Thirty Years After Chernobyl, UW-Milwaukee Professor Rememembers

Thirty years after Chernobyl, UW-Milwaukee information studies professor Maria Haigh remembers what happened six days after the world’s deadliest nuclear disaster: the birth of her daughter, Hanya Sverstiuk. Haigh lived in Ukraine at the time when she gave birth to Sverstiuk, who died from a radiation-grown brain tumor at the age of four.

“May 2, how the wind went, it was the highest radiation,” Haigh said. “So the first breath that she was taking was extremely radiated.”

Haigh delivered Sverstiuk in the isolation zone of the hospital, where administration opened all of the windows for radiated air to flow in. By that time, the world knew of the explosion, but the Soviet government downplayed the continued danger of radiation.

“And in fact, this is what it was on the radio in Milwaukee,” Haigh said. “The first time that they announced that something happened was four days later, even though people knew that something happened.”

Haigh, then married to a hematologist and mothered by one too, said she understood the threat of radiation thanks to her family. The government secretly mobilized doctors to send to the Chernobyl area following the explosion in a feeble attempt to save the people while hiding as much of the damage as possible. While Haigh was in labor, everybody else marched outside for a government celebration.

“Officially, nothing happened and everything is well [on May 1],” Haigh said. “They did force people to go out and demonstrate on May Day. Nobody wanted to go. May Day, it was always this charade. You have to go, because otherwise there will be this checklist, you will have trouble at work if you don’t go to the May Day.”

In an effort to undo some of the damage, the government started administering non-radioactive iodine tablets to citizens a week after the explosion. These tablets prevent excess absorption of radiation, which can save lives, if consumed in time.

“It was kind of these rumors and panic that [the government] started giving out [iodine tablets] a week later…which didn’t make any difference at that state,” Haigh said.

Instead of releasing vital information to citizens and sending emergency help immediately, the Soviet Union continued functioning as usual.

“It was the Soviet system,” Haigh said. “The Soviet Union was collapsing in general. It was this period of Perestroika; changes in the society, changes in government. But it was in very initial stages.”

The government controlled everything under the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, the period when the reactors at Chernobyl exploded, the Soviet Union faced pressure to appear more technologically advanced and superior to western nations, which related to the government-mandated tests at Chernobyl that led to the explosion.

“The main mission was really to look good and just cover up everything and don’t care about the people,” Haigh said. “This is what is so sad, how people’s lives have no value.”

News of an accidental massive nuclear explosion threatened to shine the government in a negative light. Officials decided it was in the Soviet Union’s best interest to keep everything secret, even at the cost of their citizens.

“It was extremely secret,” Haigh said. “The government was covering it up. ‘It’s nothing. Nothing happened. And it’s only because the radiation went up in Poland and then Sweden, it went to Sweden.’ That is what they were forced to say.”

The nuclear explosion killed two people immediately onsite at Chernobyl; about 30 people, mainly firefighters and other first responders, died within months of the incident due to high exposure to radiation. Over time, thousands of people died from Chernobyl’s cancer. Scientists say it is impossible to calculate the exact the exact number of deaths caused by the explosion, let alone the long-term health issues it caused among humans, animals and plants.

“What they are telling now—and I think they still keep saying it, the Soviet side—is that only 600 people died,” Haigh said.

Not everybody died of cancer, yet. In 2005, scientists determined about 4,000 people, who were children and adolescents at the time of the disaster, had thyroid cancer—a direct result of Chernobyl. About 99 percent of these patients survived, but damages are still totaling.

“So the scary part of it is that the disaster kind of continues, and it didn’t stop just with the explosion,” Haigh said. “But it’s because of what happened and how it was handled. That’s why it’s still a problem.”

Meanwhile, fire continues to burn in a single reactor in the Eastern European power plant. With the help of Japan, Ukraine built a sarcophagus to cover the flaming radiation. According to Haigh, the government said the fire would continue for 30 years, and 30 years later, the fire still burns. She said officials plan to have the cover updated and finished this year.

Interesting details.

“So what’s happening now—this 30 kilometer area, the isolation area where nobody can live—it’s where everybody is evacuated,” Haigh said.

Chernobyl directly affected many people’s lives both during and long after the nuclear explosion. On top of getting exposed to radiation herself, along with her family, Haigh lost her daughter to the disaster.

“For me, it was just this one episode, in a sense,” Haigh said. “I am just one person, one family, one incident. It happens all the time, this kind of indignity. I don’t know if you call it indignity, or just disrespect for human life.”

Haigh believes the damages of the disaster go beyond the tangible deaths, cancer diagnoses and ever-present radiation.

“I was just talking with my closest friend who is still in Kyiv, and we just talked about it again,” Haigh said. “From her perspective, this radiation is not even the worst of what happened to people.”

The Chernobyl disaster did more than just expose thousands of people and the entire planet to toxic radiation, Haigh said; the Chernobyl disaster also exposed the corrupt government system that the people had no choice but to rely on.

“I think she did put it really well,” Haigh said. “It caused cancer for so many people, but it’s also just this cancer of mentality and psychological cancer that was exposed.”