TWENTY YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE CHERNOBYL NPP ACCIDENT, THE BIGGEST MAN-CAUSED RADIATION CATASTROPHE IN MANKIND HISTORY

Yerevan, April 26. ArmInfo. Twenty years have passed since the
Chernobyl NPP accident, the biggest man-caused radiation catastrophe
in the mankind history.

As ArmInfo was informed in the Embassy of Ukraine in Armenia,
more than 145,000 sq.km of the Ukraine territory, Byelorussia
and Russia underwent radioactive contamination as a result of the
accident, more than 5 mln people suffered, about 5,000 settlements
of these countries underwent contamination by radioactive nuclides,
from which 2218 villages and towns with population of about 2,4 mln
people – in the Ukraine. Twenty years later after the catastrophe,
there are many problems still to be solved. It is, first of all,
social, medical protection of all citizens, subjected to radiation
exposure, employment assistance to many thousand employees, economic
rehabilitation of the contaminated territories, the problem of
compensation of energy-producing capacities, turning of the “Shelter”
object into an ecologically safe one.

The Ukraine keeps on carrying out a complex of measures for the
population protection, suffered from the Chernobyl catastrophe. There
are 17 448 families in the Ukraine today, which receive benefits
as a result of the bread-winner’s loss during the catastrophe. Such
families exist in all regions of the country. In 1987-2004, 504117
people from among the suffered ones, who were under medical control
in patient care institutions, died, 497348 of them are grown-ups and
teenagers and 6769 are children. This statistics concerns only the
Ukraine’s citizens. If remember that thousands of specialists from
the whole former Soviet Union took part in the accident consequences
elimination, these digits will be more impressive.

The Ukrainian people will always remember the courage of more than
3,000 Armenians, who did their best to mitigate the Chernobyl accident
consequences. Four hundred people of them died afterwards from
the radiation dose. Unfortunately, today the Chernobyl catastrophe
remains only a Ukrainian trouble. As the President of Ukraine Viktor
Yuschenko noted in hid speech during the international conference,
being held in Kiev April 24-26, the Chernobyl catastrophe concerns
not only the Ukraine but many nations as well.