Ukrainians recall Chornobyl sacrifice, applaud Japan

Kyiv Post Independence ^ | 3/17/2011 | Reuters

[Robert357]

If there is one person outside Japan who knows what the crisis workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant are going through now it is 64-year-old Andriy Chudinov.

One of the first Chornobyl trouble-shooters to get to the disaster site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986 and a rarity in that he survived, Chudinov looks back on those traumatic events with calmness, sadness and resignation.

He generously applauds the workers who are fighting to bring Japan’s quake-damaged nuclear reactors under control.

“These are good guys. After all, they have had it even worse than we did. They had a tsunami first and now there are several reactors with problems. That’s a nightmare for any atomic worker,” he told Reuters on March 16.

It remains to be seen whether the Japanese drama will take on the proportions of Chornobyl, when tons of nuclear material were spewed across Europe after an explosion and fire at the plant’s No. 4 reactor.

......

[Robert357]

An interesting comparision to Chornobyl from people who would know and respect what is happening in Japan.

Please note that Chornobyl involved tons of radioactive materials be released, while what is released over the ocean and never reaches shore is likely to be a small fraction of what impacted people from Chornobyl.

Also the insight that they only had one reactor to work on at Chornobyl and in Japan they have four they are trying to control adds another dimension that only those who have been there can fully understand.

[padre35]

They also had a open fire involving the nuclear materials themselves, that was a more toxic situation than what is happening in Japan.