The Chernobyl Syndrome
Sophie Pinkham

切爾諾貝利綜合癥
蘇菲·平克漢姆

TASS/Valery Zufavov/Vladimir Repik/Getty Images

塔斯社/瓦萊麗·祖法沃夫/弗拉基米爾·雷皮科/蓋蒂圖片

A worker measuring radiation after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, August 1986

1986年八月，一位工作人員在位于烏克蘭北部的切爾諾貝利核電廠測量爆炸之后的放射物。

On the night of April 25, 1986, during a planned maintenance shutdown at the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, one of the four reactors overheated and began to burn. As plant engineers scrambled to regain control of it, they thought for a moment that there had been an earthquake. In fact, a buildup of steam had propelled the two-hundred-ton concrete top of the reactor’s casing into the air, with masses of radioactive material following close behind when the core exploded. The plant workers had been assured again and again of the safety of the “peaceful atom,” and they couldn’t imagine that the reactor had exploded.

1986年四月25日夜晚，正值烏克蘭北部的切爾諾貝利核電廠按計劃停機維護(hù)期間，四座反應(yīng)堆中的一座因過熱開始燃燒。正當(dāng)核電廠的工程師們爬上去想重新控制局面時，（爆炸發(fā)生了），（但是）當(dāng)時的他們一定認(rèn)為是發(fā)生地震了。事實卻是聚集的蒸汽掀翻了這座反應(yīng)堆重達(dá)200噸的水泥頂，并將它推向天空。緊隨爆炸而來的是大量放射物質(zhì)外泄。這座核電廠的工作人員曾接受到的保證是這些 “熱愛和平的原子” 是安全的，因此他們無法想象這座核反應(yīng)堆爆炸了。

General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev was informed that there had been an explosion and fire at the plant but that the reactor itself had not been seriously damaged. No one wanted to be the bearer of catastrophic news. When the occasional official raised the question of whether to warn civilians and evacuate the city of Pripyat, which had been built to house workers from the Chernobyl plant, he was admonished to wait for higher-ups to make a decision and for a committee to be formed. Panic and embarrassment were of greater concern than public safety. The KGB cut Pripyat’s intercity telephone lines and prevented residents from leaving, as part of the effort to keep news of the disaster from spreading. Some locals were savvy enough to try to leave on their own. But with no public warning, many didn’t take even the minimal precaution of staying indoors with the windows shut. One man was happily sunbathing the next morning, pleased by the speed with which he was tanning. He was soon in the hospital.

戈爾巴喬夫總書記得到的通知是核電廠發(fā)生了爆炸和火災(zāi)，但是發(fā)生爆炸的反應(yīng)堆本身沒有遭到嚴(yán)重破壞。沒人想當(dāng)這起災(zāi)難性新聞的傳遞者，所以當(dāng)臨時的政府工作人員詢問是否警告并疏散普利皮亞特市（修建該市就是為切爾諾貝利核電廠的工作人員提供住處的）市民時，他責(zé)備那人并讓其等待上級的決定，同時等待一個專門委員會的成立 。相對于公共安全，驚恐以及令人尷尬的局面才是擔(dān)心之所在?？烁癫袛嗔似绽喬厥械某请H電話線，并阻止居民離開，這樣做也是為了防止有關(guān)這場災(zāi)難的新聞擴散出去。一些有見地的本地人嘗試憑一己之力離開， 但是由于沒有公開發(fā)出警告，許多人甚至都沒有采取待在室內(nèi)并關(guān)閉門窗這樣最基本的預(yù)防措施。有一個人曾在災(zāi)難發(fā)生的第二天愉快地曬了一次日光浴，并對本次皮膚曬黑的速度感到高興。此人不久就進(jìn)了醫(yī)院。

Moscow officials eventually realized that the reactor had exploded, and that there was an imminent risk of another, much larger explosion. More than thirty-six hours after the initial meltdown, Pripyat was evacuated. Columns of Kiev city buses had been sent to wait for evacuees on the outskirts of the city, absorbing radiation while plans were debated. These radioactive buses deposited their radioactive passengers in villages chosen to house the refugees, then returned to their regular routes in Kiev. Over the next two weeks, another 75,000 people were resettled from the thirty-kilometer area around Pripyat, which was to become known as the “Exclusion Zone,” and which remains almost uninhabited to this day.

