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Chernobyl nuclear plant worker holding a radiation dosimeter.Volodymyr Repik/AP
After the worst nuclear accident of all time, more than 35 years later, Russian troops have been advancing into Ukraine seized control of the Chernobyl plant. Calling Putin’s invasion of the country “a declaration of war against the whole of Europe,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Twitter that “our defenders are giving their lives so that the tragedy of 1986 will not be repeated.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has also issued an ominous WarningIf the Full-scale war Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched against Ukraine continues, “Chernobyl can happen again in 2022.”
What does this mean? Is the site of the accident still dangerous? What about the 15 nuclear reactors in Ukraine that might be at risk? What is the legacy and impact of Chernobyl on Ukrainian society and history?
For answers to some of these questions, Mother Jones We spoke with Kate Brown (MIT Distinguished Professor in History of Science) who is the award-winning author of many books. One of them is Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide To the Future—a nonfiction Finalist for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award—about the legacy of Chernobyl, the risk of a nuclear fallout, and what that could mean for Europe and the rest of the world. Brown was in Cambridge at the time. We spoke by phone to Brown.
Remind the readers of Mother JonesWhy was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster so significant? What did it mean for Ukraine and the Soviet Union.
The Soviet party couldn’t deliver to their citizens luxurious consumer goods or an American-style standard of living, but they did sell themselves as promoters of health and science and technology. They launched the first rocket, Sputnik, into space in 1957. They also built these nuclear power stations, claiming that they were 100% safe. The Communist Party leadership was greatly discredited after the plant exploded. Later, as they tried to minimize the damage and cover it up, they found themselves in bigger trouble. They were fumbling with the technology, and the science didn’t appear to be very good. This was the nail that went in the coffin for the Soviet Union.
It’s also a big deal in terms of the public health impact: 33 people died immediately of acute radiation poisoning. Other health issues emerged after the disaster. I found out that 40,000 people were hospitalized for exposure to Chernobyl radiations in the summer following the accident. 11,000 of these were children. This is the total number of people who died in Ukraine from radioactive fallout. However, Ukraine received only 20 percent of the radiation. Between 35,000 and 150,000 people were killed by cancers, heart diseases, and autoimmune conditions. It caused a real epidemic in thyroid cancer among kids that’s well documented. So Ukraine has been left to deal with this legacy, a country that hasn’t really had the financial means or the political organization to do it very well. It was their inheritance, an ugly product of the Soviet Union. This is why many Ukrainians don’t want Russia to rule them again.
How has the legacy of Chernobyl shaped Ukrainian nationalism and Ukrainians’ views on Russia?
It was a major driver of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the Ukrainian nationalism which demanded independence. Moscow made Ukrainians suffer at its hands, whether it were the Great Famine in 1930s or the Chernobyl tragedy. In the last 10 to15 years, it has not been an issue as Ukrainians have been trying to pay the bills, keep their sovereign status, have independence and fight corruption. Although they claim Chernobyl is something people in the West are concerned about, there are too many other concerns.
Reports are circulating that the Russian forces have taken control of the Chernobyl facility this week. What is the significance of this?
I’m not a military strategist, I’m just a simple environmental historian. They have all these troops in Belarus, and the shortest route to Kyiv is through Chernobyl. The border to Belarus is six kilometers away from the Chernobyl facility. It looks as if from the Ukrainian press, they’re being met by forces of the Ukrainian National Guard who are fighting against these arriving Russian forces. The question is what might happen if they’re fighting there. It would be a disaster if there was a fire in the Chernobyl area. We have seen forest fires rage in the last few years, which have been hot and dry. The trees and leaf litter have a lot of radioactivity. It is possible to still find a large amount of plutonium, and many other radionuclides, that were released in 1986’s accident. They are found in the soil’s upper 10 centimeters. When they go up in smoke, that’s troubling. Forest fire scientists estimated that radionuclides had been detected in Belgium and the Netherlands in June 2020. They were directly dangerous to firefighters.
The carcass of that nuclear power plant has a cover over it and it’s supposed to be sealed off for the next 100 years. If something falls on the cover, it could ignite any materials still inside, causing another nuclear explosion with radioactive smoke. That’s a problem we have with these sacrificed lands. We can kind of manage them during times of peace and stability, but when war comes, they’re extremely vulnerable. If someone wants to make a huge dirty bomb, the Chernobyl area would be a good spot to do it.
What have been your observations regarding the 15 nuclear power plants in Ukraine? What are your concerns about possible knock on effects?
I hope that the Russians won’t send a nuclear weapon on Ukrainian territory. The blowback from that is pretty serious and it would make parts of this territory that they want to occupy uninhabitable. I don’t think it’s a very practical thing. I also don’t think it would be very palatable in Russia to have a bomb go off. It’s one thing to send a missile to Washington, DC, from Moscow, but not to Kyiv. It’s too familiar for the Russian populace. It’s too close to home. And they’re supposed to defend the Russian-speaking populations of eastern Ukraine.
The world’s largest nuclear power, Ukraine, was dominant until the late 1990s when it was asked to surrender. They had nuclear weapons along the western border of Ukraine since the Cold War, and the Clinton administration agreed to send those bombs to Russia. They were given some financial aid at the time to make that happen, and they were given a promise that all the parties, which included Russia and the United States, would protect Ukraine’s national sovereignty. If Ukraine still had these weapons, this would be a very different situation.
Is it possible to estimate the radiation risk for troops on the ground? might be exposed to?
There are so many scenarios, it’s really hard. Something starts to burn and people don’t have protection, and they start to breathe things in or gamma rays are released, and you don’t have lead suits on. There are weaknesses for soldiers on both sides. But certainly, Russia doesn’t need nuclear material. They have a lot of their own nuclear waste, which is what the Chernobyl plant represents. It is a huge pile of radioactive waste that extends far and wide, with buried radioactive materials and water sources. The problem with the soils and leaf litter is that all of them contained radioactive isotopes. And then there’s the sarcophagus itself. I don’t think the Russians would be there to weaponize it because they are a nuclear power, they’ve got all those materials.
Are you convinced that proponents of nuclear energy keep these risks in mind, or is the possibility for war too far-fetched?
You don’t hear much about wars when they talk about new nuclear reactors and how safe they’re gonna be and how great they’ll be. Because a nuclear reactor relies on stability and peace, workers getting paid, wages being paid and reactors not being attacked, it is vulnerable. Nuclear power as a response to climate change—when we know climate change is gonna cause a lot of instability, mass migrations, and probably more local and maybe more extra local wars—I don’t see how nuclear power safely fits into that picture.
The thing with any of these nuclear events is that they’re not isolated within sovereign borders. Once things are nuclear, it’s no longer a local skirmish that’s happening just in Ukraine. It increases the stakes, especially in Europe, but it’s really for everybody. I’m not quite sure what the volume of radioactive waste buried in that [Chernobyl] sarcophagus is, and I think they don’t really know. It would be really terrible if it was to be hit with a bomb and go up in smoke.
This conversation was edited for clarity and length.
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