I have seen the beginning of the end of the world. The end of the world begins in Pripyat, Ukraine, a once-thriving city of 45,000. Now it sits crumbling, abandoned, a mute but overwhelming testimony to man's technological arrogance gone amok.
Pripyat could be the end of the beginning of the world--perhaps it will be yet. It could offer hope that it will be the last of its kind, that our human race could learn from the greatest of our mistakes. It seems that, from the ruins of Pripyat, we should be able to learn our lessons. As schoolchildren we learned from our textbooks, and at this point, Pripyat serves best as a full-color, multimedia textbook.
More likely though, it is the beginning of the end.
Perhaps no one expected the end of the world to begin in Ukraine, but then who expected a little-known electrical generating plant called Chernobyl to be the harbinger of a new, terrifying nuclear age.
At this moment, with the failure of the G-7 conference, with the failure of the world's environmental and safe energy organizations to convince the powers that hold the purse strings and the keys that turn the technology off and on, it appears absolutely inevitable that Chernobyl will happen again. Perhaps next time it won't be in a remote area of a rather remote region in a country few in the West know or understand. Perhaps next time it will be New York, or Washington, or Bonn, or Paris; it really doesn't matter. Because at this point, it appears that there will be a next time, and then a next time again...
Once we feared that the cataclysmic force of massive nuclear weapons detonation would end the world in a matter of seconds. Now, it is far more likely that a much slower, more pernicious nuclear war--that waged against the people of the world by the globe's nuclear power industry (and it is only one industry)---will inadvertently succeed where the weapons, in essence, failed.
Three Mile Island was the warning shot fired across the brow of our globe's mutual ship. We didn't learn. Chernobyl was the first real shot fired. But the disruption of the lives of two nations wasn't enough. The nuclear industry stands strong.
So we will have another Chernobyl, and another, and eventually, we will all live and die in Pripyat, where the end of the world began, on April 26, 1986.
Historians, if there are any left, will mark this day not only as the day that marked the end of the Soviet Union and Stalinist communism, but, with reflection, will mark this day as the beginning of the end of the world.
There isn't much time left to change this prognosis. That there is any time at all is testament to the forces wielded by millions of ordinary citizens, who have risen up and stymied an industry whose unintentional but ultimate end is all of our end.
I have seen Pripyat, and the twisted, gnarled forests surrounding it. And this is how the world ends....
Washington DC, October 1995
A foundation approaches NIRS and Greenpeace: would we be interested in helping with international activities around the 10th anniversary of Chernobyl next April?
You bet! A couple of weeks of tossing around ideas leads to the concept of collecting relief supplies for Chernobyl victims, as visibly as possible, tying in the anniversary to U.S. nuclear issues.
The foundation mentions an international conference in Kiev the weekend before the anniversary. Fat chance.
NIRS and Greenpeace eventually each receive $15,000 to conduct Chernobyl-related activities. We look for additional funding; but none is forthcoming. By the end of April 1996, we've each spent more than double our grants.
Washington DC, February 1996
I receive an invitation to attend the international conference in Kiev. To be honest, I haven't yet paid much attention to the conference.
I look over the speaker list and the plans, including a possible visit to Chernobyl, and decide I should go. A letter to a generous benefactor results in just enough money to go without interfering with NIRS' already feeble budget.
Washington DC, April 1996
The NIRS staff is unanimous: it's marginally ok for me to go to Kiev; I shouldn't go to Chernobyl. I search for reasons to explain why I feel I have to go; I write a column in the Nuclear Monitor attempting to explain myself. I'm not sure I convince anyone.
It isn't until I'm on the bus to the dead zone, not until I've spent time with the people who have been directly affected, that I can articulate why I'm going: it's to bear witness; to share in the tragedy with the good people of Ukraine and Belarus; to support them in their continuous hours of need, to be able to say, I've been there, I understand, and I can help. I hadn't counted on the fires....
Kiev, April 1996
Nearly everyone attending the Lessons of Chernobyl conference stays on a boat docked on the Dnieper River, near the old and very beautiful city of Kiev.