莫斯科的官員終于意識到該反應(yīng)堆爆炸了，并帶來了另一個迫在眉睫的危險——放射性物質(zhì)向更大范圍擴散。自反應(yīng)堆最初熔毀，又過了三十六個多小時，普利皮亞特市終于開始疏散了。但是疏散計劃還要經(jīng)過反復(fù)討論，于是來自基輔的負(fù)責(zé)接被疏散者的公共汽車列隊等在普利皮亞特市的郊外吸著放射性物質(zhì)。這些帶著放射性物質(zhì)的公共汽車又將帶著放射性物質(zhì)的乘客安置在被選中的鄉(xiāng)村農(nóng)舍里，然后返回基輔繼續(xù)跑它們的常規(guī)公交路線。在隨后的兩個星期里，又有來自普利皮亞特市周邊三十公里范圍內(nèi)的7萬5千人獲得重新安置。這方圓三十公里的區(qū)域就是著名的“禁區(qū)”，至今幾乎無人居住。

The Soviet system began to marshal its vast human resources to “l(fā)iquidate” the disaster. Many efforts to stop the fire in the reactor only made matters worse by triggering new reactions or creating toxic smoke, but doing nothing was not an option. Pilots, soldiers, firefighters, and scientists volunteered, exposing themselves to huge doses of radiation. (Many others fled from the scene.) They were rewarded with cash bonuses, cars, and apartments, and some were made “Hero of the Soviet Union” or “Hero of Ukraine,” but many became invalids or didn’t live to see their new homes. The radiation levels were so high that they made the electronics in robots fail, so “biorobots”—people in makeshift lead protective gear—did the work of clearing the area.

蘇聯(lián)開始集結(jié)其最大的人力資源“清除”這場災(zāi)難。雖然為了熄滅反應(yīng)堆的大火人們所做的大量努力——比如依靠啟動新的反應(yīng)堆或是制造有毒的煙霧——只是讓事態(tài)更嚴(yán)重，但是什么都不做是絕不行的。飛行員、士兵、消防員和科學(xué)家組成志愿者，將自身暴露在劑量巨大的核輻射中。（還是有許多人逃離現(xiàn)場。）他們被給予現(xiàn)金、汽車以及公寓的獎勵，還有一些人被授予“蘇聯(lián)英雄”或是“烏克蘭英雄”的稱號，不過他們中的許多人要么病了，要么沒有活著看見他們的新家。放射物等級已經(jīng)高到足以損毀機器人內(nèi)部的電子元件，因此“生物機器人”，即戴上臨時拼湊起來的鉛護(hù)具的人，承擔(dān)起了清理這一地區(qū)的工作。

A few decades later, it seemed to many that the world’s worst nuclear disaster had caused surprisingly little long-term damage. The official toll is now between thirty-one and fifty-four deaths from acute radiation poisoning (among plant workers and firefighters), doubled leukemia rates among those exposed to exceptionally high radiation levels during the disaster response, and several thousand cases of thyroid cancer—highly treatable, very rarely fatal—among children. Pripyat became a spooky tourist site. In the Exclusion Zone, one could soon see wolves, elk, lynx, brown bears, and birds of prey that had almost disappeared from the area before Chernobyl; some visitors described it as a kind of radioactive Eden, proof of nature’s resiliency. But striking differences in new books about Chernobyl by Kate Brown, Adam Higginbotham, and Serhii Plokhy show that there are still many ways to tell this story, and that the lessons of Chernobyl remain unresolved.

幾十年之后，這場地球上最嚴(yán)重的核災(zāi)難對大多數(shù)人而言似乎沒有造成什么令人吃驚的長期危險?，F(xiàn)在官方通報的死于急性輻射污染的（電廠工作人員和消防員）的人數(shù)在31到54人之間，因在災(zāi)難發(fā)生時暴露在異常高的輻射等級中從而罹患白血病的人數(shù)翻了一番，還有數(shù)千名患有甲狀腺癌的兒童（除了極少數(shù)死亡，絕大部分治愈）。普利皮亞特市成了一個氣氛詭異的旅游景點。人們一進(jìn)入禁區(qū)就會看見狼、麋鹿、猞猁、棕熊、以及切爾諾貝利核電廠出事之前就從該地區(qū)消失的鷙鳥；一些游客將這里描繪成有輻射的伊甸園，自然界自我恢復(fù)的證明。不過在凱特·布朗、亞當(dāng)·希金巴特漢姆和塞里·普羅基寫的新書中切爾諾貝利卻異乎尋常的不同。書中顯示依然存在著許多種方式講述這個故事，以及切爾諾貝利遺留下來的還未被解決的教訓(xùn)。

