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Article: Nuclear Blight Invades Minds as Well as Bodies; Despair Taking Severe Toll On Chernobyl Survivors Series: NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE: Chernobyl - 10 Years Later Series Number: 1/2
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- April 18, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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KIEV, Ukraine -- It is April again in the densely forested
plains of northern Ukraine. Snow has melted from the fields but
still is piled in the backwoods. Long strings of geese fly northward
against the overcast sky.
And in softening air and soil, 10-year-old radioactive dust
silently decays, poisoning the land. It has been a decade since
Reactor No. 4 at the V.I. Lenin Atomic Power Plant in Chernobyl
exploded in a ball of flame, blasting its radioactive viscera into
the night sky.
For two weeks, the reactor burned, spewing a radioactive cloud
that destroyed ecology and economy across a broad swath of Eastern
Europe, attacked the health of hundreds of thousands of people --
and ...