Kennedy’s bold declaration: “We choose to go to the Moon... ”
- became a symbol of technological determinism,
a creed embraced by millions of people around the world.
With technology, anything is possible;
it is merely a matter of concentrating our efforts and resources -
proclaimed the priests of this new faith.
When something didn’t go as planned -
it fell, collapsed, sank, burned, poisoned, or exploded -
the mantra of the “inevitable price of progress” was always at hand.
We didn’t watch the scientists and engineers too closely.
And they, in their self-importance, also stopped noticing
that they had created a qualitatively new civilization…
Chernobyl woke us from this complacency.
[Waldemar Siwiński]
The answer leads to the man without whom neither the Perspektywy Educational Foundation nor this entire philosophy of thinking about education, science, and technology would exist - Waldemar Siwiński. An engineer by training, a graduate of the Faculty of Electronics at the Warsaw University of Technology, a journalist by choice, and a man who understood from the very beginning that the future is built not only by technologies, but by the people who can create them. In the 1980s, he co-founded the legendary “Bajtek” one of the most important computer magazines of that era. In 1998, he began publishing the monthly magazine “Perspektywy” and shortly thereafter founded the Perspektywy Educational Foundation. He was a journalist for the Polish Press Agency (PAP) and served as chairman of the PAP board of directors from 2003 to 2006.
But before high school and university rankings were created, before *Perspektywy* was founded and the idea of a modern approach to education took hold, there was Chernobyl. After the disaster on April 26, 1986, Siwiński traveled there as the only Polish journalist covering the Chernobyl Trial - the trial of those accused of causing the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. He entered the exclusion zone numerous times, speaking with cleanup workers, engineers, doctors, and eyewitnesses to the events. He made it all the way to the reactor sarcophagus itself. These experiences gave rise to the book "Chernobyl: From Disaster to Trial" - the first Polish book dedicated to the Chernobyl disaster and one of the most important journalistic accounts of that time.
Waldemar Siwiński recalls:
“On Monday, April 28, 1986, I heard a report on the evening news about an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It came as a shock to me. Like most of my peers born in the first half of the 1950s, I grew up fascinated by the possibilities that the scientific and technological revolution had opened up for humanity. To be closer to these developments, I even graduated from the Faculty of Electronics at the Warsaw University of Technology. I ultimately chose the profession of a journalist, but my trust in science and technology remained. The news of the explosion at Reactor No. 4 cast a shadow over that fascination. I began collecting all the publications on Chernobyl that were appearing in droves in both the East and the West. At a certain point, uncovering the truth about the disaster became for me not only a journalistic duty, but also a deeply personal matter.”
I first entered the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 16, 1987. I later entered the “zone” many times; among other things, as one of ten foreign journalists - and the only Pole - I attended the trial of those responsible for the accident in Chernobyl. In total, I spent seven weeks in the Soviet Union gathering material for this report. To reconstruct the course of events surrounding the worst accident in the thirty-year history of nuclear power, I spoke with hundreds of people: engineers who were at the plant during the reactor explosion, firefighters who extinguished the fire, and soldiers involved in decontaminating the site. and with representatives of party and administrative authorities. In Moscow, I spoke with the vice-chairman of the state commission on the accident; in Belarus and Ukraine, I met with deputy prime ministers and ministers.
I was inside the power plant itself; I got as close as possible to the sarcophagus enclosing the remains of Reactor 4. I visited Soviet nuclear research institutes, as well as hospitals and research facilities dealing with the medical consequences of the disaster. I lived in Zielony Mys - a new housing estate built for Chernobyl power plant workers arriving for two-week shifts. I visited villages in Ukraine and Belarus built within a few weeks to house thousands of people evacuated from the contaminated zone…
I wrote the book *Chernobyl: From Disaster to Trial*, published numerous reports in *Polityka* and *Sztandar Młodych*, and covered the Chernobyl trial for the Polish Press Agency.
In my opinion, Chernobyl marked a turning point in the history of scientific and technological development. Until then, we had witnessed “progress through disasters.” This was most evident in the Middle Ages, when captains were also the builders of their own ships. Bad builders sank, good ones survived, and - to put it simply - that’s how progress happened. Until the Chernobyl disaster, nothing had really changed in this philosophy. Bad planes crashed—better ones were built. Poorly constructed buildings collapsed - better ones were built. The human cost of such development was accepted as inevitable.
