A sign warns: "Beware of wolves! Don’t walk around the power plant zone and move only in shuttle buses!" The sign is posted on a fence around a workers' smoking zone, some 50 meters away from a construction site and the forbidding concrete sarcophagus that covers Reactor #4 of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power.
See Kyiv Post photographer Volodymyr Petrov’s photo gallery from Chornobyl here
Wildlife multiplied in the region as most people were evacuated out of the area in 1986 from what is officially designated as the “exclusion zone.”
But more than 5,000 people currently live and work in the “exclusion zone,” an area that is supposedly still contaminated from the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
After the fourth reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, as a result of a test that went wrong due to design flaws and neglecting safety rules, some 200,000 persons were evacuated from the vicinity of Chornobyl and an initial concrete containment structure was hurriedly built over the fourth reactor – popularly known as the sarcophagus.
As many as 4,000 people reportedly died from diseases caused by exposure to Chornobyl-caused radiation since the accident according to the World Health Organisation.Operations of the three remaining reactors were halted the day of the accident, but resumed again by the end of 1987. The process of total closure began in 1995 and ended only in 2000.
Since the accident, a 30-kilometer exclusion zone has been established that is largely perceived a haunted area of abandoned lives and ghost towns.
Recent research has also shown that near-extinct species of animals have reappeared in this area where humans no longer dominate. However, there are some 2,200 people still in city of Chornobyl, living and working in shifts in catering, boiler houses, management of radioactive waste, forestry and water management.
The plant itself still employs near 2,600 people,who maintain the plant in a frozen condition, controlling nuclear fuel, waste, and the old equipment. “State agencies are managing the whole process, costs are paid from state budget – annual Hr 209 million for the zone and Hr 750 million for the nuclear plant,” said Vitally Malyuk, deputy head of center for organizational and technical support of the exclusion zone management.
There are about 1,500 construction workers involved in the construction of a new containment structure to contain the aging sarcophagus. The construction workers smoke and few seem to care about radioactive dust.
“The smoking zone used to be further away, then they moved it closer,”says Khalil Khalilov, an engineer from Azerbaijan. “It’s just more convenient, everyone smokes. It’s okay.”
He is one of 11 Azeri engineers and one of the 200 expats employed in the construction.Recruiting foreigner engineers to come and work in Chornobyl is a challenge.
“We try to get the best people for each task,”says Nicolas Caille, project director at Novarka consortium. “There are 23 nationals here at the moment. It’s difficult to convince people to come, but once they are here it’s quite easy to keep them.”
Tim Rea, head of Chornobyl Safety Improvement Project Management Unit working on nuclear waste storage, is one of those who stays and enjoys high quality medical support.”
We are constantly monitored, getting general and specific health checks. Working here you get a benefit of a very good foreign medical,” he told the Kyiv Post. “If I fly from London to the states I get more of radiation doze than I would do staying here.”
Rea claims he is getting 0.01 millisievert a month, while an hour in a plane equals 0.1 millisievert and chest photofluorography gives 0.5 millisievert. Radiation sickness might occur as a result of lump radiation dose of over 300 millisievert while a maximum allowed annual dose for worker is 50 millisievert.
GerardLe Gueux, a retired French engineer, decided to give Chornobyl a shot and has been working on the new confinement structure for two years. “I was retired, having worked for 40 years for Eiffel Constructions,” he says. “This was a chance to do something exceptional. I know the risk is there, but I know that safety measures are adhered to. If anything happens, (the radioactivity) will reach my country in two hours anyway. I am pleased to be here. It’s not a normal life but it’s also not difficult.”
Another 1,300 workers are Ukrainians. They work in 15-day shifts and then travel back home to various cities and towns throughout Ukraine.
Most foreigners stay outside of the 30-kilometer zone exclusion zone in the town of Slavutych and limit time they spent at the site to 2,000 per year.
About 180 illegal “squatters,” mostly pensioners, live in Chornobyl and the abandoned surrounding villages.”
Before evacuation they lived in wooden houses with small gardens, close to the woods, used to fishing and mushrooming,” Malyuk said. “But then they were displaced to live in ‘stone boxes.’ They simply couldn’t stay there.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Gordiienko can be reached at [email protected].
