3. Dose Estimates
The
exposure of the population as a result of the accident followed two main
pathways. The first is the radiation dose to the thyroid as a result of the
concentration of radio-iodine and similar radio-nuclides in the gland. The
second is the whole-body dose caused largely by external irradiation, mainly
from radio-caesium.
The
most exposed workers were the firemen and the power plant personnel during the
first days of the accident. Most of the dose received by the workers resulted
from external irradiation from the fuel fragments and radioactive particles
deposited on various surfaces. Of particular interest are the 226,000 recovery
operation workers who were employed in the thirty-kilometre zone in 1986-1987,
as it is in this period that the highest doses were received.
April’s wrongs are with us,
the misery
we made our own.
We have awakened to what
cannot be changed, our lives
stooped with the burden of
this knowledge, the anguish.
Home is nowhere… it has
slipped
into a greater pain, and you
have my word
that everything we remember
continues fixed in pain
between heartbeats.
Our town, surrounded by
thorns and bitter voices
wonders, in its love for us,
in forgiveness always,
When will you return?
Our town lives on,
nightly its windows brushed
with moonlight,
and we, empty wisps of
dreams,
wander there.
Memories hold the shapes of
trees,
unchanged, our hands
touching there unforgotten.
No one walks in the shade,
saved from high summer heat,
no one
to tell the trees they are
memories.
Our dreams are on fire, and
in this fire the branches
sway gently, and we, without
a champion
except towards morning the
stars,
bright battalions of them,
falling on pavements
until the hour passes,
and even dreams are
abandoned.
We stare into the windows of
nameless places,
into crazed, deep cold
we know means goodbye.
Immediately
after the accident, monitoring of the environment was started by gamma dose
rate measurements. About twenty hours after the accident the wind turned in the
direction of Pripyat, gamma dose rates increased significantly in the city, and
it was decided to evacuate the inhabitants. About twenty hours later the 49,000
inhabitants of Pripyat had left the city in nearly 1,200 buses. A further
67,000 people were evacuated in the following days and weeks. Prior to
evacuation, those individuals were exposed to external irradiation from
radioactive materials transported by the cloud and deposited on the ground, as
well as to internal irradiation, essentially due to the inhalation of radioactive
materials in the cloud.
Our X-ray lives somehow
different than your dread
of wars, betrayals,
the meanness, the fools of law
we see through.
So, it is time we define this condition.
After all, did you think Chernobyl
was play-acting, or doses
of agitprop we would meekly swallow.
The ministers blame us, we
who are made ciphers, we who
would not lower ourselves
to the burning brand: radiophobia.
What do you suggest, that we
accept your world, its forms,
its promises of reform? You need
your eyes tested.
With
regard to internal doses from inhalation and ingestion of radio-nuclides, the
situation is similar: radio-iodine was important during the first few weeks
after the accident and gave rise to thyroid doses via inhalation of
contaminated air, and, more importantly, via consumption of contaminated
foodstuffs, mainly cow's milk.
On
the night of April 26, 1986, about four hundred workers were on the site of the
Chernobyl power plant. As a consequence of the accident, they were subjected to
the combined effect of radiation from several sources: (1) external gamma/beta
radiation from the radioactive cloud, the fragments of the damaged reactor core
scattered over the site and the radioactive particles deposited on the skin,
and (2) inhalation of radioactive particles.
The
second category of liquidators (workers brought in for clean-up) consists of
the large number of adults who were recruited to assist in the clean-up
operations. They worked at the site, in towns, forests and agricultural areas
to make them fit to work and live in. About 600,000 individuals participated in
this work. Initially, about 240,000 of those workers came from the Soviet armed
forces, the other half including personnel of civil organisations, the security
service, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and other organisations.
Every life, every face,
we remember.
Each death is our own.
Earth, so fragile through these windows.
Everything gone, beyond these panes only
we can see through, the rivers
boiled off, the forests yellow with
Geiger static.
Here is my child, this
his inheritance.
Who will protect us now, your sound
bites?
Will we be saved by sound bites?
‘Radiation is good, radiation
Is the future, look, the bodies of
children
soaked in it
appear immortal.’
As if our children could bargain
through bones burning
silently.
Blame us, as if, as if, as if…
While the scientists puzzle with the
forms,
the passed buck bursts into flames,
an X-ray world, everywhere,
the sickness.
Our time in Hell prepares us. We have
seen
the dead bolt through abandoned streets.
We have seen ourselves, running.
Prophets, we have cured ourselves.
Through your carelessness, we are gods.
The primary health effect of Chernobyl has been
widespread psychological distress in liquidators, evacuees, residents of
contaminated areas, and residents of adjacent non-contaminated areas; several
psycho-neurological syndromes characterized by multiple unexplained physical
symptoms including fatigue, sleep and mood disturbances, impaired memory and
concentration, and muscle and/or joint pain have been reported in the Russian
literature. These syndromes, which resemble chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia,
are probably not due to direct effects of radiation because they do not appear
to be dose-related to radiation exposure, and because they occur in areas of
both high and low contamination.
The radioactivity released at Chernobyl was estimated to
be about two hundred times that of the combined releases in the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You will stumble upon my shadow,
plunged in deeper, leafy shade.
See, within pale starlight
another question presides, searing,
immovable,
spiralling breathless
without answers.
The brutal darkness does not answer.
The light the mouth cannot describe
does not answer.
Our shadows
shake loose their gravity,
drifting,
a sweetness of jasmine in the night,
at our backs a breath of mist.
The spent leaf yellows where it falls.
If it was possible to breathe it,
we would understand the end of time.
The lateness of this season
came to us suddenly.
Dazed, we understood everything.
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