Chornobyl: a chronology
1986
April 26: At 1:23 a.m., an experiment goes catastrophically awry at the V.I. Lenin Atomic Electrical Station near Chornobyl, some 60 miles north of Kyiv. Reactor No. 4 explodes and catches fire, spewing a vast cloud of radioactive fallout throughout Belarus, Ukraine and most of Europe.
April 27: A full 36 hours after the explosion, evacuations begin at Prypiat, a town built to house Chornobyl workers. Residents are given time only to pack enough belongings for a "short trip" and are told they will return in a matter of days.
April 28: A terse, four-sentence announcement by TASS, the official Soviet news agency, that an accident has occurred at Chornobyl is the first acknowledgment by the USSR government of the disaster. The TASS report makes no mention of the nature of the accident, nor of the enormous amount of radiation released.
May 1: Ignoring internal and Western reports confirming the severity of the radiation release, Soviet officials stage the annual May Day parade; hundreds of Kyiv schoolchildren march down the city's contaminated streets as the Communist elite sends its offspring to safe havens. Several days later, panic-stricken parents swamp Moscow-bound trains with their children.
August 25: The International Atomic Energy Agency convenes a special conference on Chornobyl in Vienna. Soviet authorities present a 382- page report in an attempt at mollifying Western allegations of a cover-up of the accident's magnitude and the scope of its consequences.
September 1: Chornobyl Reactor No.1 is restarted.
November 5: Reactor No. 2 resumes operation amid concern that operational safety precautions are once again not being observed.
November 17: Construction of a 195-foot-high steel and concrete "sarcophagus" is completed at reactor No. 4. Pravda reports the containment vessel will last "for centuries," but the hastily built structure starts sinking and develops cracks almost immediately following its completion.
1987
January 29: United States government rescinds travel advisory and says it is now once again safe for U.S. citizens to visit Kyiv.
1988
April 26: More than 500 people march along the Khreshchatyk. They hold a demonstration protesting the cover-up of the Chornobyl disaster and advocating the discontinuation of nuclear power generation and the transformation of Ukraine into a nuclear-free zone. Sponsored by the Ukrainian Culturological Club (UCC), the protest is the first ecologically oriented demonstration in Kyiv.
November 13: An officially sanctioned ecological demonstration attended by 10,000 people in Kyiv calls on the Soviet government to tell "All the Truth about Chornobyl." The rally is cut short by authorities after speakers start addressing questions of political freedom. Twenty demonstrators are detained; Oles Shevchenko of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union (UHU) is arrested.
December 4: Over 10,000 people demonstrate in Kyiv against the Soviet nuclear power program. Speakers, among them Yuri Shcherbak, head of the newly formed Zelenyi Svit (Green World) environmental association, call for a halt to new atomic energy station construction and a full disclosure of Chornobyl-related information by the Soviet government.
1989
April 16: 20,000 pray for victims of Chornobyl at a memorial moleben celebrated by Ukrainian Catholic clergy in Lviv outside the Cathedral of the Assumption.
April 26: 15,000 attend another Lviv rally, this time voicing political demands related to the Chornobyl accident.
1990
February 10: First shipment of humanitarian aid by the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund arrives at Kyiv-Boryspil aboard the "Ruslan" Antonov-124 transport aircraft. Numerous shipments follow and continue to this day.
July 13: The United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organization (ECOSOC) adopts a resolution appealing for worldwide cooperation on aid to mitigate the consequences of Chornobyl. The action comes after the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR formally request help from the international community.
1991
February 7: The Procurator-General of the USSR initiates a criminal investigation into the handling of the Chornobyl accident.
May 21: An IAEA report attributes all medical conditions from the Chornobyl disaster to psychological problems among an ignorant and misinformed population.
October 11: The machine room at Chornobyl reactor No. 2 catches fire and the reactor is permanently shut down.
October 29: The Ukrainian Parliament votes to shut down the Chornobyl plant completely by the end of 1993.
December 11: The Ukrainian Parliament passes a resolution demanding the prosecution of Soviet leaders for the Chornobyl cover-up. Among those named are Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, former Ukrainian Communist Party First Secretary Volodymyr Shcherbytsky and Ukrainian Health Minister Anatoliy Romanenko.
1992
February: The government announces that a second sarcophagus would have to be built over the first; work is to be completed within three years by a French company.
April 22: The Ministry of Chornobyl releases a statement estimating deaths attributable to the Chornobyl disaster at 6,000-8,000; Ukraine's government appeals for more aid from the international community.
May 2-4: Wildfires in contaminated regions of Belarus raise local radiation levels and force new evacuations.
October 16: Reactor No. 3 is restarted, against wishes of the European Community. By year's end, reactor No. 1 is again restarted, due to an energy crisis caused by Russian cutoffs of oil and gas supplies.
1993
October 21: In the midst of a severe energy shortage, with widespread, daily brownouts common, Parliament votes to keep Chornobyl open and to lift the moratorium on construction of new nuclear plants.
1994
July 8-10: The G-7 summit in Naples pledges $200 million in grant aid to strengthen Ukraine's energy sector and close down Chornobyl.
1995
July: A G-7 summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the suggestion of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, agrees to hold a summit in Moscow on nuclear issues, including the shutdown of the Chornobyl plant.
November 17: A worker at the Chornobyl plant receives the equivalent of a year's worth of radiation. The incident, Ukraine's most serious in 1995, rates three on the international scale; its severity is covered up by plant personnel for several months.
December 13: The U.N. General Assembly designates April 26, 1996, International Day in Memory of Chornobyl and seeks improved international cooperation on providing aid to Chornobyl's victims and studying its aftermath.
December 20: Ukraine's Minister of the Environment Yuriy Kostenko signs a Memorandum of Understanding with Shiela Copps, Canada's vice-premier and secretary of the environment, acting on behalf of the G-7. Members of the G-7 are to provide $2.3 billion to close down Chornobyl by 2000. No funds are allocated for the second sarcophagus.
1996
April 21: At the Moscow G-7 summit, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma reaffirms the decision to shut Chornobyl down. G-7 countries promise to study ways to replace the cracking sarcophagus, but make no new commitments of financial assistance.
April 22: Brush and forest fires, possibly accidentally ignited by evacuees visiting their former homes in the zone of exclusion, result in the destruction of five abandoned villages and a release of significant amounts of soil and ground-based radioactive dust.
April 26: This day Ukrainian communities worldwide commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster. Vigils are held in Ukraine; church bells toll throughout Europe in remembrance of the disaster's victims. An ecumenical service is held in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York and the Empire State Building glows blue and yeliow with the word "Chornobyl" spelled out. In Miensk, 50,000 demonstrators at a Chornobyl commemoration are violently dispersed by Belarusian riot police after demanding President Alyaksandr Lukashenka resign for, among other things, making light of the disaster's consequences.
- compiled by Yarema A. Bachynsky
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, May 5, 1996, No. 18, Vol. LXIV
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