Ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant will remain a threat for 3,000 years

Monday, April 25th, 2016

Ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant will remain a threat for 3,000 years

Author: Matthew Schofield
Source: Miami Herald/McClatchy
Publication Date: April 24, 2016 2:00 AM
Link: Ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant will remain a threat for 3,000 years

Stephan: I have written here about my own experiences in Chernobyl and the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine in the late 80s, and how they had a profound effect on my already very negative views concerning nuclear power. Its 30 years later and this is the present situation, and it brings home once again in the starkest terms why nuclear power is a death dealing technology that should be phased out very quickly. Even then as both Chernobyl and Fukushima, and Hanford and dozens of other sites demonstrate we will be dealing with the toxins of the nuclear era for many centuries.

The bumper cars were scheduled to be turned on May 1, 1986, for the Soviet May Day celebrations in Pirpyat, Ukaraine. That was, however, about a week after the Chernobyl disaster and desertion of the community. Credit: Claudia Himmelreich / McClatchy

An abandoned bumper car in Pirpyat
Credit: Claudia Himmelreich / McClatchy

PRIPYAT, Ukraine

Before the fire, the vomiting, the deaths and the vanishing home, it was the promise of bumper cars that captured the imagination of the boys.

It will be 30 years ago Tuesday that Pripyat and the nearby Chernobyl nuclear plant became synonymous with nuclear disaster, that the word Chernobyl came to mean more than just a little village in rural Ukraine, and this place became more than just another spot in the shadowy Soviet Union.

Even 30 years later – 25 years after the country that built it ceased to exist – the full damage of that day is still argued.

Death toll estimates run from hundreds to millions. The area near the reactor […]

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