Belarus and Chernobyl: Separating Seeds from Chaff
نویسندگان
چکیده
Seventy percent of radionuclides discharged during the Chernobyl disaster were deposited in Belarus. Besides causing radioactive contamination, the tragedy at Chernobyl exposed some of the socio-cultural characteristics, such as mass dependency on strong patronage of the state, that buttress the political institutions of that country. On the basis of a literature review, a specialist on Belarus aims at separating proven health effects of Chernobyl from psychological and socio-political consequences of the disaster. The spiritual self-isolation of Belarus from all of Europe is to a large extent conditioned by Chernobyl (Shevtsov, 2005, p. 178). ore than twenty years after the Chernobyl disaster, the issue of its magnitude and consequences is still debated. This article contributes to that debate and draws upon four principal sources: (1) David Marples’s (1996) assessment of the effect in question; (2) a kind of travel diary by the Belarusian journalist Vasiliy Semashko, who toured the contaminated areas of Belarus and Ukraine in the spring of 2006 (Semashko, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, 2006d, 2006e); the 2005 joint report by seven UN agencies and the World Bank (Chernobyl’s Legacy, 2005); and a book by Yuriy Shevtsov (Shevtsov, 2005). It is shown that in the context of Soviet and post-Soviet Belarusian society the psychological and socio-political effects of Chernobyl exceed the immediate and delayed effects of radiation. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is located 7 km south of the Belarus-Ukraine border. Seventy percent of all radionuclides (radioactive isotopes) discharged during the meltdown of one of its four reactors on April 26, 1986, were deposited in Belarus. Twenty-three percent of Belarus’s land acquired a level of contamination in excess of 1 Ci/km. The contamProfessor of Geography, Radford University, Radford, VA; [email protected] M
منابع مشابه
Increased leukemia rates in children from Belarus after Chernobyl
ISSN 0931-4288 No. 626-627, Feb. 7, 2013 www.strahlentelex.de English version Increased leukemia rates in children from Belarus after Chernobyl Alfred Körblein [email protected] February 2013 A trend analysis of data from Belarus finds a statistically significant 33% increase in the incidence of leukemia in children in 1987, following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 (RR=1.33; P=0.0...
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