After decades of suffering, misdirection, silences, disease and deaths, Chernobyl makes a green turn, from Nuclear to Solar

On April 26, 1986, there was a frightening incident at the Ukraine atomic power plant, still under Soviet rule, which caused death and destruction among the population near the plant. Nuclear radiation accompanied the lives of survivors and their descendants, bringing disease and disability for many years.

The nuclear accident at the Chernobyl power plant was classified by the IAEA at level 7 of the INES scale, the highest possible value of the index, which indicates the event as catastrophic.

The story tells us that: The causes were contributed to the serious shortcomings of the staff,both technical and managerial, in problems related to the structure and design of the plant itself and its mismanagement of the economic and administrative.

The staff was responsible for the violation of various safety and common sense rules, leading to a sharp and uncontrolled increase in the power (and therefore temperature) of the core of reactor No. 4 of the plant: This resulted in the splitting of the refrigeration water in hydrogen and oxygen at such high pressures that the plumbing of the reactor cooling system was broken.

The contact of hydrogen and incandescent graphite of the control bars with the air,in turn, triggered a very strong explosion, which caused the reactor to open and as a result caused a large fire.

A cloud of radioactive material leaked from the reactor and fell over large areas around the plant, contaminating them heavily and necessitating the evacuation and repositioning of some 366,000 people in other areas.

Radioactive clouds also reached Eastern Europe, Finland and Scandinavia with decreasing levels of contamination, also affecting Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Balkans, up to portions of the east coast of North America.

This year is the 35th anniversary of the accident and areas surrounding the plant are trying to turn the page through new energy projects.

The system of management of the distribution and production power grid in Ukraine normally belongs to private companies, run by oligarchs, which have centralized energy control in a few hands.

In the early 2000s,these private companies incorporated the power lines of cities, towns and villages for symbolic figures, creating, in fact, a kind of monopoly.

Kiev's power lines, for example, belong to the company DTEK, the largest Ukrainian energy group, headed by the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

The project developed in Slavutych is a real exception in the country as it allows the energy independence of the population through a form of democratic management in a cooperative.

The solar park was built with a networked financing,through a crowfunding intervention, which allowed to raise about 150,000 euros in just 4 months allowing the construction of 3 solar power plants on the flat roofs of the buildings.

Through the management of these small solar power plants, the population of the country sells the unconsumed energy and allocates about 5 of the proceeds to the community for social improvements.

Considering also the mortality rate of the population, due to the pollution caused by coal-fired power plants, which is equivalent to 43 GJ deaths per million of coal used, compared with Germany, which has twice the population but a mortality rate of 1.6 per million GJ of coal used, it can be hoped that projects such as these could lead to an increase in the production of renewable energy in the country.

Article written in May 2021 before the Russian invasion

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