The Liquidators: The Unknown Heroes of Chernobyl

A few months ago, I signed on to eBay and found pages of listings for “Liquidator Medals” -- medals that were awarded to the 800,000 young men from throughout the former Soviet Union who were conscripted to “clean-up” operations in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster almost 20 years ago.

I paid my $7, and less than a week later I was holding the medal in my hands. A cheap price for a medal won at such a cost. Not many people realize that the miners, soldiers, and fireman who were the first responders to Chernobyl may have saved Europe.

Looking at the medal, it is hard not to think of the 373 New York City firefighters who died at the World Trade Center in September 2001. Within weeks of their sacrifice, “NYFD” jerseys and baseball caps appeared all over United States – a homage turned into a fashion statement, as if we could channel the heroism of the lost firefighters.

On April 26 – the 19 th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster – my hand lingered over the Liquidator Medal in my drawer, as I   considered whether to pin it to my lapel as a gesture of recognition. I decided not to – like wearing an “NYFD” baseball cap, the gesture would make me wonder if I were bearing witness, or trivializing a true sacrifice. Here is what happened almost 20 years ago:

The disaster occurred in the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, when a testing error caused the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine.   During a radioactive fire that burned for 10 days, 190 tons of toxic materials were expelled into the atmosphere.

Six hundred firefighters were deployed immediately after the accident. In an attempt to stop the release of radioactive materials, the firefighters pumped cooling water into the core of the reactor. This did not work, and between 27 April and 5 May, more than 30 military helicopters flew over the burning reactor, dumping 2400 tons of lead, and 1800 tons of sand to try to smother the fire and absorb radiation.

This only made matters worse as the heat intensified under the dumped materials. The temperature in the reactor rose again.

Three days after the explosion, researchers at Academy of Sciences of Belarus made calculations estimating that that a critical mass of uranium, graphic, and water convulsed under the reactor, which could result in a 3-5 megaton blast as soon as 8 May.

Thousands of coal miners – drafted because of their expertise in underground tunneling – were tasked with digging a tunnel under the reactor and to install a coil for cooling the concrete base of the reactor and to reinforce any cracks appearing in the concrete.

These men worked in extremely high temperatures and were exposed to high doses of radiation. Their self-sacrifice likely prevented a second nuclear explosion that would have exposed Europe to massive doses of radioactive contamination.

Liquidators have reported that they could only work 5 to 60 seconds at a time due to the extreme temperatures and radiation levels. Others report that KGB confiscated their Geiger counters.

In the final phase of firefighting, the core of the reactor was cooled with nitrogen. Not until 6 May was the radioactive fire extinquished – 10 days after it began to rage.

The end of the fire at the reactor was only the beginning. Additional “liquidators” were conscripted to undertake what was perhaps the most dreadful task of all – the evacuation of contaminated villages and towns. The liquidators had to evacuate beautiful villages that had been inhabited for generations before returning to shoot the family pets. In all, over 400,000 people were forced to leave their homes and for own safety. Over 2,000 villages were bulldozed to the ground, and hundreds more lie silent.

Of the 800,000 Chernobyl liquidators, it is estimated that 25,000 have died since the disaster of diseases such as lung cancer, leukemia, and cardiovascular diseases, and 70,000 are permanently disabled. Twenty percent of the deaths are believed to be suicides.

On 2 April 2005, a leading Russian scientist reported that the hastily constructed cover over the Chernobyl sarcophagus is degrading and could cause a catastrophe of the same scale as the accident almost 20 years ago.   According to Alexei Yablokov, President of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, “If it collapses, there will be no explosion, but a pillar of dust containing irradiated particles will shoot 1.5 kilometers into the air and will be spread by the wind."