The Ghost of Chernobyl

Twenty-five years before, exactly on this date, it was just another aspiring day for the people in northern Ukraine who were starting their day with a new goal, a new hope that they normally had like any other day of the year, but it was not as wonted at all. It's meant to be something inconceivably different so that the people of Chernobyl including the surrounding Ukraine and Belarus cant forget even after many generations. An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, triggered by a testing error, devastated the entire region to a hell of radioactive inferno that burned for ten days and 190 tons of toxic materials were expelled into the atmosphere, making it the worst nuclear disaster in the history of human civilization.

The explosion was so powerful that it released 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though immediate death due to explosion was not great in numbers, over 30 thousand people since the disaster have died due to ling cancer, leukemia, and cardiovascular disease. Over seven millions of people who lived around the contaminated territories were exposed to the toxic radioactive material such as iodine-131, cesium-137, strontium-90, and plutonium-239 and the repercussion of the exposure was so huge that it widely damaged the ecosystem, and Belarus was the worst hit country in terms of economic loss. According to a report by the Committee on the Problems of the Consequences of the Catastrophe at the Chernobyl NPP, the economic damages to Belarus after the accident over 30 years (1986 – 2015) could be to the tune of $235 billion.

The environment and health impact of Chernobyl nuclear disaster are extremely concerning. Thyroid cancer in children has increased since the disaster. According to World Health Organization report, in this region, 50,000 children will develop the disease during their lifetime, 30 times higher after the accident. Leukemia has increased 50% in children and adults. In addition to thyroid cancer and leukemia, as per a UNICEF report, between 1990 and 1994, nervous system disorder has increased by 43%; cardiovascular diseases by 43%; and bone and muscle disorders by 62%.

After 25 years, the innocent victims of Chernobyl are still in a state of fear and uncertainty. They even don't know for how many generations they would face the burnt of this disaster, which has always been the results of mindless technological progress, often postulated by the agents of callous state machinery. Perhaps, in the name of technological progress the human aspirations for precarious achievements pose the most perilous threats that one day the entire world would be pushed to the brink of extinction.