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Simple narative and pictures...
But one does have to wonder... The A-Bomb in Hiroshima killed something like 140,000 by the end of the year and affected the health of over 350,000. That was nearly the entire population of the city. While some was from the initial blast, quite a bit of that was from the radiation, and I think you can still live in Hiroshima.
I have no idea the exact numbers, but the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs were tiny by today's standards. It's quite possible that the amount of radiation released was greater at chernobyl, and/or the specific isotopes released were longer-lasting...
Either way, if someone melts down a nuclear reactor, and then says I'm not allowed to live next door anymore, I'd be more than happy to believe them. Gieger counters don't lie.
That girl has a lot of courage to go there. I don't have the balls...
I've edited this quite a bit and also gotten my friend's permission to use it, so I hope it qualifies under WW TOS against quoting emails.
As of June 2002, there were about 7 Chernobyl-type reactors still in existence in the former Soviet states or satellite countries (I'm going by memory here). My seatmate on a flight to Europe was a US consultant in nuclear energy who was working with the UN on retiring those plants. He was on his way to Lithuania, where one the "Ignalina" plant was located. Closing the plant put Lithuania in a dilemma. Electricity was very cheap there because of the plant, and Lithuania had used that to attract capital investments from a lot of Western European companies. It made it much cheaper for them to manufacture products in Lithuania than in other nearby countries. Once they decommission the plant, Lithuania could "easily" buy electricity from Germany, but at a very expensive (comparatively speaking) price.One of the other reactors he was working to decommission was in Armenia, but that task was even more daunting because of the tough political situation. There were too many animosities with neighboring countries that prevented them from buying electricity from outside their borders and they had no money to build new power plants to replace the Chernobyl reactor that sits in a major earthquake zone.
It is powered by company now. I was not able to pay for traffic. I had 3 million people visited my site in two month.My only purpose was to show Chernobyl to people.
I wrote this story for no reward and I did it with love for my country.
Elena
My goodness, you can't beat word of mouth.
[uer.ca...]
Nice work though, I totally bought it - the Kremlin should hire her.
