Thirty-five years ago, on April 26, 1986, the explosion and fire of the fourth reactor of the then Soviet nuclear power plant of Chernobyl. Today the Ukrainian government has started the procedures for the request to Unesco for the recognition of the site, which has for years now become a tourist destination, as a World Heritage Site.
Before the pandemic and following the success of the “Chernobyl” series produced by Hbo, 120,000 tourists visited the plant in 2019. Kiev wants to consolidate and extend this interest. Today, the Ukrainian International Airline is organizing low-altitude flights to Kiev and Chernobyl, which will thus be possible to admire “from the most unusual angles”. A flight to “learn more about the causes and consequences of the accident made possible also thanks to the partnership with the Chernobyl Tour company”, a tourist guide specialized in the disaster. Cost, the equivalent of 87 euros.
Not many then want to remember the victims of the tragedy. Dozens in the hours immediately following the explosion due to acute radiation syndrome, thousands later, due to the pathologies resulting from exposure to radiation. A number that is still under discussion.
On the occasion of this anniversary, a statue dedicated to Oleksandr Lelechenko, deputy head of the electrical systems of the plant since 1979, will be inaugurated in front of the building where the administrative offices of the plant were located. April 26 35 years ago, immediately after the explosion, he intervened to manually pump out contaminated liquid from the blocked turbine, working with radioactive water in his knees. With his action, he prevented the fire from spreading to other units.
After a first hospitalization in Pripyat, Leleshenko returned to the plant. He received 2,500 x-rays in one day. He died immediately, at the age of 47. Posthumous honors both in the USSR and in Ukraine. In Pripyat, at 1.36 am, the time of the first explosion, a long ceremony will begin, with a mass celebrated with an Orthodox rite. The news of these events is accompanied, on a local news site, on the page dedicated to the sale of souvenirs (phone cover for i-phone with the image of the non-existent Vodka Chernobyl, 15 euros).
It was the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who recalled the “hundreds of thousands of people affected by radiation: about 350 thousand were forced to leave their homes in the most contaminated areas, with a lasting traumatic impact on their lives. Their suffering must not be forgotten “.
“The anniversary is an opportunity to recognize the recovery efforts made by the governments of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and the work of scientists who have provided important analyzes used for emergency planning and risk reduction,” added Guterres. stressing that, thanks to the contribution of the UN, the number of small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the areas directly affected by the disaster have increased from 2,000 in 2002 to 37,000 today. The lesson learned since 1986 has served to manage today’s emergency, the pandemic, starting with the recognition that “disasters have no borders”, he assured.
The entire Exclusion Zone which extends for a radius of thirty kilometers around the plant, about a hundred kilometers north of Kiev, should be included, in the intentions of the government, in the site recognized by UNESCO. Together with the radar station built in the seventies of Duga.
With its empty buildings, the ghost town of Pripyat, where 50 thousand once lived, the wild nature that has taken off again (this year the presence of horses in the wild was also reported). With the houses of villages that no one knows the name of and that no tourist visits, where every year the former inhabitants, thanks to special permits from the Ukrainian authorities, go to bring flowers to the graves of their relatives or at the foot of monuments erected in that period. Soviet for the heroes of the Great Patriotic War.
“Including the power plant and the area surrounding it in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites is a first and important step to make this place a truly unique destination of interest for all”, declared the Ukrainian Minister of Culture. Oleksandr Tkachenko.