Both Plokhy and Higginbotham devote their first sections to dramatic reconstructions of the disaster at the plant. Sketches of loving family life or youthful ambition introduce the central figures, making us queasy with dread. The two authors’ minute-by-minute descriptions of the reactor meltdown and its aftermath are as gripping as any thriller and employ similar techniques: the moments of horrified realization, the heroic races against time. The prescient 1979 film The China Syndrome, about a barely averted disaster at a nuclear plant and its cover-up, is mentioned in both books. The movie’s title comes from a former Manhattan Project scientist’s hypothetical discussion of a reactor meltdown in North America causing fuel to burn its way through the globe to China. Though that specific scenario was clearly impossible, “China syndrome” became shorthand for anxieties about nuclear material burning through the foundations of the Chernobyl plant and entering the water table, the Dnieper River Basin, and then the Black Sea.

普羅基和希金巴特漢姆在第一部分中對發(fā)生在核電廠的這場災(zāi)難進(jìn)行了生動的復(fù)原。先是用白描的手法講述幾名主要人物可愛的家庭生活、或是年輕人的雄心壯志，不過這讓我們因擔(dān)心而焦慮不安。兩位作者又以分鐘為單位講述反應(yīng)堆熔融以及由此產(chǎn)生的后果如恐怖小說一般吸引注意力，其實他們也運用了與恐怖小說相似的技巧：意識到爆炸那一刻的驚恐，以及具有英雄氣概的民族與時間對抗著。1979年曾上映了一部具有預(yù)見性的電影《中國綜合癥》，該片講述了一座核電廠勉勉強強防止了一場災(zāi)難，然后對此百般遮掩。兩本書都提到了這部電影。該電影的標(biāo)題來自參與前曼哈頓計劃的科學(xué)家們假想的一場討論：一座位于北美的反應(yīng)堆熔融了，造成燃料燒穿地球抵達(dá)中國。雖然這樣的場景很明顯是不可能的，但是“中國綜合癥”卻成了一個概述對核物質(zhì)燒穿切爾諾貝利核電廠的地基，進(jìn)入含水層，再進(jìn)入第聶伯河盆地，然后流入黑海的擔(dān)憂的縮略語。

Plokhy, a historian of Ukraine, provides a masterful account of how the USSR’s bureaucratic dysfunction, censorship, and impossible economic targets produced the disaster and hindered the response to it. Though the Soviets held a show trial to pin responsibility on three plant employees, Plokhy makes plain the absurdity of holding individuals accountable for what was clearly a systemic failure. But Chernobyl could have been worse. The Dnieper River Basin was not contaminated, there was no second explosion, and long-term damage was mercifully limited; eventually the fire burned itself out, and the reactor was covered with a 400,000-ton concrete “sarcophagus.”

烏克蘭歷史學(xué)家普羅基精彩地描述了是蘇聯(lián)那機能失調(diào)的官僚、審查制度和不可能的經(jīng)濟(jì)目標(biāo)導(dǎo)致了這場災(zāi)難，并阻礙了災(zāi)后反應(yīng)。雖然蘇聯(lián)裝腔作勢舉行了一場庭審，將責(zé)任歸咎于核電廠的三位雇員，但是普羅基明確指出這很明顯是整個系統(tǒng)的錯誤，卻讓幾個個體負(fù)責(zé)，很荒謬。雖然切爾諾貝利本來是會更糟的，但是第聶伯河盆地沒有被污染，沒有第二次爆炸，長期危險幸運地被限制住了；大火燒完一切最終自己熄滅了，反應(yīng)堆被40萬噸水泥做成的石棺封住了。

