#wormwood forest

[siriuslymeg]

In case anyone is interested in reading about Chernobyl, these are the books that I've read so far. (still reading Wormwood Forest)

My top favorite is Midnight in Chernobyl because I feel like it was the most detailed, often pulling information from author interviews with the actual victims; so firsthand information. Ablaze, Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe, and The Truth About Chernobyl were pretty much the same type of book as Midnight in Chernobyl with a few unique stories of their own.

Voices from Chernobyl ripped my heart out and danced on it, so maybe think before getting into that one. Heh.

Chernobyl 1:23:40 was very short, simple, easy to understand and also included a parallel story of the author's experience going into the abandoned city of Pripyat, which had been a long time dream of his.

Wormwood Forest (so far) talks about the radiation and the effect it is having on the environment and it is FASCINATING. It's also explaining radiation in a way that I can actually understand...could be because I've already been reading about it so much that it's finally sinking in, but either way, it's a welcome change to the books I've been reading that have mainly only addressed the human side of the story.

Please, if you have read a book about Chernobyl, add it here! I'd love to read more, believe it or not, and it can be a resource for other people who are interested in reading about it.

[briannaisuntitledatpresstime]

“I remember a dream I had soon after the disaster. In it I was out on the town with a group of faceless strangers on a dark, gray night. Suddenly a staircase appeared in a kind of scaffolding and I climbed it into my parents’ brightly lit kitchen. In the middle of the linoleum sat the Chernobyl reactor core. It wasn’t big and looked like nothing special, but I knew it was emanating deadly, invisible rays. We walked over and around it in the kitchen, going about our business and pretending it wasn’t there. But I knew it was dangerous and told my mother: ‘We have to get rid of this thing!’ And her eminently sensible response was: ‘But where are we supposed to put it?’

“In my hyphenated Ukrainian-American existence, ‘America’ was the streets and schools, bookshelves and television. But ‘Ukraine’ was family, and the family gathered mostly in the kitchen. In dream logic, Chernobyl was in Ukraine, Ukraine was in my parents’ kitchen, and therefore Chernobyl was in my parents’ kitchen.

“The worst-case scenarios depicted a dead land, a black hole that had moved me in an immediate way, as though I had lost a part of myself. In the years that followed, the disaster became a kind of hobby for me. I studied all Chernobyl matters closely and was convinced that the Soviets were lying about it even after Gorbachev ushered in glasnost. In fact, they did lie about a great deal. But by the time such details emerged in the early 1990s, I was living in Kiev where, oddly enough, my Chernobyl fascination suddenly dissolved.

“I never understood why until I stood atop that Pripyat high-rise, surrounded by the wormwood forests, swamps, and fields blooming in the pastel palette of early spring. If a nuclear disaster really is in your kitchen—or in your metaphoric backyard—and there is nowhere else you can put it, it seems best not to think about it too much. Not, at least, until many years have passed, and the bountiful evidence of nature’s nearly miraculous resilience and recovery makes the thinking more bearable.”

—Mary Mycio, Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (p. 241-2)

[siriuslymeg]

...This is incredibly sad.

Wormwood Forest by Mary Mycio

[briannaisuntitledatpresstime]

“There was nothing about provody in the zone that was not strange. More vehicles were parked by the Lubianka graveyard than I had seen in all of my zone visits combined. Although there were some old wooden crosses that had rotted at their base and fallen over on the ground, most of the grave markers were Soviet-era crosses made of welded pipe. All of them were dressed for their annual party with wreaths of plastic flowers, ribbons, and colorful scarves that gave the cemetery a festive air.

“There were easily 150 people in the cemetery, and the droning sounds of distant conversation and laughter gave it a sense of life that was missing in the village itself. Some people sat right on the graves, but larger families usually gathered around picnic tables, making sure to include the dead by spreading a tablecloth over the grave and piling it with the deceased’s favorite foods as well as the occasional bottle of vodka and shot glass. But even on graves whose overgrowth of weeds and crumbling markers indicated an absence of recent visitors, someone had placed a single candy.”

—Mary Mycio, Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (p. 212)

[briannaisuntitledatpresstime]

“Unfortunately, there have simply been too few properly designed, impartial medical studies to prove much of anything about the disaster’s long-term health impact. One thing is certain, however. The nuclear industry—both in Ukraine and internationally—has done little to advance Chernobyl health research. In fact, even after the disaster, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was quite a profitable enterprise until it was shut down in 2000. Throughout the 1990s, the company town Slavutich spent lavishly on festivals and free concerts with expensive foreign performers.

“In all that time, however, the plant did not provide a penny for cleanup works, scientific research, health care, resettlement costs, or compensation in connection with the disaster. Nor did it pay anything for the administration of the exclusion zone.”

