40 years after the Chernobyl accident, a book poses an uncomfortable question: why do Bulgarians find themselves among the most heavily irradiated in Europe?
„The Bulgarian Chernobyl“ by Prof. Dimitar Vatsov, is a study that sheds light on the actions of the authorities, late information, ineffective measures and an almost unknown „second radiation peak“. Many of you will hear about it for the first time.
Myths that turn out to be lies
One myth is that on May 1, people walked under the radioactive rain. This turned out to be factually untrue, because the Chernobyl cloud came over Bulgaria in the early afternoon of May 1, when the demonstration had just ended. So it is not possible that the rain that fell that day was radioactive. Of course, this does not exonerate the authorities, because on May 24 demonstrations are organized, sports events are held, on May 18 a marathon "Health" is held in Sofia - 40,000 people ran for health and lifted heavy radioactive dust. The figures are shocking - 340,000 foremen sent to the field in 1986, about 450,000 children were sent to camp by the sea in the summer of 86, and all these are additional doses of radiation, which are actually absorbed by the youngest people, by the workers, by the agricultural workers who work outdoors and constantly breathe the dust. Either harvesting or in factories", commented Prof. Vatsov.
Horrifying data
According to him, there is one very clear criterion - according to the data of the World Atomic Energy Organization, IAEA, Bulgaria is eighth in terms of the degree of contamination of the territory in all of Europe. The first are Ukraine, Russia, Belarus. Then there are the Scandinavian countries and in eighth place we come. But we are first in terms of contamination of children's thyroid glands according to the UN Scientific Committee for the Study of Atomic Energy and we are in first place in terms of total irradiation of people's bodies in all of Europe. And the only explanation for this disproportion is the lack of measures or the ineffectiveness of the measures.
The radiation cloud first goes to the Scandinavian countries, on April 28 the Swedes detect the radiation, thanks to them it becomes known that there is such a thing, they immediately say so, the Poles say on April 30, it comes to the Balkans on May 1 - here there is a message that everything is fine and there is no danger to the population. It was only on May 7 that Shinderov and Pandev - the then sanitary inspector and the then head of the committee for the use of nuclear energy - half-heartedly said on television that there was increased radiation and that it was good to take 3 types of measures - not to eat lettuce, not to let children play in the sandboxes and to wash the streets more often, "said Vatsov.
As early as May 4, Bulgarian scientists developed a list of 14 mandatory measures for personal hygiene, which was submitted to the government and rejected, Vatsov also said.
According to the author's documents from May 1, the Higher Nomenclature (200-300 politicians) are subject to a special food and drink regime. Every morsel of their food is checked.
The Winter of 1987
In the book, the professor proves that a year after the accident, milk and dairy products, as well as meat and local products in our country, reached levels of radioactivity close to the first days of the Chernobyl accident.
"This happens because the authorities then release radioactive fodder, mowed before May 86, immediately after the rains, for feeding animals during the winter period. Bulgarian scientists, atomic physicists, radiologists from the Military Medical Academy, from the Agricultural Academy explicitly warned many times as early as August of the same year not to do this. When they see that it is going up, because the radioactivity is going up in the animals as early as the fall of 86, in November and December they raise the alarm with reports, asking for measures to be taken to stop this, but they do not pay attention to them. Accordingly, from January to June, milk and meat become radioactive for Bulgarians.
Why did they give the contaminated feed to the animals - the only explanation - so that nothing would be thrown away.
Prof. Vatsov claims that no document contains calculations of how many kg of feed they had to buy clean from abroad and how much it would cost.
While the people who lived at that time, our parents, our grandparents, were telling themselves how bad it was that on May 1 they demonstrated in the streets when radioactive rain fell and infected them, in fact a year later the same huge amount of radiation entered their food chain.
In practice, there are extremely few measures for food decontamination, i.e. for food disinfection.
Throughout the year, there were highly radioactive products that we ate, the professor claims. What they did was the dilution method - you take highly radioactive milk and mix it with weakly radioactive milk to distribute the radiation more evenly and get within the norms - that was the systematic state policy.