Soviet authorities started evacuating people from the contaminated area around Chernobyl within 36 hours of the accident. By May 1986, about a month later, all those living within a 30 km radius of the plant — about 120,000 people — had been relocated.
On May, 1 the parade and other May celebrations did took place in Kyiv, in the city with 4 million population. These days the level of radiation in Kyiv was several times higher than the maximum allowable.
According to reports from Soviet scientists, 35,000 km were contaminated by caesium-137 to levels that can be very dangerous for people's health. It estimates that roughly 850,000 people lived in this area. That is why the issue of long-term effects of Chernobyl disaster on civilians is highly controversial. The number of people whose lives were affected by the accident is enormous. Over 300,000 people were resettled because of the accident; according to the official statistics around 600,000 participated in the cleanup; millions lived and continue to live in the contaminated area. On the other hand, most of those affected received relatively low doses of radiation; there is little evidence of increased mortality, cancers or birth defects among them; and when such evidence is present, existence of a causal link to radioactive contamination is uncertain.
Epidemiological studies have been hampered in the former Soviet Union by a lack of funds, an infrastructure with little or no experience in chronic disease epidemiology. International efforts to organize epidemiological studies have been slowed by some of the same factors, especially the lack of a suitable scientific infrastructure.
The activities undertaken by Belarus and Ukraine in response to the accident — remediation of the environment, evacuation and resettlement, development of uncontaminated food sources and food distribution channels, and public health measures — have overburdened the governments of those countries have already passed 27 years.
But there is another problem. It is the sarcophagus itself. The sarcophagus is not an effective permanent enclosure for the destroyed reiactor. Its hasty construction, in many cases conducted remotely with industrial robots, means it is aging badly, and if it collapses, another cloud of radioactive dust could be released. The sarcophagus is so badly damaged that a small earth tremour or severe winds could cause the roof to collapse. A number of plans have been discussed for building a more permanent enclosure. Most of the money donated by foreign countries and contributed by Ukraine has been squandered by inefficient distribution of construction contracts and overall management, or simply stolen.
About 95% of the nuclear fuel (about 180 tones) in the reactor at the time of the accident remains inside the shelter, with a total radioactivity of nearly 18 million curies. The radioactive material consists of core fragments, dust, and lava-like «fuel-containing materials »(FCM) that flowed through the wrecked reactor building before hardening into a ceramic form. By conservative estimates, there is at least four tons of radioactive dust inside the shelter.
Water continues to leak into the shelter, spreading radioactive materials throughout the wrecked reactor building and iiito the surrounding groundwater. The high humidity inside the shelter continues to erode the concrete and steel of the sarcophagus. It is pretty dangerous and if no measures are taken, we might face another disaster caused by our complete disregard and stupidity.
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