Petro Hurin was one of hundreds of thousands of “liquidators” mobilized to clean up Chernobyl after the accident on April 26, 1986. He worked for days carrying leaded concrete to build the sarcophagus, exposed to radiation. His health has since deteriorated.
Petro Hurin says his health has never been the same since he was sent to clean up the Chernobyl site 40 years ago after the world’s worst nuclear accident.
He was one of hundreds of thousands of “liquidators” mobilized for clean-up operations after the explosion at reactor four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine on April 26, 1986. The disaster released clouds of radioactive material that spread across much of Europe.
Thirty-one plant workers and firefighters died in the days immediately afterwards, mainly due to acute radiation syndrome. Thousands of other people have since died from radiation-associated illnesses such as cancer, although the total number of victims and long-term effects remain undetermined.
At the time, Petro Hurin worked for a company that supplied excavators and construction vehicles, which sent him to the Chernobyl exclusion zone in June 1986. Of the 40 workers sent by the company, only five are alive today, he said.
“(The first to arrive at Chernobyl) have scattered across different regions and are silently dying, dying… Few are left. I tell you: no person from Chernobyl is in good health. It is a death in installments. There was almost no one left,” he told Reuters.
Soviet authorities sought to hide the scale of the disaster, refusing to cancel the May 1 parade in Kiev, about 100 kilometers to the south. The current Ukrainian government has highlighted how the Soviet authorities mismanaged the accident and tried to cover up the disaster.
Petro Hurin said that some colleagues presented medical certificates to avoid going to Chernobyl, but he decided to help.
“I realized that no matter how small my contribution was, I was doing my part to help tame this atomic beast, to control it. And that’s exactly what radiation is. It’s an invisible enemy that affects all living things.”
Working 12-hour shifts, he used an excavator to load dry concrete mixed with lead, transported by river barge, to trucks that took it to the reactor, where it was used to build a huge sarcophagus meant to contain radiation.
“The dust was terrible. We worked with a respirator for half an hour and it ended up turning brown, looking like an onion, because of the release of iodine. And we worked like that for 12 hours.”
After four days, he began to experience serious symptoms, such as headaches, chest pains, bleeding and a metallic taste in his throat. He was treated by doctors, but after another shift he could barely walk. He even feared he had “one or two days” to live.
“At the hospital, the doctors did blood tests. They pierced all my fingers and a clear liquid came out, but there was no blood. It’s true. And then the doctors gave the verdict: I had to be removed from the Chernobyl zone immediately.”
Soviet doctors refused to diagnose radiation syndrome, something he said was not allowed at the time. Instead, he was told he had vegetative-vascular dystonia, a nervous system disorder often associated with stress.
Before the disaster, Petro Hurin had never taken medical leave, but then spent about seven months moving between hospitals to receive treatment, including a blood transfusion.
He says he was diagnosed with anemia, often associated with radiation exposure, angina, pancreatitis and several other illnesses.
Still, by your country’s standards, it has a long life. According to the World Health Organization, the average life expectancy of men in Ukraine was 66 years in 2021, having decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now retired, he lives with his wife, Olha, in the Cherkasy region, in central Ukraine. Despite his health problems, he continues to play the bayan, a type of accordion, and write songs and poems.
He says he is fighting to access a special disability pension intended for “liquidators” of the nuclear disaster.
