The Nuclear Explosion at Chernobyl

That Rocked the Children’s World

What is Radiation In general, radiation is a process where

energy emitted by one body travels in a straight line through a medium or through space. Radiation comes from the sun, nuclear reactors, microwave ovens, radio antennas, X-ray machines, and power lines, to name a few.

How is it harmful? Light radiation sickness tends to begin at about 50-100 rad (or 0.5-1 Gy,

0.5-1 Sv, 50-100 rem, 50,000-100,000 mrem).

Exposure to cosmic rays during a roundtrip airplane flight from New York to Los Angeles results in 3 mrem (1 millirem = 1/1000th of a rem) or 0.03 mSv of absorbed radiation.

One dental X-ray is 4 - 15 mrem or 0.04 - 0.15 mSv, one chest X-rays 10 mrem 0.1 mSv, and one mammogram is 70 mrem or 0.7 mSv.

One year of exposure to natural radiation (from soil, cosmic rays, etc.) is about 300 mrem or 3 mSv.

Chernobyl Nuclear Plant

Before the explosion

After the Explosion

The impact of radiation on the human body is expressed in many ways, one of which is mutations. In the case of Chernobyl, the mutations were mostly recessive—the accumulation effect will not be obvious for several generations.

There have been a few cases of mutation in children, but the worst is yet to come.

One of the most delayed effects of radiation is the induction of cancer in Belarus.

Most are thyroid cancers, but also brain tumors, bone tumors, kidney tumors, etc.

These children are being treated in a special hospital.

They need expensive treatment. Almost every day in Belarusian news-

papers, one can see ads begging for financial help from despairing parents who don’t want to watch their children die from cancer.

Few can afford the thousands of dollars when average incomes are around $30 per month.

The only world these children see are the white walls of the hospitals, and they have to take painful procedures every day, as the doctors try to postpone the fateful day.

The health of the people, especially the young, is seriously damaged by Chernobyl.

Belarusian scientists are alarmed that the genetic fund of the Belarusian people is in great danger—the nation’s immunity has been weakened.

Many abandoned, mentally retarded children are being found and brought to the orphanages.

The Story of Annya

She was born in 1990 in a village highly contaminated by the Chernobyl meltdown of 1986.

A brain tumor at the age of 4 marked the end of Annya’s childhood and the beginning of pain and illness.

Now 15, Annya is bedridden and has spent her life in and out of hospitals, between tumors and life support.

Every 15 minutes of every night, she must be turned to prevent further pain and bedsores.

Annya’s is just one story. In the Ukraine, Russia, Belarus,

and beyond, there are 100,000s of people who lost a chance of a normal life to nuclear disaster one night in 1986.

The Armageddon for the Belarusian people is not yet over, and all the truth about what is happening there must be told to the world so that it can hear the SOS of this little country.

Thousands of stories.

Thousands of lives forever and irreparably scarred.