Factoid:
The amount of electricity produced worldwide by nuclear power plants is expected to diminish by half during the next 20 years, according to the Worldwatch Institute.
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Chernobyl Horror Lingers 13 Years Later
Devastating effects of the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl continue to haunt the Ukraine and will do so for decades to come.
Start Date: 5/10/99
On April 26, 1986, reactor No. 4 at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, sending clouds of radiation around the world in the worst nuclear accident in history. A massive but dangerously impromptu effort by Soviet personnel to contain the damage subjected thousands of workers to lethal doses of radiation. In the thirteen years since, more than 4,300 of those workers have died, according to the Associated Press, and more than 70,000 Ukrainian citizens are considered permanently disabled due to radiation-related illness. In addition, an estimated 400,000 adults and 1.1 million Ukrainian children are diagnosed with less serious health problems that trace to the Chernobyl accident.
When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Chernobyl victims hoped that the newly independent Ukraine government would be more responsive to their needs than the previous Soviet government had been. But the Ukraine, like other former Soviet states, has had major economic difficulties in the years since independence, and Chernobyl victims continue to suffer without proper medical attention or government assistance. Even so, Ukraine officials say they spent nearly 10 billion dollars dealing with the continuing effects of Chernobyl between 1986 and 1997, a level of spending they can no longer sustain.
Though badly designed and accident-prone, one of Chernobyl's four reactors still operates. Ukraine officials say they cannot afford to take that reactor permanently offline and close the plant unless they receive up to 1.2 billion dollars in Western aid to complete work on two new reactors. Meanwhile, the hastily constructed steel and concrete structure encasing the destroyed reactor No. 4 is badly in need of reinforcement, a process that could take years and require constant maintenance.
In the words of Yuriy Shcherbak, who wrote a book on Chernobyl and served as Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, "As an undefeatable evil ... Chernobyl will continue to exist for an indefinite period of time, posing ever new problems for mankind."
 Excelsior, Michael Lindemann's new novel (written under the pen name Michael Paul), depicts a wholly plausible near future in which human cloning is both widespread and widely abused; terrorists have access to target-specific biological weapons; recreational space travel is commonplace; and mounting pressures of global climate change, environmental decline, population growth and civil unrest inspire radical new approaches to urban security.
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