"Those plants each issued as part of the normal working everyday order at least 350 million curies into the surrounding environment. "Let's take the production of plutonium," she told DW, referring to the American and Soviet plants that produced plutonium at the center of a nuclear bomb. If the term nuclear disaster is not only used to describe events, or accidents, in nuclear reactors but also radioactive emissions caused by humans then there are many occasions when human-caused nuclear contamination has been greater than that of the Chernobyl disaster, explained Kate Brown, professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But INES does not allow for nuclear events to be classified within a level. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 videoīoth the Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima disaster have been categorized as such. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Ukraine still dealing with Chernobyl aftermath This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. The interview is archived at the Library of Congress.Ĭopyright © 2023 NPR. INSKEEP: Stephen Quandt in New York City. And for all I know, he's still there in that radioactive forest with the dogs. But I never learned his name, and I never saw him again. And I'm holding his medal that I don't deserve, knowing full well the measure of his sacrifice. He wanted to give me his medal for helping the dogs. And then he pulled out this old, worn medal commemorating his valor. He said that he was what was called a Chernobyl liquidator - one of the guys who fought the fire in the core at the time of the accident. And she motioned me over, and he started talking. We were told we could give out little gifts - nice, you know, I heart New York bottle opener. And she points at this old man, and she says, did you give him a fridge magnet and a bottle opener yesterday? And I was like, yeah. On the last day that I was there, our translator comes up to me. But they moved back in and wouldn't leave. At the time of the accident, they were evacuated. And in this immense radioactive forest, it turns out there are squatters. They would gather in the town square and howl collectively. Every single night, a huge group of dogs would come out of the forest. So we went there and provided care for the dogs. And for 35 years, they've been breeding, living and dying in the forests around Chernobyl. And then the military was directed to kill the dogs, but many of them lived. They had less than an hour to get ready to go, and they had to leave their animals behind. QUANDT: At the time of the accident, which was in 1986, there was an order to evacuate the people. At Stor圜orps, he recalled a 2019 trip to Ukraine and the site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. INSKEEP: You see, Stephen Quandt cares for abandoned animals in disaster zones around the world. And I realized that what I'm doing with these animals is trying to find them their future. STEPHEN QUANDT: When I was a gay teenager in the '70s, I had no vision of a future - no picket fence, no house, no romantic life, nothing. Stephen Quandt is an animal welfare worker in New York City. It's Friday, which is when we hear from Stor圜orps.
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