Ukraine marks Chernobyl nuclear disaster

Tuesday marks the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident on record, when a reactor blew up, killing thousands. Last Modified: 26 Apr 2011 03:10

Activists light candles to display a nuclear radiation warning sign during an anti-nuclear rally in Vienna [Reuters] Black-clad Orthodox priests sang solemn hymns, Ukrainians lit thin wax candles and a bell tolled 25 times for the number of years that have passed since the Chernobyl disaster as the world began marking the anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in history. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill led the nighttime service early on Tuesday near a monument to firefighters and cleanup workers who died soon after the accident from acute radiation poisoning. "The world had not known a catastrophe in peaceful times that could be compared to what happened in Chernobyl,'' said Kirill, who was accompanied by Mykola Azarov, Ukraine's prime minister, and other officials. "It's hard to say how this catastrophe would have ended if it hadn't been for the people, including those whose names we have just remembered in prayer," he said in an emotional tribute to the workers sent to the Chernobyl plant immediately after one of its reactors exploded to try to contain the contamination. The service commemorates the time of the blast on April 26, 1986. The explosion spewed a cloud of radioactive fallout over much of Europe and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes in the most heavily hit areas in Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia. The explosion released about 400 times more radiation than the US atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima. Hundreds of thousands were sickened and once-pristine forests and farmland still remain contaminated. The UN's World Health Organisation said at a conference in Kiev last week that among the 600,000 people most heavily exposed to the radiation, 4,000 more cancer deaths than average are expected to be eventually found. Changed lives Several hundred Ukrainians, mostly widows of plant workers and those sent in to deal with the disaster, came to Tuesday's service to pay their respects to their loved ones and colleagues. Teary-eyed, they lit candles, stood in silence and crossed themselves to the sound of Orthodox chants. "Our lives turned around 360 degrees,'' said Larisa Demchenko, 64. She and her husband both worked at the plant, and he died nine years ago from cancer linked to Chernobyl radiation. "It was a wonderful town, a wonderful job, wonderful people. It was our youth. Then it all collapsed," she said. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus have cut the benefits packages for sickened cleanup workers in recent years, and many workers complained directly to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as he handed them awards for their work at a ceremony on Monday in Moscow. Officials in Bryansk, the Russian region most contaminated by the disaster, have failed to make necessary repairs at the local cancer hospital, worker Leonid Kletsov told the president. "It's the only place of rest for us," he said. "Officials promised to renovate it, but these promises are still promises."

Source: Agencies