The radioactive cloud may even have had a silver lining. Plokhy emphasizes Chernobyl’s role in the USSR’s final collapse and in the push for Ukrainian independence, as furious citizens worked to bring down the government responsible for the disaster, its cover-up, and the lethally inadequate response to it. For Plokhy, the greatest lesson of Chernobyl is the danger of authoritarianism. The secretive Soviet Union’s need to look invincible led it to conceal the many nuclear accidents that preceded Chernobyl, instead of using studies of them to improve safety. The memory of Stalin’s purges and the continuing threat of unjust punishment prevented plant workers and officials from reporting problems, while impossible Soviet quotas led plant employees to cut corners and ignore safety protocols. Once the reactor exploded, Soviet censorship kept citizens in the dark about the disaster, preventing them from taking measures to protect themselves.

含有放射性物質(zhì)的云可能也會帶來一線光明。普羅基強調(diào)切爾諾貝利在蘇聯(lián)最后崩潰以及推動烏克蘭獨立中所占的分量：當(dāng)憤怒的市民想讓政府對此次災(zāi)難承擔(dān)責(zé)任時，政府的態(tài)度遮遮掩掩，對災(zāi)難的回應(yīng)也不合格，而這都是致命的。普羅基認(rèn)為切爾諾貝利最大的教訓(xùn)是威權(quán)主義。蘇聯(lián)總是一副諱莫如深的樣子，是因為它需要表現(xiàn)得不可戰(zhàn)勝，這就導(dǎo)致它隱瞞發(fā)生在切爾諾貝利之前的許多核事故，而不是研究它們以提高安全性。永不會從記憶中消失的斯大林時代的肅清運動，以及持續(xù)不斷地用不公正的懲罰為威脅，也阻止了核電廠工作人員及官員匯報問題，同時蘇聯(lián)分配的不可能實現(xiàn)的工作配額，讓電廠員工做事只圖省事從而忽略了安全規(guī)程。反應(yīng)堆一旦爆炸，蘇聯(lián)的審查制度又讓市民對災(zāi)難懵懂無知，阻礙了他們采取措施保護(hù)自己。

When the United States dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the immediate effect was a huge single release of radiation. Radioactive fallout then drifted down from the sky, moving with the wind to distribute a smaller amount of radiation across a larger area. People who arrived in Hiroshima after the attack fell ill, including US soldiers helping to rebuild the city, and the Japanese press wrote about the longer-lasting effects of the “atomic poison.” This infuriated General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, who could not countenance the possibility that the hugely expensive new weapon might be vilified and banned, as German mustard gas had been during and after World War I. Groves directed an effort to use censorship and propaganda to suppress information about the dangers of the radiation emitted by the atom bomb. The US did sponsor a “Life Span Study” of Japanese bomb survivors, which yielded valuable information. But it only started in 1950, too late for comprehensive results, and it only factored the initial blast, not fallout, into its estimates of radiation exposure. This meant that it excluded from consideration potentially radiation-induced health problems connected to lower doses of radiation, such as leukemia, thyroid cancer, diseases of the circulatory system, autoimmune disorders, eye diseases, and increased vulnerability to infection.

當(dāng)美國向廣島和長崎投擲原子彈時，瞬間發(fā)生的不過一團(tuán)巨大的放射物被釋放出來。但是放射性塵埃會慢慢從天空飄下來，也會隨風(fēng)飄移將小部分放射性物質(zhì)擴散到更大的區(qū)域。在爆炸發(fā)生之后抵達(dá)廣島的人會生病，這其中也包括協(xié)助重建這座城市的美國士兵。日本新聞也報道了這種被稱作“原子能污染”的長期后果。曼哈頓計劃的負(fù)責(zé)人萊斯利·格羅夫?qū)④妼ň薮蟮某杀狙邪l(fā)出來的新武器，會像德國的芥子氣在一戰(zhàn)中及戰(zhàn)后的遭遇一樣遭到污蔑與禁用，感到憤怒。格羅夫直接訴諸于審查制度和宣傳機器，壓制有關(guān)原子彈噴發(fā)出的放射性物質(zhì)具有危險性的信息。美國對日本原子彈幸存者發(fā)起了“跨越一生的研究”。這場研究提供了許多有用的信息。但是由于開始得太遲了（1950年才開始），所以研究結(jié)果也不全面，而且它在評估輻射接觸后果時只將最初的爆炸作為考慮因素，而忽略了輻射塵埃這個因素。這意味著與低劑量的輻射相關(guān)的健康問題，諸如白血病、甲狀腺癌、循環(huán)系統(tǒng)疾病、自身免疫系統(tǒng)疾病、眼疾、以及逐漸增加的感染易受性，被認(rèn)為不可能是由輻射引起的。

