【龙腾网】切尔诺贝利综合症

The Chernobyl Syndrome
Sophie Pinkham

切尔诺贝利综合症
苏菲·平克汉姆

TASS/Valery Zufavov/Vladimir Repik/Getty Images

塔斯社/瓦莱丽·祖法沃夫/弗拉基米尔·雷皮科/盖蒂图片

A worker measuring radiation after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, August 1986


1986年八月，一位工作人员在位于乌克兰北部的切尔诺贝利核电厂测量爆炸之后的放射物。

On the night of April 25, 1986, during a planned maintenance shutdown at the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, one of the four reactors overheated and began to burn. As plant engineers scrambled to regain control of it, they thought for a moment that there had been an earthquake. In fact, a buildup of steam had propelled the two-hundred-ton concrete top of the reactor’s casing into the air, with masses of radioactive material following close behind when the core exploded. The plant workers had been assured again and again of the safety of the “peaceful atom,” and they couldn’t imagine that the reactor had exploded.

1986年四月25日夜晚，正值乌克兰北部的切尔诺贝利核电厂按计划停机维护期间，四座反应堆中的一座因过热开始燃烧。正当核电厂的工程师们爬上去想重新控制局面时，（爆炸发生了），（但是）当时的他们认为一定是发生地震了。事实却是聚集的蒸汽掀翻了这座反应堆重达200吨的水泥顶，并将它推向天空。紧随爆炸而来的是大量放射物质外泄。这座核电厂的工作人员曾接受到的保证是这些 “热爱和平的原子”  是安全的，因此他们无法想象这座核反应堆爆炸了。

Firefighters rushed to the scene without special equipment or a clear understanding of the potential risks; they had not been trained to deal with a nuclear explosion, because such training would have involved acknowledging that an explosion was possible. They kicked at chunks of radioactive graphite that had fallen around the reactor, and their boots stuck to the melting, flammable bitumen that had been used, against all safety regulations, to coat the roofs of the plant’s buildings. Efforts to douse mysteriously fizzy, incandescent fires only made the conflagrations seethe with radioactive steam. (These fires probably contained uranium dioxide, one of the fuels used in the reactor.)

消防员在没有专用设备，也不清楚潜在危险的情况下冲进了事发地点。他们甚至都没有接受过处理核爆的培训，因为存在这类培训的前提是承认会发生核爆。他们踢过洒落于反应堆四周的沾有放射性物质的大块石墨，他们的靴子被用过但已经被熔融的可燃沥青粘住，他们违反一切安全规程，只为隔绝这座核电厂的各栋建筑的屋顶。努力浇下去的水泛着诡谲的泡沫，明亮得灼眼的火焰只是让这场火灾随着具有放射性的蒸汽到处肆虐。（这些火中可能含有一种用于反应堆的燃料——二氧化铀。）

Feeling hot, the firefighters unbuttoned their jackets and took off their helmets. After less than thirty minutes they began to vomit, develop excruciating headaches, and feel faint and unbearably thirsty. One drank highly radioactive water from the plant’s cooling pond, burning his digestive tract. Over the next few hours, the exposed firefighters and plant workers swelled up, their skin turning the eerie purple of radiation burn. Later it would turn black and peel away. After evacuation and treatment in Moscow, many of these first responders died and were buried in nesting pairs of zinc caskets. Their graves were covered with cement tiles to block the radiation emanating from their corpses.

由于感到热，消防员们解开了消防服的扣子，脱掉了头盔。但不到三十分钟他们开始呕吐、进而感到难以忍受的头疼、眩晕和无法忍受的口渴。一位消防员喝了核电厂冷却池中含有高放射性物质的水，而这些水烧坏了他的消化道。在接下来的数小时中，曾暴露于核辐射中的消防员和电厂工作人员全身肿胀，皮肤呈现放射性烧伤所带来的那种怪异的紫色。随后这些皮肤会变黑，然后剥落。在转移到莫斯科接受治疗之后，首批出现反应的人员死了大部分。他们被放在一个多层嵌套的锌匣子中埋葬。为了阻止他们尸体中的放射性物质逃逸，他们的坟墓用水泥覆盖。

General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev was informed that there had been an explosion and fire at the plant but that the reactor itself had not been seriously damaged. No one wanted to be the bearer of catastrophic news. When the occasional official raised the question of whether to warn civilians and evacuate the city of Pripyat, which had been built to house workers from the Chernobyl plant, he was admonished to wait for higher-ups to make a decision and for a committee to be formed. Panic and embarrassment were of greater concern than public safety. The KGB cut Pripyat’s intercity telephone lines and prevented residents from leaving, as part of the effort to keep news of the disaster from spreading. Some locals were savvy enough to try to leave on their own. But with no public warning, many didn’t take even the minimal precaution of staying indoors with the windows shut. One man was happily sunbathing the next morning, pleased by the speed with which he was tanning. He was soon in the hospital.

戈尔巴乔夫总书记得到的通知是核电厂发生了爆炸和火灾，但是发生爆炸的反应堆本身没有遭到严重破坏。没人想当这起灾难性新闻的传递者，所以当临时的政府办公人员询问是否警告并疏散普利皮亚特市（修建该市就是为切尔诺贝利核电厂的工作人员提供住处的）市民时，他责备那人并让其等待上级的决定，同时等待一个专门委员会的成立 。相对于公共安全，惊恐以及令人尴尬的局面才是担心之所在。克格勃切断了普利皮亚特的城际电话线，并阻止居民离开。