European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - July 11, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse Legacy of soviet nuclear disaster by Felicity Bahringer new York times silence and Sand cover the abandoned acres of Prip Yat user the Skyline rising 12 stories above the empty streets is just a Concrete Skeleton of the City whose 50,000 residents were evacuated 14 months ago fleeing lethal radiation from the chernobyl nuclear Power Plant s ruined no. 4 reactor. Less than 3 Miles South across a no Man s land of desiccated Pine Trees and a mile Long Carpel of Sand Asphalt and Rock the massive Power Plant that Prip Yat was built to serve is Back in business. Two reactors Are now generating electricity 5 6 billion kilowatt hours so tar this year according to Gennadi Yaroslavl Sev a Plant Engineer who gives dour but can do predictions of meeting the 1987 goal of 14 billion kilowatt hours. By year s end. When a new permanent town Tor Power Plant employees is to be opened 35 Miles away Plant engineers Hope 1o restart the no 3 reactor twin to the reactor where an explosion and fire on april 26, empty housing in prep Btl Efto 50,000 Ait Dent were at for nor 19b6. Spewed radioactive fallout across Europe and Asia in the world s worst civilian nuclear disaster. Against la backdrop of these landscapes. The dead and the living. Soviet authorities Are trying to Cau Lehzen the raw memories of the chernobyl disaster. They Are about 10 bring 1o trial the Plant officials deemed responsible and they Are showing Tho Western press the resurrection o the damaged Plant and the 179 now dispersed communities thai once surrounded ,1 at the Plant itself military trucks and Earth movers grind about on o paved Over Industrial moonscape. White masked technicians Como and go in he huge Labyrinthine Plant buildings trying to keep the electricity coming. Soldiers too. Como and go trying to cover or remove tons upon tons of radioactive soil and debris. They work in the Shadow of the Concrete mausoleum containing the remains of the Foo. A reactor where the still warm nuclear debris of nuclear Luel and melted Graphite and Metal continues to consume i Solf. The temperature inside has dropped to just under 200 degrees. But i is Pri pyal Itsell that shows most clearly the legacy of the disaster thai emptied More than 400 Square Miles of 135,000 people killed 31 people and deformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. The Street lamps serve As nothing More than a Perch for crows. Only tattered pennants and wisps of rolling laundry break he angular Monotony of empty Concrete. A layer of Sand mom than two inches thick covers the unpaved ground of the town just South of the ukrainian byelorussian Border and about 70 Miles North of Kiev the ukrainian capital. Army trucks patrol its streets. The buildings Are watched Over by electronic sensors More than 200 to collect radiation data and a separate network to select intruders. It can t to resettled for to years maybe said Aleksandr Kovalenko the chief spokesman for the hybrid governmental Agency that has immediate authority Over All operations from plan cleanup to housing construction in Tho 18.6-Milc wide deserted zone around the Plant. There Are new places to Leplace the old 52 new settlements have been built in the Ukraine and there Are 7,500 one or two family dwellings in the Kiev Region while Kiev has Given 8,500 apartments to refugees. Others have been settled in Chernigow a Northern grassroots concern Over . Nuclear policy by Barry Schweid associated press beyond the Beltway where most of America lives and is sometimes mistakenly thought to be Only slightly interested in whal the Washington movers and shakers Are up to people Are becoming concerned about u a nuclear policy. For Paul Loeb a writer who spent four Yeary War for refusing to let them use his Lerry to Cross the nearby pee Dee River a local biologist. Jack Boyce had Willen to the morning paper on nuclear War and weaponry Cusak had react the letters and the two men began holding meetings at the Church. The March followed Loob said it marked a departure from a stance in a a members of the great peace March Tor global nuclear d Page 14 the stars and stripes