In 1953 President Eisenhower announced “Atoms for Peace,” a program intended to use nuclear power for medicine and cheap electricity. Soon the cold war arms race was matched by the competitive construction of civilian nuclear reactors. The Soviet Union’s race to nuclear power, like its other industrialization drives, required the over-fulfillment of unrealistic quotas, often using substandard materials and undertrained personnel.

艾森豪威爾總統(tǒng)于1953年宣布實施“和平利用原子能”計劃。該計劃旨在利用原子能提供醫(yī)療服務(wù)和廉價電力。不久民用原子能反應(yīng)堆的建設(shè)就追平了為冷戰(zhàn)的軍備競賽（建造的核武器）。就像其它驅(qū)動蘇聯(lián)工業(yè)化的力量一樣，蘇聯(lián)的核武器競賽也需要完成不可能完成的配額，所以經(jīng)常讓未經(jīng)培訓(xùn)的人員使用不達(dá)標(biāo)的核原料。

In the 1950s the Soviets developed the High Power Channel Reactor (RBMK). They also developed a much safer alternative model, the Water-Water Energy Reactor (VVER), similar to the Pressurized Water Reactors used in the US. But the RBMK won out because it generated twice as much energy as the VVER, was cheaper to build and run, and produced plutonium that could potentially be used in weapons—though it emitted far more radiation and had not been fully tested before operation began. The four reactors at the Chernobyl plant, opened between 1977 and 1983, were all RBMKs. They generated vast quantities of electricity not only for civilian use but also for the nearby Duga Radar system, which had been built to detect nuclear missiles. In 1985 the shoddily constructed Chernobyl plant managed to overfill its production quotas, in part by reducing the amount of time allotted to repairs.

蘇聯(lián)用二十世紀(jì)一整個50年代開發(fā)“高功率引導(dǎo)反應(yīng)堆”（RBMK）。他們還開發(fā)了“雙水能量反應(yīng)堆”（VVER）這種更安全的替代版本——這個有點類似于美國使用的增壓水反應(yīng)堆。但是由于建造和運行RBMK更便宜，產(chǎn)生的能量又是VVER的兩倍，且最終的產(chǎn)品钚（盡管钚的輻射性更強，而且有不實際操作就無法檢測的特點）還是潛在的武器原料，所以RBMK勝出。切爾諾貝利核電廠的四個于1977年至1983年間啟動的核反應(yīng)堆全部都是RBMK。這些反應(yīng)堆產(chǎn)生的巨大電力不僅供民用，也供附近專門監(jiān)測核導(dǎo)彈的杜佳雷達(dá)系統(tǒng)使用。1985年，粗制濫造的切爾諾貝利核電廠設(shè)法完成本來就超過其裝機容量的生產(chǎn)配額，而依靠的方法之一就是減少分配給停機維護(hù)的時間。

The Soviet Union had access only to the published results of the “Life Span Study.” But the rapid development of Soviet nuclear power, and the many accidents that accompanied it, provided extensive opportunities to examine the effects of radiation on the human body. By the time Dr. Angelina Guskova cared for Chernobyl responders, she had already treated more cases of radiation illness than anyone in the world. During years of work at a secret Siberian nuclear weapons installation where she was forbidden to ask her patients about the nature of their work, and thus about their radiation exposure, she learned to estimate radiation doses from victims’ symptoms, and she made substantial inroads in the treatment of radiation-related illness. She helped contribute to the Soviet definition of “chronic radiation syndrome,” which included malaise, sleep disorders, bleeding gums, and respiratory and digestive disorders. Guskova’s findings, like the many nuclear accidents that occurred in the Soviet Union in those years, were kept secret.