I meet people I've known only by e-mail and periodic correspondence over the years: Joop Boer of WISE-Amsterdam, whose 10-page, handwritten letter six years ago gave us the original ammunition to go after the proposed Louisiana Energy Services uranium enrichment plant; Miles Goldstick of Sweden (via Canada), whose doctoral thesis on uranium hexaflouride has proved invaluable to all fighting nuclear fuel cycle facilities; Paxus Calta, an American who has spent the last eight years of his life relentlessly fighting against the entrenched Eastern European nuclear industry; and many more.
I'm proud that the U.S. contingent is visible and strong: Ed Smeloff, who led the successful fight to close the Rancho Seco reactor and who turned the Sacramento Municipal Utility District from one of the most backward to unquestionably the most progressive utility in the world in less than 10 years; Bennett Ramberg of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, who has just completed a major paper on the failure of Eastern Europe to learn the basic lessons of Chernobyl; David Ellison, Daryl Davis and Michael McMurray of Cleveland, representing the U.S. Green Party and grassroots anti-nuclear activists everywhere; Amory Lovins, Harvey Wasserman, Gene Stilp of Three Mile Island Alert, whose disarming style not only made the Eastern Europeans understand that WE understand, but who played perhaps the most invaluable role of all: a clown whose antics deliberately brought us all closer together and to a greater understanding.
The conference itself suffers from the same problems that plague all conferences: long-winded speakers, monopolization of limited time by a few, all intensified by the difficulty of translating every word said into either English or Russian.
But still, much is learned; especially about the tremendous obstacles faced by Eastern European activists. When it comes to nuclear power, Stalin lives. I quickly agree to smuggle letters into the U.S. written by a young Eastern activist, who is afraid if mailed from his own country, they will never arrive.
I learn from Marianna about the fight against nuclear power in Bulgaria; from Patricia about going up against international banks financing new nuclear development schemes along Austria's border; from the Ukrainians about our own Duke Engineering seeking to profit by building new waste storage facilities at the world's largest nuclear complex.
From the Belarussians come the saddest stories of all: a government with no money, saddled with huge Chernobyl-related debts, but still repressing activists.
For me, in the space of just a few days, the understanding of the international dimensions of our struggle increases a thousand-fold. Our enemies are common: they are, in fact, the same companies--General Electric, Westinghouse, Duke, and other recognizable names.
But where in the U.S. these companies sometimes play by the rules, and skirt them only when no one is looking, in Eastern Europe they flout the rules. In Eastern Europe, these companies show no pretense about democracy or doing what is best. Their greed is eclipsed only by ubiquitous presence. Everywhere, activists ask for our help, seek access to the documents we take for granted, grab for our ideas.
We all stay up late into the night, exchanging ideas, e-mail addresses, promises. I think a lot of them will be fulfilled.
Kiev, April 22, 1996
On Monday, after two days of conference, action begins to transcend discussion.
With military precision, more than 70 Greenpeace Ukraine activists stage a sit-in at the offices of Ukraine's President, demanding an immediate shutdown of the two operating units at Chernobyl.
Dressed in white and black, they bring a coffin and a letter accepted by a representative from the President's office. A debate ensues; disheartingly, the debate is translated for me: the President's emissary is telling Greenpeace that they are not experts, that Chernobyl is safe.
This is the same government that seeks billions of dollars of aid to close Chernobyl, that says the death toll may be 125,000, that the health and clean-up costs run 5% or more of their annual budget and cannot even come close to addressing the real needs. And everyone in Ukraine acknowledges that the situation in Belarus is worse, far worse. Earlier, at a reception in Washington, the consul to the Belarus embassy says it would take 32 full annual budgets of his country just to meet the already-identified costs of Chernobyl.
On an unseen cue, the Greenpeace activists surround the President's emissary with white crosses, each bearing the name of a permanently-evacuated village. There are more than 70 of them. Soon, he is surrounded by crosses and TV cameraman, and he looks as desperate and silly as the policies he is espousing.
