The Border Drawn Around an Invisible Enemy

Name: The Border Drawn Around an Invisible Enemy
Genre: Documentary

Authorities answer contamination by drawing a restricted landscape across Ukraine and neighboring Belarus.

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Transcript

A dark line, a quiet frame, an uncertain horizon.
After radiation spread, the Soviet Union established the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation.
Its restricted landscape spread across about 1,000 square miles of Ukraine around the plant.
Public access and habitation inside the Ukrainian exclusion zone were restricted.
Pripyat was abandoned after residents were evacuated.
Residents left Pripyat by bus, leaving their homes behind.
A border can divide land instantly; it cannot divide memory so cleanly.
The Belarusian Polesie State Radioecological Reserve covers 835 square miles.
The accident brought agony and disruption across Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.
Yet a controlled map did not mean controlled exposure.
Many of the 135,000 people in the 19-mile (30-kilometer) zone received relatively high absorbed doses before evacuation.
Outside it, about 5 million people in contaminated areas faced prolonged exposure.
Psychological effects arose from fear of exposure, fear for children, mistrust of authorities, and forced evacuation.
Children were especially susceptible to thyroid cancer caused by radioactive iodine exposure.
By 2005, cases among those exposed as children were estimated at 4,000.
Plant officials presented protective clothing and repeated radiation checks as safety measures.
Plant officials claimed nuclear power was absolutely safe when developed properly.
At the plant, Soviet scientists cleaned debris and searched for missing fuel.

Behind the exclusion zone's boundary, radioactive debris still had to be removed—and the liquidators were sent in.

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