Ill-fated plant still casts a damaging shadow a quarter century on

CHERNOBYL LETTER:The terrible impact on people of the mid-1980s nuclear disaster is all too evident

LYDIA MAKAROVA is the picture of robust health as she enters the little whitewashed building in the village of Ukrainka.

Sturdy and smiling, her tanned face framed by a flowery scarf, she chats with her neighbours about how their animals and vegetable plots are faring now spring has chased away the long, hard winter of rural Ukraine.

“As you can see, I’m fine,” Makarova (69) says with a proud grin, a couple of gold teeth glinting. “I haven’t got any health problems but I came here just to make sure, for peace of mind I suppose.” Across the hallway, schoolchildren share nervous giggles and long silences as their eyes scan the medical posters on the walls and the faces of friends emerging from the examination room.

Inside, a Red Cross medic will smear gel on their necks and run an ultrasound device over their thyroid glands, searching for the abnormalities that have become relatively commonplace here since the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred just 100km away.

Twenty-five years ago today, a combination of human error and flawed design caused a massive meltdown in Chernobyl’s reactor number four, spewing radioactive fallout across a swathe of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and contaminating parts of Europe as far away as Ireland.

Thirty-one people perished in the explosion and clean-up operation, but debate rages over how many have since died as a result, with claims ranging from just a handful of cancer victims to almost a million worldwide.

A sharp rise in thyroid cancer is the only health impact recognised by the UN, but critics accuse it of playing down the consequences under pressure from its own International Atomic Energy Agency and the nuclear power lobby. Some experts claim other cancers and birth defects have risen dramatically.

Rates of thyroid cancer are five to six times higher than normal in areas that were badly hit by Chernobyl fallout, and more than 6,000 cases have been directly linked to the accident.

Many of those cancer sufferers were small children in 1986, when their growing thyroids absorbed large doses of radiation in the days after the meltdown. Soviet officials hid the scale of the emergency and failed to immediately evacuate locals or issue prophylactic medication.

The disaster’s legacy is seen every day by Red Cross staff who run mobile clinics like the one visiting Ukrainka, and six more that tour other affected parts of the former Soviet Union.

In these remote areas, the clinics bring a lifeline to people often too poor, too isolated and too scared to seek a high-tech medical diagnosis in a distant town or city – this is a vital service that in recent years has relied largely on Irish Aid for funding.

“The accident affected eight million people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, and we screen some 100,000 people for thyroid problems each year. Almost half are referred for further examination and we detect about 200 cases of cancer annually,” says Joe Lowry, the Dublin-born communications manager for the International Federation of the Red Cross in Europe. “We have learned so much about the long-term physical and psychological effects of a nuclear accident. This could be invaluable in helping Japan deal with the aftermath of the recent Fukushima disaster.”

About 36 hours after the Chernobyl blast, Soviet officials finally started evacuating people from a 30km-wide zone around the plant. But they allowed life to continue as normal in villages like Ukrainka, and even in 2.5 million-people strong Kiev, where the traditional May 1st parade and other festivities were fanned by a breeze blowing from the direction of the stricken site.

“No one tried to move us. But then we didn’t have anywhere to go and we had cows and pigs to look after,” Makarova recalls.

“Of course, some people around here died, the ‘liquidators’ who were immediately sent in after the explosion, but we’re doing OK. Perhaps our bodies adapted after the accident.”

Greenpeace found recently that berries and mushrooms growing well outside the Chernobyl exclusion zone still contain dangerous levels of radioactive metals. Makarova and her friends say they never stopped eating such produce, and relish trips into the forest to collect them, regardless of warnings about contamination.

Minutes later, Makarova’s smile has vanished and her eyes are blank with shock. The scan revealed a lump in her thyroid and she must go into town for further tests.

Thyroid cancer responds very well to treatment if caught early. But that good news doesn’t seem to register with Makarova, as she walks away from the clinic through the long shadow of Chernobyl.

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