Chernobyl Ussr

Radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is still spreading in Byelorussia almost three years after the accident and has contaminated one-fifth of the republic's arable soil, Pravda said Saturday. "We harvest hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated grain and do not know what to do with it," the Communist Party newspaper quoted Mikhail V. Kovalev, premier of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic, as saying. Although the Chernobyl plant's No.

On the surface, it seemed an idyllic tableau of Slavic spring. Gray-haired grandmothers lolled in the sun-splashed street, men gabbed on benches and a stork preened in its nest atop a brick water tower. But Ilintsy, population 300 or so, is no ordinary town, and its people are committing either a supreme act of faith or folly. A legal ban and barbed wire notwithstanding, these Ukrainians have returned to the homes they were forced to evacuate after the Chernobyl disaster.

Radioactive contamination from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster is still causing problems, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said. "There are people who are trying to prove Chernobyl is in the past as if it is time to forget about it," Pravda said. "Of course, enormous work has been done but we should not relax now, because many years will be needed to put the tragedy into the past and the main task is to draw conclusions from the accident."

A generation ago, Olga Korbut, the little girl in pigtails, won the hearts of the world with daring gymnastic routines and infectious charm. Today, 19 years after her Olympic magic at Munich, Korbut, 36, is still probably the most famous of all Soviet athletes. Maybe not in the Soviet Union--or what was the Soviet Union--but in the rest of the world. Her fame, though, has brought neither wealth nor happiness.

A newspaper said the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl power plant, the worst commercial nuclear accident in history, took 250 lives instead of the 31 officially reported. A brief article in the weekly Moscow News said deaths not reported by authorities were caused by various illnesses related to the accident. But a spokesman for the agency overseeing the Chernobyl cleanup said that only the 31 deaths officially reported could be traced directly to the accident.

Ukrainian authorities are offering Soviet and foreign tourists a new suggestion: a tour of the radioactive contamination zone around the Chernobyl reactor that blew up in April, 1986. All trips will begin and end with Geiger counter tests for visitors' exposure to radiation. If treatment at a radiological medical center is needed, it will be provided "at no extra charge," the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

Residents of a northern Siberia peninsula across the Bering Strait from Alaska die by age 45 on the average because of decades of radiation contamination as severe as that resulting from the Chernobyl disaster, a weekly newspaper reported Wednesday. The newspaper, the liberal Moscow News, said that contamination of the Chukotka peninsula, where about 130,000 people live, was caused by previously secret Soviet testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s.

A pregnant women who defied orders to evacuate the danger zone surrounding the damaged Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 gave birth to an apparently normal girl there last year, a Soviet newspaper revealed Friday. The trade union daily Trud said Yelena Chervinskaya, then 24, arrived in Chernobyl on the second day after the accident as part of a youth work brigade. Attracted by the good pay she stayed, working first as a cook and then as the director of a hostel. Then she became pregnant.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, making his first visit to the site of the world's most serious nuclear accident, on Thursday urged the utmost caution in developing atomic energy and the strictest safeguards to prevent future accidents. "All power stations must be kept in such a state (of security) that nothing of this kind can happen again," Gorbachev declared as he toured the Chernobyl nuclear power station.

The Soviet government, allocating $26 billion in additional funds to help the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster four years ago, acknowledged on Sunday that thousands upon thousands of people are still living in areas dangerously contaminated by radioactive fallout, and even more are eating food grown in those areas.

Doors bang with the wind. Fences have fallen around the village's stout houses. The post office, the school, the community center are all padlocked. And yellowed weeds, some shoulder high, wave in the fields where Bartalomeyevka's farmers grew rye, potatoes and vegetables. Bartalomeyevka is a modern ghost town--it was killed by radiation.

Ukrainian authorities are offering Soviet and foreign tourists a new suggestion: a tour of the radioactive contamination zone around the Chernobyl reactor that blew up in April, 1986. All trips will begin and end with Geiger counter tests for visitors' exposure to radiation. If treatment at a radiological medical center is needed, it will be provided "at no extra charge," the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

The Soviet government, allocating $26 billion in additional funds to help the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster four years ago, acknowledged on Sunday that thousands upon thousands of people are still living in areas dangerously contaminated by radioactive fallout, and even more are eating food grown in those areas.

A newspaper said the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl power plant, the worst commercial nuclear accident in history, took 250 lives instead of the 31 officially reported. A brief article in the weekly Moscow News said deaths not reported by authorities were caused by various illnesses related to the accident. But a spokesman for the agency overseeing the Chernobyl cleanup said that only the 31 deaths officially reported could be traced directly to the accident.

Residents of a northern Siberia peninsula across the Bering Strait from Alaska die by age 45 on the average because of decades of radiation contamination as severe as that resulting from the Chernobyl disaster, a weekly newspaper reported Wednesday. The newspaper, the liberal Moscow News, said that contamination of the Chukotka peninsula, where about 130,000 people live, was caused by previously secret Soviet testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s.

Radioactive contamination from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster is still causing problems, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said. "There are people who are trying to prove Chernobyl is in the past as if it is time to forget about it," Pravda said. "Of course, enormous work has been done but we should not relax now, because many years will be needed to put the tragedy into the past and the main task is to draw conclusions from the accident."

On the surface, it seemed an idyllic tableau of Slavic spring. Gray-haired grandmothers lolled in the sun-splashed street, men gabbed on benches and a stork preened in its nest atop a brick water tower. But Ilintsy, population 300 or so, is no ordinary town, and its people are committing either a supreme act of faith or folly. A legal ban and barbed wire notwithstanding, these Ukrainians have returned to the homes they were forced to evacuate after the Chernobyl disaster.

A generation ago, Olga Korbut, the little girl in pigtails, won the hearts of the world with daring gymnastic routines and infectious charm. Today, 19 years after her Olympic magic at Munich, Korbut, 36, is still probably the most famous of all Soviet athletes. Maybe not in the Soviet Union--or what was the Soviet Union--but in the rest of the world. Her fame, though, has brought neither wealth nor happiness.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, making his first visit to the site of the world's most serious nuclear accident, on Thursday urged the utmost caution in developing atomic energy and the strictest safeguards to prevent future accidents. "All power stations must be kept in such a state (of security) that nothing of this kind can happen again," Gorbachev declared as he toured the Chernobyl nuclear power station.

A pregnant women who defied orders to evacuate the danger zone surrounding the damaged Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 gave birth to an apparently normal girl there last year, a Soviet newspaper revealed Friday. The trade union daily Trud said Yelena Chervinskaya, then 24, arrived in Chernobyl on the second day after the accident as part of a youth work brigade. Attracted by the good pay she stayed, working first as a cook and then as the director of a hostel. Then she became pregnant.