Today was a relaxed late start with the bus leaving at 9:30. Breakfast didn’t start until 8. We had signed up for an optional “tour” of the Chernobyle Museum,  located in Kiev at an old firehouse 90 kilometers South of the reactor.  The second stop on the “tour” is Babi Yar followed by lunch. 

The guide at the museum spoke through Baiba as translator.  She walked us through the history of the disaster 27 years ago.  Just as a reminder,  the number 4 reactor at Chernobyle experienced an explosion that blew the roof off of the core and a subsequent fire.  This placed reactor number 3 which is adjacent in immediate risk. The cloud of radiation from the initial explosion blanketed northern Europe then spread South and eventually circled the earth 3 times dropping radioactive rain as it went.  We stood in a room with the equipment used by the “mitigators” as they sought to put out the fire and clean up the roof of number 3. This was not the actual equipment since all of that has been buried at the site. 

We learned once again about the horrifying aftermath of the radiation and the abandonment of towns and villages within a 30 kilometer radius.  The people displaced,  the lies to the world and their own people about the nature and severity of the accident. We also learned that the exclusion zone may need to be maintained for 3,500 years!  There is also a lot of information about Fukashima and the stairway is lined with fish pennants hung by Japanese to bring luck to their families.  They have a lot in common.

After being overwhelmed with the reminder s of nuclear disaster,  we went into a conference room and we were introduced to an operator from Chernobyle who was on the next shift after the explosion.  He and his team entered the devastated control room with radiation levels 1000 times higher than normal to supply water to cool what was left,  to recover the bodies of their mates, and to prevent further damage from a huge oil tank that was in danger of catching fire and a “balloon” of hydrogen similarly at risk.  The four members of the team that went to activate the emergency drain systems died within two weeks of radiation exposure.  Our man discovered a radiation suntan all over his body and stuffed classic radiation exposure symptoms.  This was confirmed by John from our party who is a retired nuclear medicine doctor.  I questioned, in disbelief,  whether he understood the risk he was facing and his comment was “we knew we were not making toys for kids”.  Baiba, our guide, confirmed that he had his degree from the most highly rated Soviet Institue of Nuclear Energy and is trained to be a constructor.  He left nuclear energy to become a journalist and retired from that to take up painting and spreading the memory of what happened and telling the stories that were forbidden until Ukrainian independence in 1991.  I don’t even know how to think about meeting such a man.

As we recovered from this  “learning and discovery”, as OAT calls such an experience, the bus took us to the site of another notorious slaughter, the killing grounds called Babi Yar.  Most of the territory had been built over by the Soviets. A Metro Station sits atop the actual killing field,  it is believed.  The Menorah Memorial sits atop a hill overlooking a ravine next to one that may have been the actual burial grounds.  A TV tower dominates the height and apartments adorn the grounds of the nearby concentration camp.  It is all very disturbing especially the memorials scattered hear and there with little connection to any actual history.  They have tried to blot it out,  but like Amalek, whom we are required to forget,  the requirement to forget enhances the memory.

Please, if the pictures do not appear, click on the links in the text to see them.  This process is a work in progress.  I’ll get it right one day.