Voices From Chernobyl Essay

The novel “Voices from Chernobyl,” by Svetlana Alexievich describes the personal accounts of survivors from the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine. The tragic event was set up by mere means of human error. Combine an inadequately trained employee with a flawed Soviet-era reactor design and this results in the steam explosion of Reactor #4 at the nuclear powerpoint, releasing deadly levels of radiation. The reader travels a winding and confusing path of uncertainty in absorbing these first-hand accounts of the nuclear disaster. The militaristic language the Chernobyl people are given is far too high for the everyday citizen to understand. As one account states: “ But what's a bec ? A curie ? What's a milliroentgen ? We ask our commander, he can't answer that, they didn't teach it at the military academy.

Both the ill-prepared government and the high levels of corruption are what eventually lead to the 30 resulting deaths and hundreds of thousands of diseased people who are still fighting for what's left of their lives today. Speaking on the behalf of modern Chernobyl, the Ukrainian government still doesn’t quite understand how to cope with the disaster 30 years later. As of now, the remains of the nuclear power plant are now confined by the “New Safe Confinement,” a steel structure invented to prevent further radiation damage to the environment. A major theme of trust is posed to the audience right from the jump. The Ukrainian government failed their citizens main priority; protection. It is an implied instinct to place trust in higher authority, yet the state failed the people of Chernobyl majorly with limited safety equipment, giving a blind eye to the severe radiation damage bound to