Zero Hour: Chernobyl

I just finished watching this program on TV which gives the most accurate account of what happened at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. Chernobyl (called the Vladimir I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station - Чернобыльская АЭС им. В.И.Ленина - in Soviet times) was seen as the most modern Soviet nuclear power plant and yet, like most things done in the USSR, it was poorly constructed and quickly opened so the Communist Party members would praise everyone involved with bonuses. You would think that despite all the shortages in the Soviet Union an important place like a nuclear power plant would get only the best, but it didn't. On top of the poor construction the workers were doing a test that night under the arrogance of Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov (Анатолий Степанович Дятлов.) In 1987, he was found guilty "for criminal mismanagement of potentially explosive enterprises" and was sentenced to ten years in prison. He was released in five years. The Soviet authorities that decided to try and cover-up the explosion from both the Soviet people and the rest of the world are also at fault. The USSR only announced there was a problem when countries in Europe started to complain about the radioactive material entering their airspace  two days after the explosion(and then the Soviets evacuated the plant town of Pripyat.) Even with fault placed on shoddy construction and poor management of some of the workers there were hundreds of heroic Soviet people (from firefighters, police, the army and ordinary citizens) that put their lives at risk to clean-up the plant and help stop the radioactive material from spreading even more - most did so without any protective clothing and would suffer and die from exposure.

I was living in West Germany at the time and was too young to remember anything, but my parents told me that they were put on a plane ready to take off (probably for the US) but in the end they were told to go back home and stay indoors - apparently, the US Government didn't want to upset their German "friends" by evacuating. That just goes to show you that when push comes to shove you can not count on anyone (even the Government) to help you. It is up to you to save yourself.

I went to Kiev a few years ago and wanted to take a tour of Chernobyl, but in the end decided against it as it still seems very unsafe. Apparently, the tours have since been stopped because it is so dangerous there.

What this TV program and my knowledge of the USSR shows is that that only lasting thing the Soviet Union gave the world was Chernobyl and that is pretty pathetic for a country that lasted 74 years.