Sunday (April 26) marks the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Soviet Ukraine. Thousands of Estonians were among those sent to clean up the immediate area by the USSR authorities. Chairman of the Estonian Chernobyl Association, Jaan Krinal, told ERR about his experiences at the site.
From 1986 to 1991, a total of 4,831 men from Estonia were sent to clean up radioactively contaminated areas near Chernobyl by the Soviet authorities.
Krinal, a reserve officer at the time, was one of the first. He was sent to the accident site about 10 days after the disaster for the clean-up operation.
“We received a summons for military refresher training because at the time the only chemical defense regiment in the Baltic Military District was located in Pärnu,” he said.
“At first, none of us knew where we were being sent. When we arrived at the assembly point, we were surprised that men called up for reserve training were being issued brand-new equipment.”
He said a general told them not to worry: it would take two weeks, a month at most and there was nothing serious to fear.
When they arrived, they discovered that local residents had already been evacuated.
“We were right on the border of the 30-kilometer zone. The people inside the zone had been taken away, but on the other side of the road there were houses and people were still living there. Our task was to wash houses in the villages, which is what we did for the first two weeks. We used high-pressure water from large tanker trucks. After the washing, everything was measured and the results looked very good — everything appeared clean. But when they checked again, they found that conditions were just as bad or even worse, meaning washing the houses had done no good at all,” Krinal recalled.
Officials then decided the soil had to be turned over. “The men began turning over the ground. It was measured again and once more the results looked very good, but then they found that this didn’t work either. After that, the soil had to be gathered up and removed,” Krinal said.
The men wore ordinary military uniforms and, according to Krinal, there was no special protective equipment.
“We truly hoped that if we cleaned the houses, people would be able to return home and we could go home as well,” said Krinal, who ultimately spent more than five months at the accident site.
The first years after returning from Chernobyl were difficult because at the time no attention was paid to mental health.
“A stark example is that by 1991, 51 of the men from our group who had been there had died and 17 of them died by suicide,” Krinal said. “I think it was fear of the future.”
Krinal said he does not directly complain about his health, but he has had various problems. “Colds and coughs come very easily and are relatively hard to get rid of.”
In 2006, Krinal returned to the former disaster site with other men from Pärnu.
“Our guide was a 26-year-old woman who said that no matter what happened in her life, she would not have children. It was a conscious decision she and her friends had made,” Krinal said.
The houses they had washed so carefully in 1986 stood abandoned. No one had moved back into them.
A documentary covering the building, history and disaster at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl is available on ERR’s Jupiter streaming service.
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