Chernobyl, however, showed that humans had created such powerful devices and engineering systems that their failure could be tantamount to the annihilation of humanity. Nuclear energy can no longer develop through disasters! This applies not only to nuclear power but also to large computer systems controlling air traffic on a continental scale, technical systems ensuring the functioning of major cities, chemical industry enterprises, and biotechnology companies. Chernobyl showed that it is no longer enough today to build a technological system operating with a reliability of 0.9999… - a figure unimaginable even at present. We must learn to build systems that, even if they fail, will ensure - by virtue of their internal design - that the failure does not turn into a catastrophe,” says Waldemar Siwiński.
As Waldemar Siwiński emphasizes, it is no longer enough to build “nearly reliable” systems based on statistical probabilities of safety. They must be designed so that even in the event of a failure, they cannot lead to a catastrophe. Safety is no longer an add-on to innovation - it has become a prerequisite. And it is precisely this philosophy that underlies today’s discussion of modern nuclear energy.
That is why the topic of nuclear energy returns to the Perspektywy Women in Tech Summit 2026 not as a nostalgic reminder of Chernobyl, but as one of the most important questions about Europe’s future. How can we build technologies that ensure energy security, national stability, and a response to the climate crisis - without repeating the mistakes of the 20th century? This is no longer a conversation solely about reactors, but above all about responsibility. And that is precisely why Perspektywy has been investing for years in the people who will bear this responsibility: female scientists, engineers, technology leaders, and women present where decisions about the world’s future are made.
Below are excerpts from Waldemar Siwiński’s memoirs of his travels through the Soviet Union:
A Brief Course in Dosimetry.
On April 16, 1987, one year after the Chernobyl disaster, I found myself in Barshchevka, the most radioactively contaminated place in Belarus. Today, it is the “Poleski Radiation and Ecological Reserve.”
Since a chemical warfare patrol was passing by, I asked the soldiers for information about the contamination levels in the area. Terror flashed across my escorts’ faces, as the contamination levels were considered one of the empire’s greatest secrets at the time… But let’s take it step by step. Here is another excerpt from my travel notes:
“We’re heading to Barszczewka. The only inhabitant of this village, which a year ago had 350 residents, is a stork that has returned to its nest on a telegraph pole next to a shop locked with two padlocks and bearing the sign “Products.” The wooden, dilapidated houses of Barszczewka make a gloomy impression. Under the apple trees in the backyard gardens, a thick layer of brown, rotting fruit has lain since autumn. Their flesh, and even more so their seeds, turned out to be a sponge absorbing cesium and strontium isotopes… So once again, as in the biblical temptation of Adam and Eve, the apple has become the forbidden fruit.”
Neat stacks of firewood lie under the eaves. None of these logs, however, will ever make it into a stove to heat a Belarusian home. Both the smoke and the ash would contain too many radionuclides. Life will never return to this village. Every now and then, after obtaining permission from Major Zielony, mechanics from the Barszczewka collective farm drop in briefly to remove the spare parts they need from the abandoned combines, seeders, and trailers and take them away - provided, of course, they aren’t too “dirty.”
In the center of Barszczewka, we turn left onto a dirt road covered with gravel and crushed stone. It leads to the dam on the Pochoński Canal. A year ago, there was no dam. It was built as one of 138 hydrotechnical structures intended to protect the waters of the Pripyat and Dnieper. From Moscow to Chojniki, there was great fear of the spring flood wave. It peaked on April 14, but fortunately turned out to be much lower than expected. Even at its maximum, however, it could not have caused damage, as the dam’s parameters - its height and length - were specifically designed with this in mind. Of its more than 600 meters in length, exactly 164 meters are part of the filtration section. It is constructed of a stone foundation covered with a thick layer of tuff-fine rocks brought all the way from the mountains of Armenia that have the ability to absorb radioactive dust washed down from the fields.
