To tell the truth

In May 1986, I was in the fourth grade and I was very happy that I couldn’t eat salad either at school or at home. At that time, I had no interest in vegetables. My teacher Enrica and my parents had explained to me that due to radioactive rain, the vegetables in the gardens were contaminated. Back then, I knew nothing about nuclear physics (and still don’t know much), but even though I didn’t understand the causes, the effect didn’t bother me at all. However, I soon realized that there were much worse and more terrible consequences of which I was becoming aware. In the province of Turin and in many other parts of Italy, children from Belarus began arriving seeking refuge from the radioactivity. That’s how I first learned the name of a place I had never heard of before, Černobyl'. Almost no one knew about the location of the nuclear plant 40 km from Kiev, on the border with Belarus, before April 26, 1986. During a simulation of a malfunction, a real overheating of the uranium rods in reactor four occurred, causing a core meltdown, two explosions, and the release of large amounts of radioactive steam. Thirty-one people died in the first explosions, but that was just the beginning of a nightmare that would involve scientists, nuclear plant workers, firefighters, soldiers, and even thousands of laborers, who were called in to shovel sand made of boron, silicates, dolomite, and lead on the melted core to stop the radioactive vapors. Over 400 miners from Donetsk were called to dig a tunnel under the plant to channel liquid nitrogen and isolate the radioactive material that was seeping into the groundwater. It was work that proved fatal for almost all the rescuers, forced to work without proper protective gear. Many of them fell ill in the days and weeks following the incident, as they worked to secure the plant. The areas around the plant were evacuated up to 30 km, and more than 350,000 people were forced to leave their homes (including the inhabitants of the nearby town of Pripyat, which had been built to accommodate the families of Černobyl' workers, in total over 45,000 people).

The Soviet regime tried to keep the incident secret from the country and the world, but reports of high radiation levels recorded in some European countries forced Gorbachev to publicly acknowledge what had happened. According to many historians, the Černobyl' disaster had enormous significance not only on an environmental level but also politically, because it "forced" the USSR to decisively embark on the path of glasnost (transparency) and highlighted the structural backwardness of the Soviet energy and industrial apparatus. Many years later, Gorbachev himself stated that "the Černobyl' tragedy was a sign of the end of the Soviet Union."

Among the stories connected to the great tragedy of Černobyl', one of the most interesting is that of Valerij Legasov (1936-1988). Legasov was, in 1986, the first deputy director of the Kurčatov Institute for Atomic Energy and was tasked by the government to intervene to secure the plant. He was one of the first to promote the total evacuation of the area, coordinated the necessary actions to limit the most acute spread of radiation, and remained on-site for a long time to oversee the work, absorbing lethal doses of radiation in the process. However, his most important contribution may have been his desire to communicate what had happened to the outside world, denouncing the structural shortcomings and human and political responsibilities behind the disaster. For this, he was marginalized within the Soviet world. Before committing suicide in 1988, he recorded audiotapes in which he revealed everything he had been forbidden to say. It was an indictment of the Soviet political leaders' responsibilities, and it remains a warning to raise awareness about the management of nuclear energy.

Renato Bonomo
NP February 2025