us to carry out very important programs, which helped to people from radioactive polluted zone of the Bryansk region. We would like to ask you for support again. If you need description of our programs we will send it to you. If you can support us, please, inform us. We would be grateful for any support.

Please, answer as soon as possible.

Love,
Ludmila

Land of the Dead

The Guardian UK
Monday 25 April 2005

On April 26 1986, the No 4 reactor at the Chernobyl power station blew apart. Facing nuclear disaster on an unprecedented scale, Soviet authorities tried to contain the situation by sending thousands of ill-equipped men into a radioactive maelstrom. In an extract from a new book by Russian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, eyewitnesses recall the terrible human cost of a catastrophe still unfolding today.

When a routine test went catastrophically wrong, a chain reaction went out of control in No 4 reactor of Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine, creating a fireball that blew off the reactor's 1,000-tonne steel-and-concrete lid. Burning graphite and hot reactor-core material ejected by the explosions started numerous other fires, including some on the combustible tar roof of the adjacent reactor unit. There were 31 fatalities as an immediate result of the explosion and acute radiation exposure in fighting the fires, and more than 200 cases of severe radiation sickness in the days that followed.

Evacuation of residents under the plume was delayed by the Soviet authorities' unwillingness to admit the gravity of the incident. Eventually, more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the surrounding area in Ukraine and Belarus.

In the week after the accident the Soviets poured thousands of untrained, inadequately protected men into the breach. Bags of sand were dropped on to the reactor fire from the open doors of helicopters (analysts now think this did more harm than good). When the fire finally stopped, men climbed on to the roof to clear the radioactive debris. The machines brought in broke down because of the radiation. The men barely lasted more than a few weeks, suffering lingering, painful deaths.

But had this effort not been made, the disaster might have been much worse. The sarcophagus, designed by engineers from Leningrad, was manufactured in absentia — the plates assembled with the aid of robots and helicopters — and as a result there are fissures. Now known as the Cover, reactor No 4 still holds approximately 20 tonnes of nuclear fuel in its lead-and-metal core. No one knows what is happening with it.

For neighbouring Belarus, with a population of just 10 million, the nuclear explosion was a national disaster: 70% of the radionucleides released in the accident fell on Belarus. During the Second World War, the Nazis destroyed 619 Belarussian villages, along with their inhabitants. As a result of fallout from Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements. Of these, 70 have been buried underground by clean-up teams known as "liquidators".

Today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. That is 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Because of the virtually permanent presence of small doses of radiation around the "Zone", the number of people with cancer, neurological disorders and genetic mutations increases with each year.

Read the rest of this story, including first-hand accounts of the days following the Chernobyl disaster, at the UK Guardian website.