At the dam, we meet Viktor Korotky, head of the Chojnice Land Reclamation Board, and Anatoly Krasutsky from the Institute of Water Management in Minsk. Accompanied by them, we go to observe the effectiveness of the filtration. To the left of the embankment lies the vast expanse of the artificial reservoir. The water is murky, full of suspended particles. To the right, clear streams flow out from among the tuff pebbles. Engineer Krasucki informs us that measurements taken several times a day show the water to be completely clean. In addition to civilian monitoring, the military regularly checks the water’s radioactivity. On our way back from the dam, we encounter a patrol of chemical troops heading out to take further measurements.
“Is it very radioactive?” I ask.
“Check for yourselves,” the major suggests.
I take a DP-5 device from the private walking with him (it was precisely these devices - the most widely used ones, incidentally - that were missing during that critical night at the power plant). I hang the measuring box around my neck, set the switch to the most sensitive range, and begin to move the probe with my right hand: up and down.
“Not like that, closer to the ground,” a soldier in a peaked cap corrects my movements. I’m getting a crash course in measurement techniques.
Radiation measurement techniques… Something none of us on the Great Land would have even thought existed turns out to be a skill in the Zone as basic as using a knife and fork. The radiation background at the dam is 0.1 millirems per hour. Which means—it’s clean. Because although 0.1 millirems is four times more than it was here before the accident, it’s still well below acceptable limits.
Chernobyl, getting closer and closer to the sarcophagus…
On April 21, 1987, I bid farewell to the Gomel region, and we made our way to Ukraine via a detour. We were housed in Zielony Mys (Green Cape), an administrative and lodging facility for shift workers, built just before the border of the 30-kilometer special zone.
As in Belarus, entry into the zone and its surrounding areas is strictly regulated in Ukraine as well. Only vehicles and individuals with special passes are permitted to travel the 130-kilometer route from Kyiv to Chernobyl. In the district town of Ivankiv, located roughly halfway along the route, there are no visible signs of the accident. Twenty kilometers further on, we encounter military camps stretching almost to the road. Exemplary order: neatly arranged columns of utility vehicles, smoothly stretched walls of 24-person insulated tents, large barracks made of corrugated metal and wood, concrete access roads, and paved alleys - it is clear that the stay here was planned for more than a month or two.
Near the village of Ditiaki, you can see red-and-white barriers, “Stop” signs, and a line of trucks from a distance, with soldiers wearing dosimeters bustling around them. An information sign by the road reads: “CHERNOBYL - 21, PRIPIAT - 37.” In early spring, you have to strain your eyes to see the barbed-wire fence running along both sides of the road. In summer, however, the border is clear: the field of blooming potatoes stretching to the horizon ends, and fallow fields fenced off with barbed wire begin. In many places, wheat ears sprout from the lush grass. These are self-sown plants from last year’s unharvested crops. This land will lie fallow for many years. In Ditiaki, we enter a restricted zone. A constant feature here are warning signs with a “radioactive” clover and the words: “Warning! Contaminated roadside!”, as well as abandoned villages overgrown with lush weeds.
Just before Chernobyl, we pass an abandoned farm on the left, with a statue of a young man grappling with a sturdy bull by the horns. A little further on, the city’s entrance sign comes into view, topped by a stone model of an atom with electron orbits tilted at various angles. The city of power engineers. The city of the atom. Until recently, it sounded so proud…
Chernobyl, despite being evacuated, is full of people. All habitable premises have been converted into dormitories. They are occupied by employees of various companies arriving for two-week shifts. Cleanup work is underway in the city. Some of the workers and soldiers - roughly one in four - wear white dust masks.
In the center of Chernobyl, there is a post and telephone office (with lines forming in front of the long-distance phone booths) and a Voyentorg store. The Ministry of Defense’s operational group is stationed in the building of the regional party committee, while the director of the “Kombinat” Union - the man in charge of everything happening within the zone - holds office in the building of the regional executive committee of the Council of People’s Deputies. Protocol dictates that a visit to the zone should begin with a visit to the host.
Man No. 1 is Yevgeny Ignatenko, a 47-year-old widely regarded as one of the most experienced managers in the Soviet nuclear power industry. After graduating from Leningrad Polytechnic University, he worked for several years at the renowned Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology. He has discovered four isotopes. He completed a research internship at CERN in Switzerland. Then, as he jokes, he came to the conclusion that academic research wasn’t for him, since he didn’t have the patience to wait a thousand years for the results of his work to be implemented! He became fascinated with commissioning new nuclear power facilities. He commissioned the units: “Kola I,” “Armenia I,” “Zaporizhzhia I.”
