Villages contaminated from Chernobyl

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When I was in a fifth grade I went with my class to the tour to Kiev for few days. Kiev is somewhat contaminated from the Chernobyl plant. So some kids were joking that they are going there to get sick, and since I was taking everything literally I actually began to worry about it. It happened that while at Kiev I happened to have a flu, and I was scared that it was due to radiation. Even though eventually people managed to explain to me that there is nothing to worry about since few days is not enough to catch any radiation, I still was left with my obsession with radiation in a form of fascination, so ever since I know how to use internet sometimes I make searches on various contaminated towns just to see how the houses would look like.

On any event, when my grandmother was little she was living in a town of Novozybkov, untill the time when she had to run from the Nazis in 1941 since she was Jewish. Now, Novozybkov is in Russia but it is very close to the border with Belarus. So it got radioactive contamination from Chernobyl. As you can see on the map ( http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwe ... tion96.jpg ), there are two "wings" of contamination. One wing is area surrounding Chernobyl, while the other is towards the north, but the radiation levels are just as high. The reason for this is that there was radioactive cloud heading north, and the government decided to prevent it from reaching Moscow by shooting dust from airplains in order to make it rain while it is still far off. Indeed, Moscow and the rest of mainland of Russia was spared of radiation, but that was in the expense of that region where they made the cloud rain on Belorus and Western-most part of Russia. Hence radiation is so high there.

Once again, here is the map that shows both towns and levels of radioactivity: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwe ... tion96.jpg You can find Novozybkov in the Russian part of the cloud but like you see it is on "Permanent control zone". Ironically, the town of Chernobyl itself falls into the same category. Well in case of town of Chernobyl it is on the contrast a bit cleaner than you would expect since it is 10 miles South from the nuclear plant and the wind was blowing North as opposed to South. So yah thats why we have that irony that as a result of dirrection of teh wind combined with artificial rainfall pattern, the town of Novozybkov which is 100 miles North is on the same level of contamination as Chernobyl which is 10 miles South.

Anyway, lets go back to the subject. So my grandmother left Novozybkov in 1941 because of teh world war and she never returned, so obviously she never had a chance to catch radioactivity. But few years ago she decided to go with my mom to Russia and they visitted Novozybkov to remmeber her youth. So I seized an apportunity and started asking her whether or not she found any more concrete information on radioactivity from the locals. She told me that while people live in the town of Novozybkov itself, there is a village near Novozybkov where the level of radioactivity even higher and everyone was evacuated from there. She told me that hte name of the village was Klyntsi.

So now I was bored and I decided to google Klyntsi just to see how the houses look like in that village. So I ran on a certain message board for people living in Klynci. Interestingly I didn't see them talking much about radioactivity on that board, they were mostly focused on cultural aspects of the town. So on one of the posts I saw someone posting a link with a song about the village, well basically the topic of the song is that it is the place of their childhood memories so after being in many places of the world this one village is what they can relate to the most and blah blah blah. Nevertheless, I think it is a good song, and you can listen to it here: http://www.klintsy.ru/music/klintsy2.mp3

However, when I did further searches on Klyntsi I was somewhat disappointed because my grandmother said it was supposed to be evacuated. The fact is that people, mostly elderly DO return to evacuated villages, so the fact that there are people there is no surprise. But the surprise is that based on the stats that I saw there are A LOT of people there, so clearly it wasn't evacuated. Furthermore, I read some place where they mentioned that the radioactivity in Novozybkov is higher than in Klyntsi which is just the opposite to what my grandmother said.

But I guess the thing is that she was visitting Novozybkov few years ago, but I asked her for the name of the village right now, so she could have forgotten. When I did more searches I found villages that DO have radioactivity higher than Novozybkov, namely Barsuky and Zaborje. Ironically, the village of Barsuky was quickly evacuated while Zaborje was NOT despite the fact that the radioactivity of the latter is twice higher than in the former. The reason is that the population of Zaborje is much higher and the government didn't knwo what to do with them so they decided to simply hide the fact that it needs to be evacuated, which is a typical act of dishonesty of Russian government.

But anyway, may be the village they told my grandmother about was either Barsuky or Zaborje, while she heard about Klyntsi in some totally different context, but then she simply confused them within the few years span between her actual trip and my asking her about it. But still even if this is the case it is still exciting enough. After all from the map I know that the whole area surrounding Novozybkov has comparable radiation levels to town of Chernobyl. So I thought Klyntsi was even MORE contaminated, and now I know it is JUST AS contaminated, which is still exciting enough.

Why did they evacuate Chernobyl and not Klyntsi and/or Novozybkov? Well since they had to carry it out quickly they simply drew a circle of 18 miles (30 kilometers) and Chernobyl happened to fall within the circle while Novozybkov/Klyntsi is 100 miles away, which is way too far. Then few years later when they had time to actually study radioactivity they could OCCASIONALLY resetle people if it was way too high, but that was more of an exception than a rule.

So yeah, anyway, as far as the song it is just a song about village Klyntsi, it doesn't talk about radioactivity at all just a cool song about Klyntsi being their homeland and blah blah blah. By the way, here is one more exciting thing about my family: my grandfather, which is my mother's father, lived in the town of Chernobyl when he was young. But, just like my grandmother, he moved out before the war or even earlier so he weren't contaminated either. But still to be able to say that my grandpa is from Chernobyl and my grandma is from Novozybkov is quite exciting.

I know that I had a grandpa from Ukraine... I think he was from Odessa. That's not really anywhere near Chernobyl I guess. Where are you from?

I was living in Moscow up until I came to USA in 1994. Moscow is clean. But like I said I mostly got the obsession from the trip to Kiev that I had when I was 10, plus the fact that my grandmother is from Novozybkov (Briansk region in Russia but near the border of Belorus) and my grandfather is from Chernobyl. Both of the latter two villages are heavilly contaminated, although both of my grandparents only lived there as kids, which means that they didn't stay there to actually receive the contamination.

I'm not Ukrainian, but Ukraine and its history was one of my special interests. I still read about it every so often.

Ukraninian women are a special interest of mine.

Famous Ukrainian athletes include:

Vladmir Kuts (track)
Valery Borzov (track)
Sergei Bubka (pole vault)
Olga Bryzgyna (track)
Zanna Pintusseyvich (track)
Oksana Baiul (figure skating)
Viktor Petrenko (figure skating)
Vyacheslav Zagorodniuk (figure skating)

Actually Chernobyl is on the Northern end of Ukrain and the wind was blowing north. So, despite the fact that power plant itself is in Ukrain, 70% of radiation fell on Belorussia. Of course, however, various places of Ukrain were also contaminated. For example, the people who were in May 9 parad (end of world war 2 holiday) in Kiev that year got a lot of radiation, and even now it isn't recommended to eat vegetables in Kiev. However, as you can see from the map I provided in original post, the level of radiation in Kiev wasn't shown. On the other hand, there are plenty of places in Belorussia much further from the plant than Kiev which fall into each of the three kinds of zones. So this only shows that even though parts of Ukraine were contaminated, their Belorussian counterparts were contaminated much more. Of course, however, the parts of Ukraine close to exclusion zone itself would be exceptoins. For example Ukrainian village Polesskoje suffered just as badly as any place in Belorussia. But then again, it is only 25 miles from the plant (the radius of exclusion zone itself is 18 miles)