雖然蘇聯(lián)只拿到了“跨越一生的研究”的出版結(jié)果，但是其快速發(fā)展的核能以及與之相伴的事故，都為檢驗核輻射對人體的影響提供了大量的機會。到安吉麗娜·古斯科娃博士照料切爾諾貝利事故中的傷病員時，她已經(jīng)是全世界治療核輻射病例最多的人了。在西伯利亞一個秘密的核武器軍事基地工作期間，她被禁止詢問病人的工作性質(zhì)以及如何接觸到核輻射的。她學(xué)著通過病人的癥狀估計輻射劑量。在治療與輻射相關(guān)的疾病方面，她開拓出了大量的新領(lǐng)域。她協(xié)助定義了蘇聯(lián)的“慢性輻射綜合癥”。這種病包括萎靡不振、睡眠紊亂、牙齦出血以及呼吸及消化系統(tǒng)紊亂。像那些年發(fā)生在蘇聯(lián)的許多核事故一樣，古斯科娃的發(fā)現(xiàn)一直處于保密階段。

A 1990 assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meanwhile, was sabotaged by the KGB, which was so desperate to conceal sensitive information from foreigners that it stole a large registry of patient data kept on a single computer in Belarus. (It was never recovered.) According to Brown, the IAEA ended up producing inaccurate estimates of radiation exposure, in part because it grossly underestimated the use of contaminated local products by people living around the Zone—especially berries, mushrooms, and milk. The WHO and IAEA results hamstrung fundraising efforts for further Chernobyl studies, and for medical care and resettlement. Ukrainians and Belarusians were told that their health problems were caused by stress and “radiophobia” rather than by radiation itself.

國際原子能機構(gòu)（IAEA）在1990年也進(jìn)行了一次評估，但是遭到克格勃的蓄意破壞。克格勃不顧一切地隱藏敏感資料，甚至偷了保存在白俄羅斯一臺電腦中的病人掛號記錄。（這些記錄再也不可能恢復(fù)了。）布朗在書中寫到：IAEA最終對核輻射暴露作出了錯誤的評估，部分原因在于它極大地低估了生活在“禁區(qū)”周圍的人使用被核輻射污染的本地產(chǎn)品（尤其是漿果、蘑菇和牛奶）的情況。世界衛(wèi)生組織和國際原子能機構(gòu)得出的結(jié)論打擊了為更多的切爾諾貝利研究、為醫(yī)療救助以及重新安置籌款的努力。烏克蘭人及白俄羅斯人被告知他們的健康問題是因為壓力和“恐輻射癥”，而非核輻射本身造成的。

One of the most alarming—though also eerily beautiful—aspects of Brown’s book is her description of the way radioactive material moves through organisms, ecosystems, and human society. Of the infamous May Day parade held in Kiev just after the explosion, Brown writes:

布朗在其書中發(fā)出的最危險的（雖然也帶有令人恐怖的魅力）警告之一是帶有輻射性的物質(zhì)借助有機物、生態(tài)系統(tǒng)和人類社會四處移動。對于爆炸剛剛結(jié)束不久就舉行的那場聲名狼藉的基輔“五·一”游行，布朗寫道：

The newsreels of the May holiday did not record the actions of two and a half million lungs, inhaling and exhaling, working like a giant organic filter. Half of the radioactive substances Kyivans inhaled their bodies retained. Plants and trees in the lovely, tree-lined city scrubbed the air of ionizing radiation. When the leaves fell later that autumn, they needed to be treated as radioactive waste.

“五·一”假日的新聞短片沒有記錄250萬具吸氣又吐氣、像一個巨大的有機過濾器那樣工作的肺的活動?；o人吸進(jìn)他們身體的放射性物質(zhì)有一半留了下來。在這座綠樹成行的可愛城市里，每一株植物，每一棵樹都在刷洗飽含放射性離子的空氣。當(dāng)那個秋天樹葉凋落時，需要用處理放射性廢物的方式處理它們。

Radioactive fallout was distributed far beyond the Exclusion Zone, which was, after all, just a circle on a map. Clouds absorbed radiation and then moved with the wind. Red Army pilots were dispatched to seed clouds with silver iodide so that radioactive rain would fall over provincial Belarus rather than urban Russia. Belarusian villagers fell ill, as did the pilots. Livestock absorbed radiation in the immediate aftermath of the disaster by inhaling air and dust, and later by consuming contaminated grass. Cleaned villages were soon recontaminated by radioactive dust from surrounding areas, and buried material leaked radioactivity into the water table.