If you smile at me I will understand, because that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language. I can see by your coat my friend you're from the other side, there's just one thing I have to know, can you tell me please who won?
The Dead Zone, April 23, 1996
Radiation levels in Kiev are at background, comparable to Washington. But the nation of Ukraine is clearly ill: a broken treatment plant somewhere upstream has spewed raw sewage down the Dnieper River past our boat for two days now. The fisherman on the opposite bank are, unfortunately, undeterred. The weather is warm, but the sky never gets quite blue, a seemingly permanent haze permeates the air, Ukraine is a nightmare of pollution; the people recognize this and fight and fight and fight, but there is only so much power and even less money....
On the roadside, chickens, roosters and goats straddle by ancient villages; some houses sport TV antennas, others look like they haven't changed in 200 years.
On our bus as we travel into the Dead Zone, we check our radiation monitors; background levels rise very slowly. By the time we reach the first checkpoint into the Dead Zone, they are less than twice Kiev background levels.
But while the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Chernobyl Wall still exists: a barbed wire fence meant not to keep people in, but to keep them out....
Past the first checkpoint, we drive further, past endless fields of dry grass and forest; life is gone here: no people, no animals, no birds. We pass by a small area covered with rusting school buses and helicopters--only one of 800 radioactive waste dumps in the dead zone--no one knows where they all are, some were bulldozed before their location could be identified.
Once this was among the most productive farmland of all Europe, now it is useless, even deadly.
The official Dead Zone is an approximate circle with a radius of about 30 kilometers (18 miles). The real Dead Zone, which stretches far into Belarus, is the size of Switzerland.
We stop in the town of Chernobyl, about 12 miles from the reactor complex and the official headquarters of the Dead Zone. We receive a briefing from the person in charge of the contaminated area. He tells us that 11,000 people work in the Dead Zone, half at a time. They work 15 days, then have 15 days off. Most seem to live in Chernobyl, given the rather bustling nature of the place.
He also mentions that we might have heard there is a fire there today (we haven't). He assures us it is under control (as we learn later, it isn't).
We climb back on our buses and proceed to the "Contamination Control Center." We had originally been told that we were not welcome, and that we would not be allowed to get near the reactor, nor do anything but tour a few contaminated villages by bus. Those orders now appear to have been countermanded, although we can't be sure.
At the control center, we strip, and don new clothes, boots, masks, and head protection. Our clothes are placed in lockers awaiting our return.
The Center was built in 1988 for clean-up workers. Now it is used mostly for the occasional tourists, such as ourselves, given access to the Zone. We're told the clothes they give us will be disposed of as radioactive waste when we return. But I learn the boots are cleaned and re-used; I suspect the clothes are too....
Radiation counts at the Center range from double to triple background levels at Kiev--still fairly low.
Properly outfitted, we climb on new buses--the ones that brought us here aren't allowed to go any further, the ones that take us now aren't allowed to leave the Zone.
A few minutes driving time later, we see a series of large buildings on the horizon, in the middle of a large flat field. We argue whether this is indeed Chernobyl or yet another abandoned industrial plant. It is Chernobyl.
We still don't know how close they will take us to the reactor, but we soon find out: within 500 yards of the sarcophagus the bus suddenly stops and our guide says you may get out and take pictures, but please stay on the concrete, don't walk on the dirt.
The sarcophagus looms above us, huge, but somehow less impressive than the photos. In real life, Chernobyl is a series of banal industrial buildings, whose importance in changing the world is belied by its commonplace appearance.
Most of our radiation monitors go off-scale when we dismount from the bus. I have one monitor which allows me to adjust to higher levels. The count is nearly 2,000 counts per minute; according to my monitor this is about 2 millirems/hour. To those of us wrapped up in protective gear, listening to our radiation monitors click incessantly, this seems terrifyingly high---in just two days one would receive the U.S. annual maximum permissible dose.
Then we realize the truth of the matter: a friend from Kiev points out that this is the exact level citizens of that 3-million population capital city received every day for about two weeks after the accident---and no one ever told them, until well afterwards, that there was a problem.