—Mary Mycio, Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (p. 200-1)

This is pretty appalling, and frankly, makes me rather angry.

[briannaisuntitledatpresstime]

“‘The Shelter is not hermetic and was never intended to be,’ [Oleg] Goloskokov explained. ‘There are about 100 square meters of cracks and openings.’

“These cracks serve as a way for dust to get out into the environment. Birds fly in, get sprinkled with dust, and then fly out, carrying the contamination great distances. Such vectors are minor, however. But if one of the large, unstable objects inside—such as the 200-ton core cover that was blown on its side and hangs over the empty reactor vault—falls, it would raise a significant cloud of radioactive dust that could drift out into the environment.

“The cracks also allow precipitation to get inside. In the early postdisaster period, the FCMs [Fuel-Containing Materials] were hot and glass-like, so the water merely evaporated on contact. But now that the FCMs have cooled, the water no longer evaporates. Shelter experts—and an entire interdisciplinary institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences is devoted to Shelter science—estimate that there are now from 2,000 to 3,000 cubic meters of water inside the structure. In comparison, an Olympic-sized pool holds 4,000 cubic meters.

“This ‘unit water,’ as it is known, affects electrical and diagnostic systems, corrodes metals, and deteriorates concrete. In the winter it freezes, cracking FCMs, and creating dust. Most dangerously, it also leaches out water-soluble forms of enriched uranium and transuranic elements such as plutonium and then trickles and flows into the reactor’s basements, where it is ankle-deep in places. And the amount of transuranic elements in it is increasing with time. This means that the water poses a nuclear risk.

“In contrast to fission products such as cesium-137 and strontium-90 that are merely radioactive, transuranic elements such as uranium and plutonium are also capable of fission. Since water is a moderator, slowing neutrons so that they are more likely to hit other atomic nuclei in a chain reaction, the transuranic soup accumulating in the bowels of the reactor poses the risk of starting an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.

“This is why pumping that radioactive water out for processing is a top priority. It is also a huge undertaking. Although the plant has facilities for processing liquid waste created in the course of normal reactor operations, it is not suited for the dangerous job of removing the transuranic elements in the unit water. The problem is that when radioactive materials are separated from water, they are usually concentrated to take up less space for storage. But concentrating transuranic elements could create a critical mass that will sustain fission. So the decontamination facility must somehow ensure that such accumulations do not occur.

“I swept my arm towards the Shelter, ‘So will it ever be clean?’

“‘A green field?’ Goloskokov smiled and shook his head. ‘I doubt it. You see, the Shelter Object itself is radioactive waste that should be processed and safely stored.’

“Goloskokov laughed at the notion of such a mind-boggling task. ‘We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of tons. That is more radioactive waste than exists in the entire world! Disposing of it is simply unrealistic.’”

—Mary Mycio, Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (p. 223-4)

[briannaisuntitledatpresstime]

“The tomb over the ruined fourth reactor was like a monumental Rorschach test, perhaps more revealing about the person looking for meaning in it than about the thing itself. Was Chernobyl’s message one of hazard, about the dangers of technology and the fact that all of us, 5 billion strong, live downwind from 300 nuclear reactors that are operated by mere people and have a statistical probability of one meltdown every 30 years?

“Or was its message one of hope, that no matter how humanity messes up, nature will persevere—even if it is forever changed and unnaturally natural, like the radioactive landscapes of Chernobyl? Perhaps the arch would one day become a kind of environmental shrine, eerily sanctifying the radioactive wilderness around it. Or would it desecrate that wilderness? I imagined future philosophers making pilgrimages to contemplate the shelter shrine and come up with answers.

“I didn’t have any.”

—Mary Mycio, Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (p. 241)

[briannaisuntitledatpresstime]

“For security reasons, the only place that visitors can legally take close-up pictures of the Shelter is in a parking lot located about 250 meters away on its northwest corner, where there is a good view of the Cascade and Buttress Walls.

“The structure is a gray and grimy eyesore surrounded by concrete partitions and concertina wire. Photographs barely convey how decrepit it looks in real life.

“Rimma [Kyselytsia] accompanied me to the Shelter. But I remembered [Oleg] Goloskokov’s words in describing it. ‘The Shelter is a very. . . .’ His voice had trailed off and he shrugged as if to underscore the inadequacy of his description: ‘It’s a very specific object, built under extremely high radiation levels, often remotely. It’s a covering to protect personnel and the environment from the high levels of radioactivity inside.’ In that light, it seemed unfair to criticize the structure, which has done a pretty good job given its extraordinarily difficult task and the unique circumstances of its construction.”

—Mary Mycio, Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (p. 225)