放射性塵埃的分布區(qū)域遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出那個只能在地圖上呈圓圈狀的“禁區(qū)”。云朵吸收放射性物質(zhì)，然后被風(fēng)吹走。紅軍的飛行員被派出去用碘化銀處理云層，為的就是讓含有輻射物質(zhì)的雨禍害白俄羅斯省而不是俄羅斯城市。白俄羅斯農(nóng)民和那些飛行員一樣生病了。爆炸之后立刻出現(xiàn)的后果是家畜因為吸入空氣和灰塵，然后是吃了受到污染的青草，吸進(jìn)放射性物質(zhì)。打掃干凈的村落很快就會因為來自周邊地區(qū)的放射性塵埃而再次被污染，被埋起來的放射性物質(zhì)又會滲透進(jìn)含水層。

A reluctance to waste food and other basic goods helped keep the radioactive isotopes in circulation. (Radioactive isotopes are unstable atoms that release dangerous particles until they decay into stable atoms of different elements. Although scientists can estimate the half-life of radioactive isotopes, the process of decay at the level of individual atoms is random.) Contaminated wood and peat were burned for fuel in homes and factories, releasing more radioactivity into the air. The State Committee of Industrial Agriculture had 50,000 animals rounded up and slaughtered during the evacuation from the Zone, and their radioactive wool, hides, and meat sent to different cities for processing. Brown’s findings in a Kiev archive led her to Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine, where workers at a wool factory requested the same benefits received by those who had been at the site of the reactor explosion. The workers had held the Chernobyl wool in their hands and inhaled its fibers. Soon their noses started to bleed, and they became dizzy, nauseous, and fatigued. Their managers pushed them to fulfill their quotas anyway. The authorities eventually made some efforts to clean the factory, but they weren’t willing to bury the highly radioactive wool. Instead, it was piled near the factory’s loading dock, waiting for its isotopes to decay. Wool accumulated for over a year, continuing to emit radiation. Meanwhile, the cleaning efforts caused radiation to be released into the surrounding environment along with the rest of the factory’s waste.

因為不愿意浪費食物和其它基礎(chǔ)物資，也讓放射性同位素傳播得更容易。（放射性同位素是一種不穩(wěn)定的原子。只有衰退成穩(wěn)定的其它原子，否則它們會一直釋放危險的微粒。雖然科學(xué)家們可以估計放射性同位素的半衰期，但是單個原子的衰退過程是隨機的。）家庭和工廠將受到污染的林木和泥炭當(dāng)作燃料燒掉，向空氣中釋放更多的放射性物質(zhì)。國家工農(nóng)業(yè)委員會在“禁區(qū)”疏散期間圍捕并屠宰了5萬頭動物，并將含有放射性物質(zhì)的羊毛、獸皮以及肉送往不同城市加工處理。布朗在基輔檔案館里的發(fā)現(xiàn)指引她來到烏克蘭北部城市切爾尼希夫。在該市的羊毛工廠里，工人要求得到與反應(yīng)堆爆炸地點的工人相同的補助金。這些工人用他們的雙手握著來自切爾諾貝利的羊毛，吸入羊毛纖維。不久他們開始流鼻血、感到眩暈、作嘔及疲乏。但是管理人員依然強迫他們無論如何要完成工作定額。雖然當(dāng)權(quán)者后來終于做了一些清潔工作，但是他們還是不愿意埋掉具有高放射性的羊毛。他們只是將羊毛堆在工廠附近的碼頭，等待羊毛上面的同位素衰退。那些一直在向外發(fā)射放射性物質(zhì)的羊毛堆放了一年多。而同時清掃工作又將放射性物質(zhì)連同工廠的其它垃圾一起釋放到周邊地區(qū)。

Paul Fusco/Magnum Photos

保羅·弗斯科/瑪格南圖片社

A mother holding a government document certifying that her daughter’s brain tumor was caused by radiation from the Chernobyl disaster, Zamishevo, Russia, 1999

