Book Review

BOOK REVIEW: Journey to Chernobyl: Encounters in a Radioactive Zone

Author: Glenn Alan Cheney
Academy Chicago Publishers, Chicago, Illinois, 1995
ISBN: 0-89733-418-3

 

Book Review by Mitch Collins
December 13, 2012

 

Glenn Alan Cheney, the author of the book Journey to Chernobyl: Encounters in a Radioactive Zone describes his trip to post-communist Ukraine five years after the one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents. He enters the city of Kiev and the ghost town of Pripyat in the Chernobyl zone located near the border of Ukraine and Belarus providing startling statistics on the aftereffects of the disaster. Through interviews with the local citizens who had been affected by the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in April/May of 1986, he shares their personal experiences to the rest of the world about the events that occurred there at that time.

 

Cheney, now a professor at Connecticut College in Hanover, Connecticut is author to thirteen nonfiction books on controversial topics ranging from ongoing conflicts in Brazil’s amazon region to nuclear proliferation in El Salvador. The events at Chernobyl in 1986 sparked his interest to travel to the region for six weeks and make sense of what was hidden from the world under the former Soviet Union rule. Cheney wanted to know the truth and see if the event was an exaggeration or misinformation of any kind or if the aftereffects were truly more serious than people outside of the region have ever imagined.

 

The book is easily readable because of the straightforward tone that Cheney uses throughout it shifting from dark humor when describing the Soviet way of life, to absolute seriousness when he talks about the displacement of thousands of workers out of the zone, and the suffering of the children who were unknowingly becoming irradiated by playing in their own sandboxes. Cheney’s descriptions of what he saw and what he heard from the interviews helps the reader envision the conditions and suffering that the people had to go through from this disaster. The reader feels as if he or she is there with Cheney conversing with the locals and seeing how the complex and corrupt bureaucracy of the former Soviet Union used cover-ups in the aftermath of Chernobyl. Following the disaster in 1986, the rest of the world did not have much knowledge of the extent of the harmful effects caused by this meltdown on the surrounding population and environment. However, Cheney exposes some of what was unsuccessfully hidden by a corrupt communist government.  

 

This excerpt best describes how the government kept the Chernobyl nuclear disaster a secret from the rest of the world:

 

As rumors spread in the early days of May, TV announcers actively denied problems. Peasants were interviewed. They said they felt as healthy as ever. Scientists took readings near the power plant and found radiation levels below normal (Chapter 4: Zones p. 52).

 

During his visit to Kiev, Cheney interviewed ex residents of Pripyat, an abandoned city near the plant that was originally built for Chernobyl’s workers, who were exposed to the radiation outburst the day of the disaster. Many of the workers were unaware of the dangerous release of radiation in the surrounding air thanks to the quick denial by the government stating that there is no reason to panic. However, in an interview with Valentina Patushina, who lived in Prypiat when this all occurred, tells Cheney that just a few days after the blast, the government issued an evacuation of the “prohibited zone” near Chernobyl. She describes the confusion of residents in Pripyat from the misinformation released by the government, which started the uncertainty in the region and was then soon followed by panic and the final evacuation.

 

Through the use of statistics, Cheney demonstrates the amount of research and knowledge gained from spending six weeks in Kiev. At the International Conference on Chernobyl which conveniently takes place in Kiev while he is there, Cheney learns a lot about the facts of the nuclear blast and hears people’s experiences on the immediate effects of the event. The next passage shows how he uses statistics to illustrate the extent of the technological disaster.

 

The Union wants Ukraine to be a nuclear-free state. It wants to find out what happened to several tons of nuclear fuel that was in the reactor. Something like fifty of the 230 tons cannot be accounted for. At the time of the accident, the government said not to worry because most of the radioactive material stayed in the reactor. Now that they can’t find it, they say not to worry; it was blown into the atmosphere. One theory says that the stuff is still in there (Chapter 3: Pravdap.38).

 

Also at this conference Cheney learns more statistics and information from Ukrainian doctors about the discovery of long-term effects on the population from the radiation following the accident. Even with the use of statistics and descriptions of scientific findings from Chernobyl, he maintains a tight and simple language. Cheney avoids using the technical language that other scientists and experts with whom he talks to use in several of his interviews so that the story is moving and easy for the readers to understand.

 

Although for many of his interviews Cheney brought a translator named Mikitichna who knows Russian and English, he went to Ukraine only knowing a handful of words in Russian, which is shown in this excerpt: “Back in the compartment, I finally strike up a conversation with old Leonid. I used the term “conversation” loosely. He knows no English at all. I know half a dozen words in Russian. ‘Zhournaleest,’ ‘Chernobyl’ and ‘Amerikanskiy’ are three of them” (Chapter 1: Boots p. 15). This was interesting because for the time that he was without a translator at the start of the book, these words can barely serve as enough to get his points across to people. English and Russian are two completely different languages in their structure and alphabet so it is curious to the reader how many times communication between Cheney, the translator, and the interviewee got mixed up. Despite this language barrier, Cheney is still able to understand the main ideas from his interviews to share with the reader.

 

Journey to Chernobyl: Encounters in a Radioactive Zone does a superb job at showing the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on the surrounding population five years later. Through his questions and observations, Cheney is able to expose the impacts of Chernobyl from a personal perspective and teach the reader much more of what happened at the nuclear plant and why. Although there is still more to be discovered about the long-term effects of the radiation blast, details surrounding disaster are made clearer to the rest of the world thanks to Cheney and his experiences abroad.