Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

The approximately 600,000 workers conscripted to the Zone to “liquidate [i.e., eliminate] the consequences” of the explosion were called liquidators. Most were soldiers and reservists, including a large number of 18- to 20-year-old draftees. Their tasks included evacuating villages; digging up and burying topsoil, forests, roads, structures, and livestock; exterminating abandoned dogs and cats; digging tunnels under the reactor; and, in the case of the unfortunate “biorobots,” removing 100 tons of highly radioactive debris from the reactor roof.

In a 1953 speech, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke to the public candidly, for the first time, about the rapidly growing destructive capacity of atomic weapons and the intensifying arms race between the US and its former ally the Soviet Union, pledging to “help solve the fearful atomic dilemma” by promoting peaceful uses of nuclear technology so that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.” He announced the launching of a new “Atoms for Peace” program, under which the US would eventually export highly enriched uranium to 30 countries to fuel research reactors; the Soviets subsequently established a similar program.