“I also built the world’s first sarcophagus,” he adds to the list. He flew to Pripyat on the first plane, on the morning of April 26. “And ever since then,” he says with a mischievous grin, “we’ve been pulling off new feats here every day!”
The “Kombinat” complex was established to coordinate all work in the zone. It oversees a large decontamination enterprise, the dosimetry services department, and auxiliary enterprises. One of the constituent units of the “Kombinat” is the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. In total, about eight thousand people work at “Kombinat.” To feed them, seven cafeterias were opened in Chernobyl alone. The one where I ate was set up in a former Zhiguli car service station. Three and a half thousand people use it every day.
A year after the accident, the priorities of the “Kombinat” Union were as follows: completing the decontamination and commissioning of Unit 3 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, collecting and burying the most contaminated materials from the zone in deep repositories, and putting Sławutych — a new city for power plant workers, being built 60 kilometers east of the plant and named after the ancient name of the Dnieper.
“And do you know,” Ignatienko smiles mysteriously, “that I was in Chernobyl for the first time on March 5, 1986, a month and a half before the disaster. I came to check on the progress of work on Unit 5, to see when I would be able to start it up.”
As I arrived at the power plant that evening, I realized it was a special moment. After all, March 5th is the anniversary of the death of the “leader” - Stalin. According to the Buddhist calendar, that day also marked the beginning of the Year of the Tiger. And thirdly, as evening fell, Halley’s Comet appeared over the power plant! So many signs had to lead to something bad… That’s what I foolishly thought to myself as I drove: “Something bad is going to happen - I hope not here!”
And yet?
The name “Chernobyl” comes from the Old Ukrainian language and means “wormwood.” For those who believe in prophecies, one might quote here a passage from the “Revelation” of Saint John the Apostle (Chapter 8, verses 10 and 11, in Jakub Wujek’s translation): “And the third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell upon a third of the rivers and upon the springs of water. And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and a third of the waters turned into wormwood, and many people died from the waters, because they had become bitter…”
Chernobyl means wormwood.
Its taste is bitter.
The Landscape After the Disaster
Everyone who has visited the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant knows the Golden Corridor. I first saw it on April 24, 1987, two days before the first anniversary of the disaster. As I noted at the time:
“I’ve finally made it! Accompanied by my guides, I’m heading to the heart of the exclusion zone, to the power plant. In Zielony Mys, we were given coveralls, ‘disposable’ white shoes with rubber soles, white caps, and a supply of disposable dust masks. Equipped like this, now as ‘locals,’ we’ll be able to get right up to the sarcophagus.
“What are these masks for? Do we really have to wear them inside the power plant?” I ask.
“Not at all!” replies Aleksander Karasiuk. “The inside of the power plant is clean. The only thing that might pose a threat is the dust on the road between Chernobyl and Pripyat. I advise you to put them on!”
Volodya Dergun shakes his head: “I’m not going to wear a ‘lily of the valley.’ What for?!”
Among the photos in Volodya’s office on Khreshchatyk in Kyiv, I saw a photograph taken three months after the accident. Volodya, dressed in a white jumpsuit, stands 20 meters in front of the exposed ruins of the reactor. At that spot, the radiation level was 60 roentgens per hour. “I was only there briefly,” Volodya explains, “so how much radiation could I have gotten? It’s nothing to worry about!”
We smile nonchalantly, implying that everything is clear: Alexander has a duty to ensure our safety, so he tries to protect his guests from even the slightest risk. But soon, our courage and confidence will diminish significantly.
The sixteen-kilometer road from Chernobyl to the power plant is also a kind of journey through time; the events of the past twelve months have left a lasting mark here. To widen the road, the trees along the roadside were cut down. In their place, clean crushed stone was piled up and asphalt was poured. Now, an almost endless stream of concrete mixers, trucks, fire trucks, and military vehicles, dosimetry service vans, and gray and black Volga cars with Kyiv license plates races along it.
