the accident.
(The big wheel in the contaminated ghost town of Pripyat. It is a reminder of the life of the city, which was specially built for the power station workers, up to 26 April 1986. Pripyat is only 4 km away from Chernobyl. © Chernobyl Interinform)
now. i won't pretend i know a lot about what happened during this week, twenty years ago. (click on the title of this here blog and read some.) but the more i learn, the more i'm horrified at the thought of Accidents like this happening. we build these things. we create these accidents. we use our Important Technology and it gives kids tumors. it gives them the inability to walk. it gives them silence. it gives them a life spent entirely within the walls of the same institution.
watching THIS PHOTO ESSAY made me cry. oh the children.
the author/narrator of that essay says something poignant about the things we build and all of the safety measures we create to ensure that nothing like this ever happens. Ever Happens. but it did. and it affected something like seven million belarusians. some people think, because of the radiation, that the people of belarus will not live on. they have babies with incredible birth defects. some of those babies have no procreation capabilities.
it's sad indeed.
anyhoo. take a moment. think about bad things happening to good people. then kiss someone nice. or lick a rock. or both.
Comments
Nuclear power plants can be built and operated safely, in theory, but it takes people to operate them, and that's where the problems begin.
Makes one wonder what the long term effects of all the testing in Nevada will be. All that radiation is still underground where the explosions took place, and of course that's also where much of the state's drinking water comes from. Sure the water wells are many miles away from the contamination, but won't the contaminents migrate over time? You can bet they didn't study the geology and groudwater conditions nearly as much in the 1950's as they are doing now for the Yucca Mountain project. Even with all that study the experts disagree on the safety of the site.