QURGHON TEPPA/DUSHANBE, April 29, Asia-Plus — Members of Tajikistan’s Soyuz-Chernobyl Public Association (association of the Chernobyl cleanup workers) gathered in Qurghon Teppa, Khatlon province on April 27 to mark the 22nd anniversary of the “Chernobyl disaster, rector accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Speaking in an interview with Asia-Plus, Faridoun Hakimov, the head of Tajikistan’s Soyuz-Chernobyl, said that more than 6,000 representatives of Tajikistan had participated in a cleanup operation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. According to him, some 200 died of various diseases they contacted during the cleanup operation.
1,150 Chernobyl cleanup workers currently live in Tajikistan. “Children of many Chernobyl cleanup workers suffer from various diseases, including anemia, tuberculosis and goitre,” Hakimov said.
He added that although three is a law on social protection of the Chernobyl cleanup workers in Tajikistan, not all institutions comply with this law.
The Chernobyl accident was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history and the only instance so far of level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Sale, resulting in a severe nuclear meltdown.
On April 26 1986, at 01:23-40 a.m. reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant located in the Soviet Union, near Pripyat in Ukraine exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Nearly thirty to forty times more fallout was released than Hiroshima. The plume drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and eastern North America. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. According to official post-Soviet data, about 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.
The 2005 report prepared by the Chernobyl Forum, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organization (WHO), attributed 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers, and nine children with thyroid cancer), and estimated that there may be 4,000 extra deaths due to cancer among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed and 5,000 among the 6 million living nearby. Although the Chernobyl Explosion Zone and certain limited areas will remain off limits, the majority of affected areas are now considered safe for settlement and economic activity
