ed the explosion sent 12 million curies (a measure of how radioactive something is) of radiation into the air in just 24 hours. An additional 38 million fell within the next ten days. In contrast, only 17 curies escaped at the Three Mile Island accident (Pringle, 65).Two point two million people now live within contaminated regions. Their lives have adapted to deal with it. Clocks atop government buildings in Minsk, Byelorussia, flash the time, temperature, and radiation level (McCuen, 33).Following the accident, the Soviet government sent an army of 750,000 people to clean up the accident. These people were known as “liquidators”. They erected a twenty-four story sarcophagus of concrete block around the remains of reactor Number Four. The structure was not sealed air-tight, because it was decided that the welders faced too great a danger of radiation. If the structure collapsed, it could launch even more radioactive dust about the countryside. Some of these liquidators received over 200 REMs of radiation (Edwards, 115) (a measurement of biological tissue damage caused by radiation (Pringle, 116)). This is enough to cause acute radiation sickness, a breakdown of the body’s systems characterized by diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea. 5 REMs are the maximum dosage of radiation permitted yearly for any U.S. worker.An estimated 180 tons of uranium fuel remain in the rubble, scattered or even fused with melted concrete or steel. Chernobyl had four reactors. Numbers One and Three are still functioning, but they are unsafe. Number Two was shut down after a fire in 1991. Two operators were fired due to this incident. Five survivors were jailed, but they were later released because they had not been informed that graphite-core reactors will become dangerously unstable at low power. Operating manuals, also, made no mention of this shortcoming. Now the rules prohibit operating below one quarter power.Ukraine is concerned about their ...
