What would it take to figure out that nuclear power is a bad idea? For some, that took a lot less than the Chernobyl disaster. Twenty-five years ago today, the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine, then in the Soviet Union, exploded and caught fire after a safety test experiment went badly wrong. It sent radiation all over Europe, and beyond. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated, never to return, from Prypyat, the city closest to the site. Back then it had a population of 50,000. Today it is a ghost city, one of many in the dead zone surrounding Chernobyl.
How long is 25 years? Long enough to figure out nuclear power is not safe? Apparently there are those who need more time. Long enough to develop cancer even though you ‘weren’t there’? For some, much less than that — their time ran out years ago, and their children’s clocks are ticking faster than they ought. Long enough for nature to fully reclaim a space conquered by humans? It’s a start, but not quite.
Is 25 years long enough for all the radiation to dissipate? Hardly; the containment structure made of lead and concrete that was erected over the failed reactor has begun to leak radiation. One news story indicates that it was the recent and ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster, not the simple fact of the leaking radiation, that has spurred what that newspaper called ‘the world community’ to pledge 550 million euros ($780 million) to help build a new containment shell over Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4.
If 25 years, two disasters that defy imagination for most of us, and the inability for a concrete-and-lead sarcophagus to contain the radiation are not enough to convince the holdouts in favor of nuclear power that it is a bad idea, what is? When do we realize this is not simply a problem for the Ukraine or Belarus, the other former Soviet state just over the norther border which received a tremendous dose of the radiation? It would seem Fukushima is beginning to bring the message home, as its crippled reactors continue releasing radiation that is traveling the globe. But will it take another 25 years for us to leave nuclear power behind completely? That’s not even the half-life of cesium-137 — and that’s considered one of the ‘medium-lived’ fission products.
“will it take another 25 years for us to leave nuclear power behind completely? That’s not even the half-life of cesium-137 —”
Don’t know. Hope not. Working on it.