The nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan …………………………….. (focus) attention on a small and often heroic group of people: those who ………………… (risk) their lives by ……………. (go) inside the facility to contain the damage. Perhaps no one ……………… (know) this better than those …………………………. (involve) in the 1986 cleanup effort at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, scene of what ……………………….. (be considered) the world’s worst nuclear accident.
* Aleksey Breus
He ……………… (be) an engineer at Chernobyl at the time of the disaster. He ………………… (work) four straight days inside the plant after the explosion. He …………………….. (wear) protective equipment, but anyway ………………………… (receive) a large dose of radiation.
According to Breus, all “lucheviki” – the Russian word surviving cleanup workers use for describing one another – ………………………….. (have) one thing in common: illness and a lack of money to pay for medications. He ……………
……. (say) virtually all of them …………….. (live) in poverty.* Aleksander Kramer
He ………………… (be) one of the first to go into the plant after the explosion. He now ……………………….. (live) in Germany and ……………………….. (remain) angry at how he …………………………… (be treated) by authorities in what ………………… (be) then the Soviet Union.
From the very beginning, he says, the authorities …………………… (doubt) they …………………………… (be) part of the clean-up effort. In 1993, former rescue workers ……………………… (have) to prove to Ukranian authorities “that their documents ………………………. (be) not a sham and that their health problems ……………….. (be) real.”
* Anatoly Gritsak
He …………………………. (consider) himself a happy man but his life …………………… (be) undeniably difficult.
He ………………………… (work) at the plant 12 years and over time ………………………….. (contract) several radiation-related diseases, including one that ………………. (lead) to the amputation of his legs.
But he ……………… (be) still alive and he ………………….. (feel) grateful.
The anniversary of the Chernobyl accident …………………… (be) an especially hard time for him. April …………………… (be) the time when the lucheviki …………………………….. (call) one another and ………………………. (remember) the day that …………….. (change) their lives. With each passing year, Gritsak ………………. (say), he ……………… (get) fewer and fewer phone calls.
