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it was in the small hours of a spring morning that their world came apart, hurtling across the realm of any recognition of existence as they had known. Can one prepare for a nuclear disaster? Is there any escape from the radiation syndrome that slowly eats up ones insides, playing havoc with the system until the body itself feels alien and death a healer?
Chernobyl, one of the worst nuclear disasters, is a lesson never to be forgotten. A blast during an experiment blew away the reactor’s roof. The resultant fire could not be extinguished for days. Nuclear energy is the hubris of humanity, like aspiring to fry bacon on the sun, writes Ingrid. Huge quantities of radioactivity rendered the air poisonous. Tonnes of stones and lead were air-dropped to smother the blaze. A 30-km zone was cordoned off to contain the damage. Volunteers built a sarcophagus to seal in the radiation and dive into heavy water to open the reactor’s hatch. It meant death, but one that would be commemorated. The affliction was perhaps God’s bane. The nearby Pripjat town did not have a church. It had repudiated God, she writes. Residents were evacuated but not before crucial 36 hours had passed. The immediate reaction was appearance of spots on skin that grew bigger as days passed; as did vegetables, rendered unfit for consumption. Dogs and pets were shot. Congenital defects, mutations, cancer and miscarriages came next. The narrative is exceptional; the superlative prose fine poetry. There are no main characters, just many victims of noxious atoms.
Each has a unique story, and a new suffering — "He should have died immediately, should have been spared that interval between life and nothingness`85 The face flattened, a bit of the nose remained. Only his voice was the same. That was what terrified me the most. Behind all that mutation, he still existed." The pace is compulsive, almost urgent — a warning to humanity to leave atoms alone; these are neither workers nor soldiers. "The accident will become like the siege of Stalingrad `85 something the old folk talk about. The old folk talk for a long time, the wrinkles come out of their faces and down onto the table. There they coil themselves up like rope, with all their smiles and anger and anxieties. It’s a strong rope, but nobody wants to use it." In an interview at the end of the book, she says she supports protests in India against nuclear plants. It takes very long for radioactive materials to break down. The earth is condemned with high levels of becquerel. There’s danger in dismissing the Chernobyl tragedy.
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This one is for the
advocates of nuclear energy. Accidents happen, only the aftermath here
is beyond fixing — the rotting of live flesh horrendous; only it isn’t
zombieland. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster is a case in point, and
more recently, the Fukushima disaster in Japan, where, in a delicate
operation, 400 tonnes of irradiated fuel is being removed. The
challenges, besides the danger, are many. The decommissioning of the
plant will take decades and cost billions of dollars. If the rods are
exposed to air or if they break, radioactive gases could be released
into the atmosphere.
