(ANSA-AP) - KIEV, Ukraine - With flowers, candles and tears,
Ukraine on Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the explosion
at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the world's worst nuclear
disaster. Some survivors said the chaos of that time is etched
in their minds forever. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko led
a ceremony in Chernobyl, where work is underway to complete a 2
billion euro ($2.25 billion) long-term shelter over the building
containing Chernobyl's exploded reactor. Once the structure is
in place, work will begin to remove the reactor and its
lava-like radioactive waste. "We honor those who lost their
health and require a special attention from the government and
society," Poroshenko said. "It's with an everlasting pain in our
hearts that we remember those who lost their lives to fight
nuclear death." About 600,000 people, often referred to as
Chernobyl's "liquidators," were sent in to fight the fire at the
nuclear plant and clean up the worst of its contamination. The
initial explosion on April 26, 1986, at the power plant killed
at least 30 people, exposed millions to dangerous levels of
radiation and forced a wide-scale, permanent evacuation of
hundreds of towns and villages. But since the Ukrainian
government has scaled back benefits for Chernobyl survivors,
many of them feel betrayed by their own country. "I went in
there when everyone was fleeing, we were going right into the
heat," said Mykola Bludchiy, who arrived in the Chernobyl
exclusion zone on May 5, just days after the explosion. "And
today everything is forgotten. It's a disgrace." He spoke
Tuesday after a ceremony in Kiev, where top officials were
laying wreaths to a Chernobyl memorial. At midnight on Monday, a
vigil was held in the Ukrainian town of Slavutych, where many
former Chernobyl workers were relocated. Thirty years later,
many could not hold back the tears as flowers and candles were
brought to a memorial to the workers killed in the explosion.
Some of the former liquidators dressed in white robes and caps
for the memorial, just like those they were wearing in the
aftermath of the disaster. Andriy Veprev, who had worked at the
Chernobyl nuclear plant for 14 years before the explosion and
helped to clean up the contamination, said memories of the
mayhem in 1986 were still vivid. "I'm proud of those guys who
were with me and who are not with us now," he said. The final
death toll from Chernobyl is subject to speculation, due to the
long-term effects of radiation, but ranges from an estimate of
9,000 by the World Health Organization to a possible 90,000 by
the environmental group Greenpeace. In Russia, President
Vladimir Putin said in a message to the liquidators released by
the Kremlin press office that the Chernobyl disaster was "a
grave lesson for all of mankind."
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