Russian soldiers tossing chunks of nuclear fuel into a pit... all are dead now

[Vinnie From Indy]

After reading that some working at the Japanese plant will probably die from radiation exposure, I was reminded of a video I had seen during the Chernobyl disaster in Russia. It showed young Russian soldiers running across a rooftop to collect large and small chunks of highly radioactive fuel that had landed after an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear facility. They would run out as fast as they could and grab chunks and throw them over the edge of the roof into a pit that was later covered in concrete. All were bathed in lethal gamma radiation and, I believe, later died.

I was searching for the video of the soldiers and came across a very interesting and haunting blog by a young Russian girl who returned to Chernobyl on a motorbike recently. Her blog post about Chernobyl is filled with haunting images of people and places. Some of the photos are hers and others are from other photographers. The blog is very informative and it does have a photo of the young soldiers that sacrificed their lives trying to contain the disaster.

Cheers!

"A dose of 500 roentgens within 5 hours is fatal to humans. Interestingly, it takes about 2 1/2 times that dosage to kill a chicken and over 100 times that to kill a cockroach. This sort of radiation level can not be found in Chernobyl now. In the first days after explosion, some places around the reactor were emitting 3,000-30,000 roentgens per hour. The firemen who were sent to put out the reactor fire were fried on the spot by gamma radiation..."


"Work on the roof was the shortest job of all, and lasted only two minutes. Many soldiers were offered a choice of how to fulfill the tour of duty requirement that was necessary for their retirement from Army. One lasted two years in a hellish rain of bullets, rockets and bombs in Afghanistan, and the other lasted two minutes in a tranquil, silent and invisible rain of gamma rays on the roof of Unit # 3."


http://www.memoryarchive.org/en/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Disas...

[somone]

1. Great story

[sakabatou]

2. Off to the Darwin Awards

[hlthe2b]

5. They were soldiers who were unlikely aware of the risk of what they were doing...

(Probably ordered to do).

So, I don't count that in the Darwin Award category... Maybe the murdered category.

[Thegonagle]

6. Quite the insensitive post... Someone DIED believing he was doing the right thing.

What would you have done?

[SolutionisSolidarity]

7. These men died to contain the most serious nuclear accident in history.

I can't think of a more noble thing to do. Our gene pool is definitely worse off without them.

[slampoet]

17. What a shitty thing to say.

[sakabatou]

18. Fuck, I'm not reading it right.

Someone delete my previous post.

[Maru Kitteh]

22. Alert on your own post and ask that it be deleted. Explain that it is your post in the alert.

[WhiteTara]

20. Enjoy yourself while there,

we'll read your obit to see how you got in!

[City Lights]

23. Self delete. nt

[hlthe2b]

3. I saw her blog and photos quite some time ago, but was looking for it...

On the anniversary, I tried hard to find it. Bookmarked this time. Thanks

[chatnoir]

4. Ukrainians, not Russians

Sorry to nitpick.

[ClarkUSA]

8. Those workers still at Fukushima are heroes. 50 have elected to stay to keep seawater pumps going.

They are clearly trying to buy time for their nation.

800 others have been evacuated. They obviously didn't want to stay.

[right2bfree]

13. I hope the Japanese take better care of them then the 9/11 workers were by the US. nt

[ClarkUSA]

24. I doubt they will live long enough for us to find out.

[Shallah Kali]

9. Liqudators of Chernobyl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_ (Chernobyl)

Tribute to the Chernobyl Liquidators
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dLycZdumJI

[niyad]

10. and let us not forget the other russian nuclear accident--hidden for years

(I saw a report on this last year (on either Link or the documentary channel) and it was heartbreaking)

Mayak

Mayak (Russian: Маяк, "lighthouse") is one of the biggest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation. Located 150 km south-east of Ekaterinburg between the towns of Kasli and 72 km northwest of Chelyabinsk, the closest city to the nuclear complex is Ozyorsk, the central administrative territorial district. As part of the Russian nuclear weapon program, Mayak was formerly known as Chelyabinsk-40 and later as Chelyabinsk-65.

