Chernobyl (1986)

On 26 April 1986, the Number 4 reactor of the V.I. Lenin nuclear power station at Chernobyl (situated in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union until 1989) exploded. It was the most significant nuclear accident in history.

The Soviet Union admitted the accident four days after it occurred, as high radiation levels were detected in Scandinavia.

According to the brief Russian statement, the other three reactors in the plant had been shut down, and two people had been killed, with nearby places evacuated.

Pictures taken by American satellites indicated that the top of the reactor was blown off in an explosion.

The reactor was on fire, and the Russians asked for help in fighting it from Sweden and West Germany. Other offers of assistance, including one from the International Atomic Energy Agency, were refused.

Russian reactors did not have containment buildings, normal in the West, to prevent the release of radioactivity after an accident.

After the accident, traces of radioactive deposits were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere, but due to fluctuating winds, some areas were more severely affected than others. The disaster released 100 times more radiation than the combined atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in World War II.

Following the disaster, those in power began looking for people to blame. To point the finger at substandard equipment would have been tantamount to admitting that the mighty Soviet Union lagged behind its world competitors in matters of technology or safety, so it was far better to put the blame on human error.

Over 25 members of the Communist Party were expelled for their ‘role’ in the disaster, and six Chernobyl workers were accused of violating safety rules. Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov was accused of sending four subordinates to inspect the burning reactor without telling them of the radiation hazard.

All were found guilty and given sentences varying from two years in a camp to 10 years in jail.

The Soviet government had their scapegoats, but the political consequences of the accident could not be contained, and one of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster was the demise of the Soviet Union.

Mikhail Gorbachev had been the Soviet leader for just over a year at the time of the disaster and was embarking on a series of reforms, one of which was to decrease the withholding of information from the population by certain government agencies. Chernobyl gave him the chance to draw a line in the sand between the old and new eras in terms of communications and brought home to him the damage nuclear weapons would cause.

He later wrote that this was a major factor in his decision to open a dialogue with the US about decreasing the number of nuclear weapons of both countries.

The disaster at Chernobyl caused great suffering but was also a turning point in the Soviet Union’s history and ultimate dissolution. It proved that, towards the end of the 20th century, a Western government that seemingly cared so little for the safety of its citizens was no longer sustainable.

As the last Soviet president, Gorbachev later wrote: “The Chernobyl disaster, more than anything else, opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression, to the point that the system as we knew it could no longer continue.”