1999年，俄羅斯，Zamishevo。一位母親手持一紙文件證明她女兒的腦癌是由切爾諾貝利災(zāi)難的核輻射造成的。

Moscow agronomists explained how to make sausage with an “acceptable” amount of radioactive meat, and Chernobyl sausages were distributed across the USSR without special labeling. There were instructions on how to salvage contaminated milk, berries, eggs, beets, grain, spinach, potatoes, mushrooms, and tea—often by converting them into products with long shelf lives and simply storing them until the isotopes decayed. This misguided thriftiness was not a uniquely Soviet or authoritarian practice. Chernobyl fallout had contaminated much of Europe. When Italy rejected 300,000 tons of radioactive Greek wheat, Greece refused to take it back; the European Economic Community eventually agreed to buy the wheat, which was blended with clean grain and sent to Africa and East Germany in aid shipments.

莫斯科的農(nóng)學(xué)家講解如何用“可接受”數(shù)量的帶有放射性物質(zhì)的肉制造香腸，然后這些切爾諾貝利香腸被不貼任何特殊標(biāo)簽地送往蘇聯(lián)各地。還有課程教授如何回收利用被放射性物質(zhì)污染的牛奶、漿果、雞蛋、甜菜、谷物、菠菜、馬鈴薯、蘑菇和茶葉。其實方法不過是將它們制成可長期保存的東西，然后儲存起來直到同位素衰退。這種錯誤的節(jié)儉并不獨見于蘇聯(lián)，也非只有威權(quán)政體才會采用。切爾諾貝利的放射塵埃也污染了大部分的歐洲。當(dāng)意大利拒絕接受30萬噸受到放射性物質(zhì)污染的希臘小麥時，希臘拒絕將小麥拖回。歐洲經(jīng)濟(jì)共同體最終同意買下這批小麥，然后把它們摻進(jìn)干凈的谷物中以援助的形式送往非洲和東德。

The difficulty of the cleanup was increased by the fact that the Chernobyl plant had been built in a marshy area, the worst possible type of land for a nuclear disaster. Mineral-poor soil soaked up radioactive minerals, which were then absorbed by mineral-hungry plants. Meanwhile, seasonal floods spread contaminants into pastureland. Tim Mousseau and Anders M?ller, biologists who have been studying Zone ecology since 2000, have found that microbes, worms, spiders, bees, and fruit flies still cannot function normally in the Zone, or that they exist in far lower numbers than they did before the meltdown. This means that leaves do not decay at the normal rate, pollination does not occur often enough to produce the fruit that feeds some birds, birds don’t spread the seeds for new plants, and so on.

清除切爾諾貝利核電廠的污染物的困難之所以與日俱增是因為該電廠建在一塊沼澤地里。沼澤素來是發(fā)生核災(zāi)難最糟糕的地形。缺乏礦物質(zhì)的泥土大量吸收放射性礦物質(zhì)，然后再被缺乏礦物質(zhì)的植物吸收。與此同時，季節(jié)性的洪水又將污染物擴散到牧場。生物學(xué)家蒂姆·毛瑟和安德斯·莫勒自從2000年以來一直在研究“禁區(qū)”的生態(tài)。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)在“禁區(qū)”中的微生物、蠕蟲、蜘蛛、蜜蜂和果蠅依然無法正常發(fā)揮功能，或者換一種說法吧，它們的數(shù)量遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)低于反應(yīng)堆熔融之前的數(shù)量。這意味著樹葉無法以正常的速度腐爛，蜜蜂的授粉無法支撐生產(chǎn)足以喂養(yǎng)鳥的水果，于是鳥也無法將能長出新植物的種子撒播出去，如此等等。

Other researchers have issued a much sunnier picture of post-Chernobyl ecology, but Brown argues persuasively that they are grossly underestimating the scale of the damage, in part because they rely too heavily on simplistic measurements of radioactivity levels. Because radioactivity can move across so many environments and exposure to it can come in so many varieties, individual doses are hard to measure or even estimate, and a full understanding of radioactivity’s effects requires fine-grained observation at many levels over a long period. We don’t even fully understand the process of isotope decay. Biologists originally expected that the ecological half-life of cesium-137 would be only fifteen years; now researchers predict that it will take between 180 and 320 years for cesium-137 to disappear from the forests around Chernobyl, though they don’t yet know why.