Kiev is 80 miles south of Chernobyl and was spared the worst of the reactor's spewing of radiation and heavy metals. To the North and West, radiation levels were far higher for the May Day parades of 1986. But who knew?
If anyone doubts that Chernobyl brought down the Soviet system, talk to a few people who were parents of young children in 1986. Their rage, upon learning the true dimensions of Chernobyl, was unstoppable. The world's leaders should take note that no system could survive the wrath of mothers who have been lied to when their children were so endangered. In this event, the White House itself would fall....
Pripyat, April 23, 1996
Before it became a symbol of the nuclear age, Pripyat was a Stalinist nightmare. Row after row of identical apartment buildings, broken up only by occasional, identically placed shops covered with Soviet-realist murals.
At the center of the city was a huge square, built not for people but for the grandiosity of the State. An energy building, stores, all designed to intimidate rather than welcome the people who lived and worked less than two miles from the Chernobyl reactors.
Behind the grand square lies the one concession to real people. At the end of a path lined by dilapidated kiosks featuring silkscreens of Lenin urging Socialism to move ever forward lies a permanently-abandoned amusement park.
I walk through Pripyat, in my protective clothing and mask. The radiation readings range from 20-40 times above background--far too high for anyone to live there. I peek in one window which shows overturned furniture, a couple of mattresses stacked against a wall, unidentifiable things. Perhaps this is where the relatively well-paid residents of Pripyat outfitted their apartments?
I walk back across the square, across crumbling steps, dry grass growing everywhere through the concrete--a single yellow flower rises through the grass in this still city of death.
In the distance, I can see huge plumes of brown smoke heading in our direction.
I walk toward the amusement park, feeling like an alien from a science fiction movie: two radiation detectors in hand counting furiously, crossing an abandoned city.
The smoke, driven by fires ten miles away, comes closer.
As the smoke reaches us, the smell of burning wood permeating our protective masks, we begin to make our way back to the relative safety of our buses.
But we pause for a moment, Gene Stilp and I, and look around. For this truly is how the world ends, not with a cataclysmic bang, but with a radioactive whimper.
Not from a sudden blast from an enemy power, but from the steady contamination of a friendly industrial infrastructure.
Pripyat is the end of the world, it is the apocalypse.
The question is whether Pripyat will be merely the end of the Soviet Union and an economic and health burden on Ukraine, Belarus, and even Russia for generations to come, or whether it must be repeated, again and again, until our Earth's powers recognize that there is no escape from a Chernobyl.
Chernobyl remains a powerful image, because it is a powerful image. And the radiation from Chernobyl still kills. The fires in the Dead Zone continue to spread lethal radiation across the countryside. The costs of Chernobyl continue to outstrip the budgets of all relevant governments.
So this is how the world ends...
A few people in radiation suits come to monitor and witness. Pripyat could be New York City. Or Washington DC, or Chicago or Philadelphia.
And indeed, those cities will become Pripyat, unless we close nuclear reactors now.
That's a talent we'd better become a lot better at. We're pretty good at blocking the nuclear power industry's initiatives; we're not nearly as skilled at advancing our own agenda.
But the quiet radioactive breeze of Pripyat tells me we'd better learn quickly.
I have to believe that Pripyat is only one possible future; there are others.
Washington DC, April 26, 1996
The Safe Energy Communication Council sponsors a morning Chernobyl commemoration in Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Still suffering from jet lag and emotional disruption, I say a few words, trying to speak from the heart and tell the audience what I saw and what it means.
Afterwards, Valery Kurdyukov, the young Counsel for the Belarus embassy walks up, shakes my hand, thanks me for my work, and praises my courage for going to Chernobyl. I'm dumbfounded. The courage isn't mine, I reply, I could leave anytime. The people of Ukraine and Belarus cannot.
They are the ones already living at the end of the world. It is up to the rest of us to determine whether we have the courage to ensure that Chernobyl is the last gasp of a dying nuclear age, or whether Chernobyl is the future of a damaged, dying Earth.
