20 Years ago Today
Today was the 20th anniversary of the horrible accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant.
Yahoo/AFP has a report on the memorial ceremony:
Haunting vigils mark 20 years since Chernobyl disaster
Haunting night-time vigils marked the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident that shocked the globe, ravaged this corner of eastern Europe and affects millions of people to this day.
Clutching candles and carnations, hundreds of people silently poured into the central square of the Ukrainian town of Slavutich, built 50 kilometers (31 miles) to the east of the defunct nuclear power station to house its staff and others evacuated following the accident.
A shrieking siren pierced the silence around the time that two explosions ripped through reactor number four at the Soviet-designed plant on April 26, 1986, releasing a huge radioactive cloud into the air.
Somber-faced, many with tears in their eyes, the crowd made their way toward a monument honoring the 30 people who died in the first year after the accident that became a grim symbol of the hazards of atomic energy.
"I knew all of these people," Mykola Ryabushkin said, pointing to the portraits hanging on the monument.
The 59-year-old was an operator at the station and was working the night of the explosion that bathed the station in an otherworldly bluish light.
"I look at them and I want to ask them for forgiveness," he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. "Maybe we're all to blame for letting this accident happen."
Emphasis mine -- no you are not to blame. The only people to blame are the idiots who put operators on duty that had no experience with the particular kind of reactor and who decided to run a test that should never have been run. Wikipedia has an excellent article outlining the faults of
that particular core and the
timeline leading up to the accident.
Posted by DaveH at April 25, 2006 10:32 PM