Chernobyl workers after the accident?

Question

After the Chernobyl accident, how did the Soviet government find operators to work the remaining reactors? Didn't they know that they could be killed? I know that there were workers up until the shutdown in 2000. What did all those workers do after they lost their jobs?

I'm curious and would like to know what anybody else may know on the subject.

I didn't explain this well. I know the old workers died, but I wanted to know about the new ones that came AFTER the accident.

Answer 1

they were using protections and having short turns to avoid a long exposure. apart from the better pay, i guess at the beginning the workers couldnt refuse (there were other ways to be killed if you get what i mean...) and after the fall of ussr the economic depression and lack of jobs made it easy to find volunteers. there is still people living in the area anyways.

Answer 2

They had no choice in the matter.you can't just flip a switch and stop a nuclear reaction.
Chernobyl after the disaster
The completed (but crumbling) sarcophagus surrounding Chernobyl reactor 4, viewed from the northwest.Following the accident, questions arose on the future of the plant and its eventual fate. All work on the unfinished reactors 5 and 6 were immediately halted. However the trouble at the Chernobyl plant did not end with the disaster in reactor 4. The damaged reactor was sealed off and 200 metres of concrete was placed between the disaster site and the operational buildings. The Ukrainian government continued to let the three remaining reactors operate because of an energy shortage in the country. A fire broke out in reactor 2 in 1991; the authorities subsequently declared the reactor damaged beyond repair and had it taken offline. Reactor 1 was decommissioned in November 1996 as part of a deal between the Ukrainian government and international organizations such as the IAEA to end operations at the plant. On December 15th, 2000, then-President Leonid Kuchma personally turned off Reactor 3 in an official ceremony, effectively shutting down the entire plant. This transformed the Chernobyl plant from energy producer to energy consumer.

Answer 3

Okay, I know that to work on the accident site the Soviet government used a number of soldiers. They were not informed about the dangers. Each soldier had a time limit of 30 seconds to do his job. After the 30 seconds, the effect of radiation was so substantial, the soldiers looked completely different. I am not sure about the workers. I think some time has passed before the reactors in Chernobyl started operating again.

Answer 4

Let Elena Filatova's site tell you all about it. Elena is a Ukrainian motorcycle enthusiast, her father is a nuclear physicist and she has permission to ride her bike through "ghost town" The link provided has lots of pages of Elena's excursions. She goes right up to Chernobyl's gates! She is mad as hell about wars, the USSR and the Chernobyl event. She is also obsessed with history, politics, bikes and Chernye. You will need to be pretty thorough to see everything she has assembled, but it will help answer your questions, without propaganda.

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/journal/articles.html

Regarding the answer about cowards, let the idiots who designed that graphite core reactor deal with it. Its their glorious moment to be a hero! The cheapo commies could have upgraded that disaster long before it finally happened. And once it did happen they could have 'fessed up instead of waiting a day and letting radiation alarms in SWEDEN figure it out that something was up, in this case a core meltdown. Three-mile island never racked up a single fatality. What luxury to be a communist dictator. The truth is whatever you want people to mumble, for fear of being shot. And there is full employment (at a flakey old nuke plant) and universal health coverage (not that you live long enough to use it) And the Ukrainians bear the brunt, while some red a**hole gets stoned on stoly in the Kremlin.

Answer 5

They got lots of money. I am Ukrainian and I still have a relative living in the "old country" who was part of the Chernobyl clean up. He was given lots of hazzard pay and when I met him at a family reunion he was very well dressed. Unfortunatly I didn't get to speak with him because I do not speak Russian and he did not speak English and the older generation was too busy trying remember their own Russian that they couldn't translate for me.

I don't know what he did after the shutdown as that was the only time I ever met him.

Answer 6

Even if certain jobs are dangerous people accept it. There are2 reasons. 1. Many people are fond of accepting challenges. They may loose their lives in doing so. Secondly hunger makes some people to accept such jobs. Peo[le full of stomock and cowerds like us will never accept such jobs.

Answer 7

I think most of the people working there probably died or are now dying. You can't even live there to this day.
Lost their jobs? Try their lives, they either died on the spot or have cancer.

Answer 8

Many went in to contain the radiation, knowing they would be contaminated, but also knowing they had to do this to save lives.