CHERNOBYL 30TH ANNIVERSARY

CHERNOBYL TOWNHALL

Today, 26 April 30 years ago in 1986 on the border of Ukraine and Belarus the Reactor Number Four at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin power plant in Chernobyl had exploded.

The reactor's 160-ton concrete lid was blown off, releasing a radioactive cloud of plutonium and other deadly nuclear isotopes into the atmosphere.

After three days Moscow admitted the explosion. Later on it was revealed if a legion of Soviet soldiers, miners divers, firemen and helicopter pilots had not risk, literally, their lives to tackle the reactor's molten core a second explosion would occurred and it would have wiped out western Europe and left it a toxic wasteland for tens of thousands of years.
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The second explosion would have been 10,000 times greater then that which devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima in the Second World War.

Those heroic men succeeded to seal the reactor and paid with a horrendous death. None of them were ever honoured for their heroic sacrifices. It is assumed that 5,000 died of agonising deaths from radiation poisoning.

Today, the area of a radius of 19 miles of the plant is a no-man land with deformed nature, and the shattered buildings.

The city of Pripyat where 50,000 workers from the plant lived is now the most eerie of the deserted towns and villages in the Dead Zone. Now, trees irradiated by superheated plutonium, cesium 137, iodine 131 and strontium 90 started to grow at the public plaza.

Wolves, wild horses, bats, rats, rabbits and mice took up residence in the houses, cinemas, swimming pool, restaurants where all plant life is mutated and irradiated soil has a half-life of 240,000 years.

The town was only evacuated a day after the explosion when people collapsed in the street and blood running from their noses. A fleet of 400 cars, 1,200 buses and dozen trains made them leave with only a few hours of notice. They had to leave everything behind which was looted by soldiers who were the last ones to leave.

Chernobyl despite of radiation contamination people seem to be determined to move back. Already 4,000 people work, eat and sleep there. They are the engineers, labourers, technicians, electricians and atomic specialists who keep the Reactor Number Four under control. The units at the gigantic complex - size of 40 Wembley Stadiums - the fuel rods were removed and moved far away.

The other workforce of nurses and doctors caring for the workers are all aware of the silent killer around them.

Due to harsh winters and hot summers the protection built by the first squads is corroding and it needs now another group of workers to construct a giant rubber and steel sheath put instead to protect the reactor ageing shield. It will take 2 years and cost £1.5billion.

It is hard to understand why people want to live there again after around one million died of cancer. Nevertheless, the people seem to be willing to move back into the Dead Zone even they are aware of the silent killer.

It is even harder to understand that governments are not closing down any Nuclear power Stations leave alone building new ones. This explosion should give a lesson that nuclear power is far beyond the capacity of man to cope with. Not to speak of seeking constantly new dumping grounds for the waste with will not disintegrate for hundred of thousands of years and piling up more and more.

Also the radiation of the explosion was recorded thousands of miles away in Uppsala, Sweden. Japan still contaminates the Pacific Ocean with radiation seeping into the sea because they cannot control or stop it. If the Soldiers and engineers did not risk their lives with which they had to pay for it, there would have been a second explosion which would have wiped western Europe out and contaminated for tens of thousands of years.

　

CRIMEA

Crimea, a peninsula on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Although only a small piece of land all along in history it became a very important point because it is the entry to the Black Sea.

It was first colonised by the Greeks in the 6^th century BC. 

In the 1^st century AD the Crimean people became a Roman protectorate.

Tribes from the north and the east invaded Crimea as they swooped down. Ostrogoths, Huns and other tribes went across until Byzantine partially controlled it from the 6^th to the 12th century.

During the 13^th century it was overrun by Mongolians.

In the late 15th century Tatar khanate became part of the Ottoman Empire

Russia Empire annexed the Crimea in 1783 till 1914 as Crimea Autonomous Soviet Republic.  It was dissolved in 1945 and Crimea became an oblast of the RSSR from 1945 to 1954 and then a part of the Ukraine SSR from 1954 till 1991 it became two territories – Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol City within the Ukraine

In 2014 independence was declared and a referendum of whether to join Russia was held while the peninsular was occupied by Russian soldiers.  After the Crimea's majority voted to be annexed to Russia it was again split into two federal subjects – Republic of Crimea and federal city of Sevastopol.

USA and its Allies do not accept the vote and stated it is illegal and ever since the trouble started and thousands have to die or severely injured again.

G8 expelled Russia temporarily and started sanction against the country which is of no benefit to both sites.

Crimean War

From 1854 to 1956 the war was fought between Russia and the combined forces of Turkey, Britain, France and Piedmont.  The war broke out because Russia was not able to get equal rights from France in a dispute over the Palestinian holy places and occupied part of the Ottoman Empire.

A conference was held to stop Russian expansion in the Black Sea area and to protect trade routes; Turkey’s allies demanded to appease Russia. However, Turkey refused and declared was on Russia in October 1853.

In November the Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet at Sinope on the Black Sea. This action forced Britain and France to enter the war in March 1854.

Austria remains neutral but it mobilised its army whereby Russia was forced to evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia.

The Allied force, under Lord Raglan, entered Crimea in August 1854. It was ill-prepared and despite suffering heavily of cholera it defeated the Russia Army at the battle of the Alma River on 20 September 1954.  It laid siege to the armed fort of Sevastopol.

Russia attempted several time to break the siege but was beaten back by the British defence of the Inkerman ridge. The Tsar’s forces had to retreat after a bloody battle.

A winter of siege warfare followed the next Anglo-Russian confronting at the Battle of Balaklava, the place were the historical Light Brigade charged.

The Allied armies lacked of fuel, clothing and supplies and therefore suffered of a heavy death toll. The British public criticism was high after ‘The Times’ reported it by W.H. Russell, the first war correspondence to use the telegraph to transmit his report.

Florence Nightingale asked for permission to travel to Crimea. Her introduction of hygiene and various other new methods finally reduced the mortality in hospital among the Allied wounded form 42 per cent to 2 per cent. She turned the whole nursing completely around and made it to what it is today.

When Sevastopol fell, Alexander II, the new Russian Tsar began a peace process which was formally accepted at the Congress of Paris in 1856.