“My name is Natalia Manzurova. I’ve always been into nuclear, because I was born in the closed city of Ozersk. The cities were closed in all corners of the Soviet Union where there were secret military projects and were some distance from the city ‘real’. They were not marked on the maps and addresses were extensions of the royal city closest, in the case of Ozersk was Chelyabinsk. For example, if in Chelyabinsk a street ended at the 300th, in the closed city of Ozersk it had a street named the same and started at number 301. To send a letter to Ozersk it was written as a destination city: Chelyabinsk 65. the reason for the secrecy, and why my parents lived and worked there, is that in Ozersk was the Mayak nuclear plant. It is not a civil but military plant. Now it is not perceived that way, but for decades the idea of ’nuclear energy’ was linked to military production, own and enemy, and all training was thinking of an attack and not an accident. And finally the accident happen in 1957. I was six years old then, but I know the details because then, as nuclear biologist, I worked in Ozersk. The accident at Mayak was not a nuclear explosion, but chemistry, but the explosion caused the dispersion of radioactive elements in such an amount that is no exaggeration to speak of medium Chernobyl “.
The accepted figures speak of 60 dead people 470,000 for immediate and exposed pollution at Mayak. As at the time of the accident did not exist throughout Europe radiation detectors that made it impossible to hide Chernobyl, only until 1976 the first reports they met. Silence not only came from the Soviet side, according to independent researcher Anna Gyorgy: CIA detected increased radiation levels in Europe and the source confirmed thanks to his informants, but refrained from making it known to avoid damaging the image nascent US civil nuclear program. The Mayak incident is unique in the history listed as Level 6 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. Only Fukushima and Chernobyl have been classified Level 7.
“Of course they wanted to determine Manzurova- Go on the consequences of the accident and until the eighties, with the scientists who kept the complex operating Mayak, there were several teams investigating the long-term effects of radiation on organisms in the region. The optical remained military, because civil nuclear energy was considered infallible. That was my job to mid-eighties while working a doctoral thesis in radiobiology, but the secret was so much that when we were told we had to go to Chernobyl even informed us the nature of the disaster and for us to use appropriate. So at the end improvising with what we could, but for example, who knew how to protect myself, I was so little informed of the reality on the ground that arrived in shorts and sandals. I was part of the ‘second wave’ of liquidators. Then, as part of which radiated to death throwing sandbags on the reactor and washing the walls, we began to get some scientists to study what had happened. Also military and civilians. Women were very few. One per thousand. I would say that there were three groups: those who had a house in the region and offered to recover it, the ‘sent’ like me (who did not reject the order a little heroism, partly because of fear of professional consequences of a rejection ) and arriving for monetary reasons and worked making toilet or cooking. For a month working in Chernobyl could expect to earn him a year in any other position. Not that these women were ambitious, many of them had economic problems, were single mothers with several children who could not risk running or imagined, but they were willing to make the sacrifice. “
Women who became pregnant in the “Zone”, as it was called the place where the nuclear accident occurred, and residents were workers or nearby, they were forced to have abortions. Manzurova says that throughout childhood her daughter was afraid it was to appear to him an untreatable disease and also feared convey fears that as a woman, had suffered during his years at Chernobyl.
“It was not only the danger radiation. Since we were on the way and watched the rows of buses and peasants who were with what they could’d understood it was a war, but coming to a city where no one and yet, everything is intact is very hard. For women it was even worse, because being so minority were victims of constant harassment by all those male troop in which the idea that to avoid the effects of radiation Maybe it was the vodka was so divided. There were cases of rape and murder. Women who appeared dead beside a road wrapped in uniform, but in that same dynamic of war, were considered ‘low’ and not crimes. Women were forbidden to travel alone or be in the street at night, and if that was enough for professionals, workers used to quickly find a ‘husband’ and was temporary because many had a family out of the ‘Zone’. It was the only way that left quiet. This constant harassment prevented us access distractions. For example, from 88 theater he opened, but what women were told how they were treated made me never dared to go. We used to stay locked in the house and shared a bed in shifts. While one worked, the other slept. So also circulated disease. “
Manzurova not need to go into detail to understand the consequences for their health had four and a half years spent in the” Zone “. Among the liquidators exists a dark joke: “You also have the necklace Chernobyl?”. The joke refers to the scar left after removal of the thyroid. The tumor laying the extracted Manzurova was benign, but still fears that cancer can develop. In 1999 he formed the Association of Invalids of Chernobyl, to help the liquidators and their families to access health services.
“The first was always a nosebleed. It was the sign that were no longer ‘new’ and radiation had begun to make its effects, but despite that there were few who gave up because all dreamed pension. Then there were problems with the intestinal flora and constant fatigue. My health is much deteriorated when was four years in the ‘Zone’, but had to endure four and a half to access the benefits, so I was even after they took me half the thyroid. For that reason all stayed a little longer. From the second year in the ‘Zone’, we were equipped with dosimeters to measure radiation, but often the level was so high that the damaging. We never knew how much radiation we were getting. And although twenty years we never told us asking. We pensionamos relatively young, it is true, but of the fourteen members of my team’m the only one still alive. “
This happened the nuclear accident in Chernobyl
the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred on April 26, 1986 in the town of Pripyat, in the Ukraine and then territory under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Union. The explosion of a reactor produced an expansion of energy radioactive contaminated areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. 31 people died from the blast, caused by deficiencies in reactors and human failings, and about 100,000 square kilometers results affected by the release of nuclear material. The worst affected country was Biolerrusia. Its effects on human health and the environment were disastrous. In the first weeks, more than 200 people were hospitalized after being exposed continuously to radioactive contamination way. Those responsible for cleaning the area, called liquidators, were also affected: between 300,000 and 600,000, according to the Soviet Union. Radiation ended with entire forests. Instead, given the human neglect, the area has become a sanctuary for species thought to be extinct.
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