Background - 24 March, 2006
While for many people the Chernobyl disaster might be just a distant memory for many it is something they must live with every day. Meet Annya, a teenager living with cancer since the age of four. Read about Yuri the liquidator and only surviving memeber of the work crew on duty the night the reactor blew up. Many lives have been blighted by the disaster in the huge areas that have been contaminated for thousands of years.
The liquidator - Yuri Korneev- "Real hell didn't start until Moscow", says Yuri Korneev in Kievalmost 20 years later. "My friends were dying around me. I had worked for years with many of them."
Fireman and Soldier - Vasily Tychomirov and Pjotr Khmel - 'Only in the morning did Ivanchenko realise what had happened in Chernobyl. "My shift ended at 8am and I went home. Then I saw that the reactor block had exploded". Except for those who were informed by friends or relatives on duty at the plant, nobody in the workers' town of Pripiyat had been warned.'
The farmers - Mr and Mrs Smeyan
- "My aunt diedand we wanted to bury her in native soil". At the checkpoint they werestopped and sent away. "We had to bury her in another village."
Doctors of Chernobyl
- "Beforethat, we hardly had any oncology problems concerning children. Now there are many cases of brain tumours, cancer of the eyes, kidneys andother organs."
Children of Chernobyl - Annya -
'Annya's mother shows a picture where her daughter has cut out the face of a girl. "Last autumn Annya's hair fell out", she says, "I think boys understand her better". Girlfriends have stopped visiting, deliberately or out of cruel forgetfulness.'
Personal memories of Chernobyl
- 'I see "liquidators" running with old-fashioned protection suits into a huge pile of rubble and carrying some nuclear fuel parts, graphite or metal parts with their hands from the one side of what has been the roof of a reactor hall to the other side trying to "clean it up". They run for their lives. For a very long 90 seconds. Then the next group is sent into the rubble.'