Mayak is also known as the source of the serious contamination of a huge territory in the Ural area in 1957, which was kept secret by the Soviet regime for about 30 years. Working conditions at Mayak, and a lack of environmental responsibility in the past, led to additional contamination of the surrounding lake district and severe health hazards and accidents. Some areas are still under restricted access because of radiation. In the past 45 years, about half a million people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing some of them to more than 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl disaster victims.<1>

Mayak was the goal of Gary Powers' surveillance flight in May 1960.<1>
Fissile Material Storage Facility (FMSF). Looking at administration building of the storage facility to include all the support facilities. Excavator is one of the construction equipment procured by the USACE.

Nuclear history

The Mayak plant was built in 1945–48, in a great hurry and in total secrecy, as part of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapon program. The plant's original mission was to make, refine, and machine plutonium for weapons. Five nuclear reactors were built for this purpose. Later the plant came to specialize in reprocessing plutonium from decommissioned weapons, and waste from nuclear reactors. Today the plant makes tritium and radioisotopes, but no plutonium. In recent years, proposals that the plant reprocess, for money, waste from foreign nuclear reactors have given rise to controversy.

In the early years of its operation, the Mayak plant released quantities of radioactively contaminated water into several small lakes near the plant, and into the Techa river, whose waters ultimately flow into the Ob River. The downstream consequences of this radiation pollution have yet to be determined. Some residents of Ozersk claim that living there poses no present-day risk, because of the decrease in the ambient radiation level over the past 50 years. They also report no problems with their health and the health of Mayak plant workers. These claims lack hard verification, and no one denies that many who worked at the plant in 1950s and '60s subsequently died of the effects of radiation. While the situation has since improved, the administration of the Mayak plant has been repeatedly criticized in recent years for environmentally unsound practices.

. . . ..


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak

additional information: http://www.logtv.com/films/chelyabinsk/

[dixiegrrrrl]

21. I had no idea. Wow. Many thanks for this info.

[jtuck004]

11. K&R

The wikileaks article is interesting.

From her _blog_:

"My dad used to say that people are afraid of a deadly thing which they can not see, can not feel and can not smell. Maybe that is because those words are a good description of death itself."


Read a story the other day about the government payments, school tution, and vacations to all the survivors. Sounded a lot like U.S.

Found this on a rally...

"Kiev rally demands pension raise for Chernobyl survivors

19:12 29/04/2006KIEV, April 29 (RIA Nobosti) - More than five thousand Chernobyl survivors took to the streets in the Ukrainian capital to demand pension raise just three days after the world marked an anniversary of the worst civilian nuclear disaster to date.
The participants, many of whom had taken part in cleanup operations following the April 26, 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, gathered Saturday outside the government headquarters in downtown Kiev to protest a resolution cutting their compensation payments 15-fold...."

http://en.rian.ru/world/20060429/47053116.html

[jannyk]

12. Fabulous Read! Highly Recommended k&r!!

[Lucinda]

14. Thank you!

♥

[MattSh]

Duplicate

[MattSh]

15. Riding around Chernobyl on a motorcycle is a HOAX!

Chornobyl "Ghost Town" story is a fabrication TOP
e-POSHTA subscriber Mary Mycio writes:

I am based in Kyiv and writing a book about Chornobyl for the Joseph Henry Press. Several sources have sent me links to the "Ghost Town" photo essay included in the last e-POSHTA mailing. Though it was full of factual errors, I did find the notion of lone young woman riding her motorcycle through the evacuated Zone of Alienation to be intriguing and asked about it when I visited there two days ago.

I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.

She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site.

Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/05/fraud-exposed-and...

[bvar22]

19. I was about to post this.

I saw the photos and the story about the lone woman motorcyclist in Chernobyl several years ago,
and also remember that it had been debunked.

[Buddyblazon]

16. Someone posted a Chernoybl documentary here last night...

No. They did not all die. But many have. And the rest...we'll let's just say they've literally never been the same since.


Here:

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-battle-of-chernobyl /

Watched it last night. Good documentary.

Edited to add link

[GSLevel9]

25. great read...