While entering the zone from the Belarusian side - separated from the power plant by the wide Pripyat River - leaves one with the haunting impression of entering a desolate land, the situation is different on the Ukrainian side. Here, the site is bustling with activity: thousands of people start work every day, and thousands of vehicles bring in and haul out people and materials. Press releases sum up this effort in four words: “The cleanup of the accident’s aftermath is underway.”
Just beyond the city limits, the field bases of many companies begin. We pass fleets of trucks, container storage yards, piles of trusses lying in the open air, cylindrical towers of mobile concrete plants… A few hundred meters from the highway, two helicopters land at a temporary airfield.
Technology dominates the post-accident landscape. People try to work under its protection. But how are the road workers grading the terrain for the second lane of the highway supposed to protect themselves from the dust? Or the members of the decontamination teams?
A few kilometers beyond Chernobyl, a chemical warfare company is clearing a pine forest adjacent to the highway. Most of the soldiers are working in green reusable respirators. They arrive here from camps set up just before the entrance to the zone. Their health is monitored on an ongoing basis by military medical and radiological services. Each soldier has a personal record card where their daily radiation exposure is logged. Now that every part of the zone has a precise, constantly updated contamination map, calculating this dose is simple: if, for example, the background radiation at a given location is 1 milliroentgen per hour, then (without getting into methodological and definitional nuances) during one hour of staying there, the body receives a dose of approximately 1 millisievert. Staying in that location for 4 hours, the body receives 4 millisieverts, and so on.
The units operating in the zone consist almost exclusively of reservists; only some of the officers are career military personnel. This arrangement has many advantages, such as the fact that employers subsequently pay reservists for their period of service at the higher rates applicable in the zone. Reservists, men aged 30–40, usually already have children, which eliminates concerns about possible genetic consequences, though - as Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Service, Dr. Paweł Zabrodski, explains - there is, of course, absolutely no question of such a thing!
Lieutenant Colonel Zabrodski, 35 years old - athletic build, sparkling eyes, a face weathered by the wind, a dosimeter in the lapel of his field uniform, an “alganka” cap - is the chief radiologist of one of the sectors within the zone. He graduated with honors from the Kirov Military Medical Academy in Leningrad. After a few years, he returned to that institution for an advanced training course for senior officers. He has been working in the zone since April 1, 1987. During his first days there, he was constantly haunted by associations with Andrei Tarkovsky’s film *Stalker*.
The reservists whose health he looks after - such as Senior Corporal Ivan Bezrukov, 34, a locksmith from Kharkiv; Private Vladimir Lepichin, 38, a laborer from Kuzbass in Siberia; and others - are called up for six months. If their bodies receive the permissible radiation dose earlier, they are discharged to civilian life sooner. In the first months after the accident, the permissible dose was 25 rem. Later, it was lowered to 20 rems, and a year after the accident, practically no soldier was allowed to exceed 15 rems. The work is organized so that soldiers remain in contaminated areas only when absolutely necessary, meaning that only a few exhaust their rem limit before the six months are up.
The masks on the soldiers’ faces make us look at our own respirators. Karasiuk nods approvingly, so we tear open the parchment pouches and pull out white pieces of gauze, stiffened by a delicate plastic frame and soaked in some kind of solution…
On the left side of the road, shrouded in fog, the outlines of Pripyat appear on the horizon. Today, it is fenced off with barbed wire. Firefighters and soldiers have washed the roofs and walls of all the houses. But dosimeters still show radiation. A layer of gravel nearly a meter thick has been spread over the playgrounds, lawns, and flower beds. Only the roadways and access paths to the buildings remain uncovered. Electronic sensors connected to the police station have been installed at the entrance doors. Entry into Pripyat requires a special permit. A few months after the evacuation, Pripyat residents were allowed to visit their apartments and take some personal belongings and family mementos, provided they were not contaminated…
We turn right, and at that moment the squat structure of the power plant looms up before us, with its distinctive chimney striped in white and red… Mesmerized by the sight of the world’s most famous power plant rising before us, we’ve stopped looking around. And as we drive by, Karasiuk points out, there’s a massive structure rising on the right, surrounded by scaffolding and cranes. This is the unfinished, halted-midway so-called third phase of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant - Units V and VI. RBMK-1000 reactors were also to be installed in their reactors. Once Units V and VI were operational, the plant on the Pripyat River would have been the largest power plant in the world. It will not be. By decision of the Politburo and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, construction of the third phase has been suspended until the end of the current five-year plan. The people of Kyiv, as well as many experts from the central government, believe that this construction should be halted forever.
