VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL
A Readers Theater Play
To be performed Monday, June 11, 7 p.m. at New England Youth
Theater, 100 Flat Street Brattleboro
$5 donation suggested
Sponsored by Nuclear Free Vermont, Vermont Yankee Decommissioning
Alliance, Citizens Awareness Network and AFSC-VT
The Chernobyl Disaster
On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in
history occurred in Chernobyl, Ukraine, only 40 miles North of Kiev, the
capital and a city of three million people. This disaster contaminated as
much as three-quarters of Europe.
Over 485 villages had to be abandoned forever. Even today
approximately 2.1 million people (including 700,000 children) live on
contaminated land.
We may never know how many people have died or will die
prematurely or how many children were born deformed as a result of this
disaster. Only now is a leukemia epidemic being reported in New York City
among Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian emigres - people who left their
homeland after Chernobyl. (Leukemia is a cancer that takes about 20 years
to develop.)
The fourth reactor, now known as the 'Cover,' still holds
about twenty tons of nuclear fuel in its lead-and-metal core. No one
knows what is happening with it.
The sarcophagus containing it was well made, uniquely
constructed, and the design engineers from St. Petersburg should probably
be proud.
But it was constructed in absentia, the plates were put
together with the aid of helicopters and robots, and as a result, there
are fissures. According to some figures, there are now over 200 square
meters of spaces and cracks, and radioactive particles continue to escape
through them...
Might the sarcophagus collapse? No one can answer that
question, since it's still impossible to reach many of the connections
and constructions in order to see if they're sturdy. But everyone knows
that if the Cover were to collapse, the consequences would be even more
dire than they were in 1986.
"Voices from Chernobyl" from book to play
Ukrainian journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds
of survivors of the disaster and in 1997 published many of their stories
in a book, Tchernobylskaia Molitva. In 2006 this was translated from the
Russian and published as 'Voices from Chernobyl' by the Dalkey Archive
Press. In 2007 the book was issued as a paperback by Picador Press.
With the permission of Dalkey Archive, Montpelier writer,
Spencer Smith, has made a readers theater play from six of these
testimonies which will be performed at the New England Youth Theater at
100 Flat Street in Brattleboro.
Audiences have been moved to tears by the words of these
survivors as they express in concrete terms the terrible price in human
lives paid by those who lived through this nuclear disaster.
Those who speak their testimony (in book and play) include
two nuclear physicists who held top positions in governmental
organizations, the wife of a man who sacrificed his life to help control
the fire, a retired rocket scientist who runs a museum commemorating the
disaster, the mother of a child born deformed from radiation, a peasant
woman who can't really understand what is this thing called 'radiation'
which is killing her neighbors.
The story of Chernobyl is especially relevant for residents
of the greater Brattleboro area who live in the shadow of the Vermont
Yankee reactor. For those who may believe that nuclear energy is 'safe,
clean and green' we also suggest a 2006 book published by the Heinrich
Böll Foundation, 'Nuclear Power: Myth and Reality; the risks and
prospects of nuclear power.' (See: www.boell.org.za or
www.boell.de/nuclear)
The Playwright
Montpelier resident, Spencer Smith, first became aware of the
danger of nuclear power plants when a core melt-down occurred in 1979 at
the Three Mile Island reactor near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Seven years
later the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine reinforced her
concern. From 2001 to 2003 she lived in Ukraine as a U.S. Peace Corps
Volunteer teaching creative writing at a university. During her stay in
Ukraine she became even more sensitive to the long-term effects of a
nuclear disaster.
A year ago, after reading the book "Voices from Chernobyl,"
Smith became active in the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance, a
North Central Vermont organization seeking to close the Vermont Yankee
reactor. She has adapted "Voices from Chernobyl" into a fifty minute
readers theater play. Smith returned to Ukraine in 2006 and is currently
writing a memoir about her experiences there.
For 2008, Smith has been granted a Fulbright award to teach
creative writing at Belarus State University in Minsk- an area
especially hard-hit by the Chernobyl disaster.