We cross the bridge over the canal that supplies water for reactor cooling and come to a stop in a large paved area in front of the main entrance to the power plant. A year ago, you could only move around here under the protection of a military armored personnel carrier, which reduced radiation levels several times over. Now the area is clear. Karasiuk encourages us to take off our respirators. With relief, we remove our masks and take a deep breath of fresh Chernobyl air.
Our guide through the power plant will be Nikolai Karpan, deputy chief engineer for scientific affairs. Nikolai (a tall, energetic forty-year-old from Tomsk) worked at the nuclear safety facility as deputy head until the accident. Called to Chernobyl on the morning of April 26, he first organized the dosimetry services, and then did whatever needed to be done at the time. “He proved himself in the toughest test,” Seryozha Akulinin will tell me about him, “so he was promoted.” Just like many others. The evaluation criteria in Chernobyl became simple and clear: how you behaved during the accident and what you did to mitigate its effects, brother, says everything about you. Because it was a man’s test, just like in war.
“Right here - Karpan points to the right - there used to be a ‘Komsomol’ park. That’s what we called it because the trees were planted by young people during a subbotnik. Here - Kola’s hand moves to the left - there were beautiful roses. In the spring and summer, it felt just like being in a garden…” We’re standing with our backs to the power plant. In front of us, everywhere Kola directs our gaze, we see a gray asphalt slab. Gray is the dominant color here. Though “dominant” is an imprecise term in this case. Aside from a brown strip of “red forest” visible in the distance, everything here is gray.
As part of the decommissioning work, a meter-thick layer of soil was removed around the power plant. Concrete slabs were laid in its place and covered with asphalt. This is in the immediate vicinity of the power plant. A little further away, thousands of truckloads of gravel and crushed stone were brought in to replace the removed soil. It will be many years before the wind blows new soil here and the grass begins to turn green in the spring…
Through the mandatory dosimetry checkpoint (green lights come on - the way is clear), we enter the administration building. In the jargon of Chernobyl power plant workers, this building is referred to by the abbreviation ABK-1 (administrative and residential complex).
In the fallout shelter located beneath it - the only place on the power plant grounds that was 100% safe - the rescue operation headquarters operated during the first few months. This is where workers rested after working in the contaminated zone. Military armored personnel carriers served as “taxis” to transport people here… After the sarcophagus was built, it was time to decontaminate the power plant’s facilities. Plaster, wall coverings, and floors were stripped away… Inside ABK-1, everything is new - including the marble staircase we take to the second floor to reach the management offices.
We walk through a glass-enclosed gallery from ABK-1 to the main power plant building. We walk down the “golden” corridor, so named by the crew because of the “gold-plated,” metallic wall coverings used to line the walls and ceiling after decontamination. Before the accident, the corridor was nearly a kilometer long (now it is shorter, as part of it is inside the sarcophagus). To our left is the turbine hall, nearly 700 meters long. The reactors, however, are located in tall, seventy-meter-high “annexes” on the right side of the corridor.
Reactor No. 1 is closest to the control room, and No. 4 is the farthest (it is also a blessing in disguise that the accident occurred in the outermost unit rather than the middle one). Between the corridor and the turbine hall, the unit control rooms and the central power control room have been installed. The metal doors leading to them are equipped with combination locks. The engineer accompanying us, Vladimir Ryzhykh, the power plant’s shift supervisor, opened them without any trouble, of course!
Unit 1 is operating at full capacity. This is evident from the instrument readings and the steady hum of the turbines coming from behind the walls. It was precisely this hum that the duty crew of Unit 4 heard until 1:24 a.m. on April 26, 1986…
Vladimir Ryzhykh introduces us to the people responsible for the unit’s operation: shift supervisor Vladimir Khokhlov, senior reactor control engineer Alexander Kiriutin, senior unit control engineer Nikolai Markelov, and senior turbine control engineer Vasily Rebets.
To be able to stand behind the consoles set up in this semicircular, air-conditioned room, you need not only the right education but also sufficient experience. For example, you can only become a shift supervisor after 5–6 years of working in the operating room. The base salary of a shift supervisor is 180 rubles, but the monthly paycheck, taking various factors into account, amounts to 800–1,000 rubles.
“So,” I say aloud, “this is what the place looks like where the worst accident in the history of nuclear power occurred!”
This is what it looks like, because the control room of Unit IV was identical…”
Reflections from beneath the sarcophagus
It is April 24, 1987, late afternoon: “We reached the sarcophagus from inside the power plant, and now we want to get closer to it in daylight. ‘What’s the problem?’ Nikolai Karpan smiles. ‘It’s completely safe now.’
We get into the Volga and drive along the canal that supplies cooling water to the power plant. We pass a transformer station covering several hectares, beyond which the remnants of the ‘red forest’ are visible. But here is the dark mass of the sarcophagus. From a distance, it looks as if it were covered with lead plates. However, this is just an illusion caused by the fact that the steel-and-concrete walls have been painted dark gray.
We get out of the car and approach the dark gray wall. It’s cold, and the wind is starting to pick up. That’s actually a good thing, because a place like this shouldn’t be associated with anything pleasant. We get to about fifty meters from the sarcophagus. We could get even closer, but there’s really no point anymore, because my journalistic curiosity has been satisfied. Volodya Dergun calls this the “prisutsviya effect.” He says: “Everyone I bring here actually knows what they’re going to see, but everyone still wants to feel it…”
The place where we are now was one of the most dangerous after the accident. Karpan is to be believed, as he was already here on the afternoon of April 26. He was taking the first dosimetric measurements. Of course, approaching this area on foot would have been highly unwise at that time. He arrived in an armored personnel carrier.
========================
I look up at the black prism of the sarcophagus… We will pass it on to future generations. Ancient Egypt left behind the pyramids, a warning against the selfishness of absolute power. Hellenic Greece gave humanity the sculptures and columns of the Acropolis, demonstrating the possibilities of human creative development. We, the people of the second half of the 20th century - as we proudly liked to call ourselves until recently - will leave behind the steel-and-concrete prism of the Chernobyl tomb.
The place where we stand is special… In Chernobyl, a man (and it is not the most important thing that he happened to have a Soviet passport) crossed boundaries he believed to be insurmountable. And looking back, he saw how fragile the foundations of the civilization he had shaped truly were. We thought we had found the key to mastering the environment in which we live. It seemed we could always achieve what we planned and protect ourselves from what we did not want.
Kennedy’s bold declaration - “We choose to go to the Moon because we want to and because we can” - became a symbol of technological determinism, a creed embraced by millions of people around the world. “With technology, anything is possible; it’s just a matter of concentrating our efforts and resources,” proclaimed the priests of this new faith. When something didn’t go as planned - it fell, collapsed, sank, burned, poisoned, or exploded - the mantra of the “inevitable price of progress” was always at hand. We didn’t watch the scientists and engineers too closely. And they, in their self-importance, also stopped noticing that they had created a qualitatively new civilization… Chernobyl woke us from this complacency.
The uniqueness of the Chernobyl disaster compared to others does not lie in the fact that people died here, though the death of every human being - and especially the unimaginable death from radiation - must evoke deep feelings of sorrow and compassion in every normal member of our species. But after all, however cruel it may sound, we accept that ships with sailors sink at sea, rockfalls crush miners, test pilots crash in prototype aircraft, train engineers die in collisions, and chemical laboratory workers suffer fatal burns… We accept this, however, as a tragic but logical consequence of the lifestyle or profession these people have chosen. We ease our conscience by telling ourselves that their greater occupational risk was compensated in advance by higher earnings…
If the Chernobyl disaster had affected only the on-duty crew, we would probably have brushed it off as just another day… But the radioactive isotopes spewed from the open crater of Reactor No. 4 also threatened people who had nothing to do with nuclear power- people living in the immediate and wider vicinity of the reactor. And since no one could determine where the boundaries of that wider zone lay, we felt that the explosion in Chernobyl threatened us all. And there is only one way to effectively protect oneself from the consequences of a disaster that threatens everyone: by preventing it from happening in the first place…
Waldemar Siwiński
