The First Chernobyl
I grew up on science fiction. My earliest memories are sitting close to the family console television set and watching Star Trek with rapt attention. Almost as soon as I could read I was given a copy of Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.
Being also a child of the Cold War, my thoughts often turned towards the apocalyptic. Attending fundamentalist Christian churches only increased my encounters with eschatology and wonderings about "The End." In the late '70s and early '80s, that end looked nuclear. I often wondered what name people would give the first nuclear wasteland.
A few years later I would find out. On April 26, 1986, an accident at reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant spread disaster. The need for energy rendered a region uninhabitable, a "dead zone."
But only yesterday did I learn that a decade before I was born, a similar disaster had played out over a longer timeframe and a smaller scale, and not thousands of miles away but just a couple of states' distance. In 1962, in the small coal mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, an accident ignited the seam of coal running beneath the town. Residents ignored the underground fire until 1979 when the owner of a gas station lowered a thermometer into one of his underground tanks and found the gasoline sitting at 172 degrees Fahrenheit. Two years later, a twelve year old boy nearly died when a 150 foot deep sinkhole opened beneath his feet. Within three years most of the residents has accepted buyout offers and moved away. In 1992, the state of Pennsylvania invoked eminent domain on all of the town's property. Ten years later, the United States Postal Service revoked the town's zip code.
The meltdown at Chernobyl occurred much more quickly and displaced many more people, but Centralia shares the same key characteristics: accidents involving the energy industry which resulted in wiping entire towns off the map. Chernobyl will remain radioactive for centuries. The eight mile seam of coal beneath Centralia will burn for another 250 years.
The aftermath of Chernobyl killed thousands and displaced thousands more. As the radiation spread across borders it created an international incident, one which the Reagan Administration pushed in a Cold War climate. The fires of Chernobyl highlighted the dangers of nuclear power.
The disaster at Centralia displaced about 2000 people in the eastern coal belt of rural Pennsylvania. Coal, a fuel of the Industrial Revolution, drove the railroads across the Americas. It is familiar and lacks the radioactive public relations of nuclear.
Yet the parallels remain. Today, Centralia is a wasteland. The few buildings that remain are surrounded by fields where carbon monoxide laden smoke rises from the earth, where rocks lying on the ground are so hot that touching a matchhead to them will ignite it.
We need energy to power our machines, fuel our vehicles, even create the fertilizer that grows our good, and our global need for energy is increasing. I believe that we're going to have more Centralias and Chernobyls, and I hope that we'll learn lessons that will help us cope with the aftermath.
And I can't help but wonder what we'll call them.
Being also a child of the Cold War, my thoughts often turned towards the apocalyptic. Attending fundamentalist Christian churches only increased my encounters with eschatology and wonderings about "The End." In the late '70s and early '80s, that end looked nuclear. I often wondered what name people would give the first nuclear wasteland.
A few years later I would find out. On April 26, 1986, an accident at reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant spread disaster. The need for energy rendered a region uninhabitable, a "dead zone."
But only yesterday did I learn that a decade before I was born, a similar disaster had played out over a longer timeframe and a smaller scale, and not thousands of miles away but just a couple of states' distance. In 1962, in the small coal mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, an accident ignited the seam of coal running beneath the town. Residents ignored the underground fire until 1979 when the owner of a gas station lowered a thermometer into one of his underground tanks and found the gasoline sitting at 172 degrees Fahrenheit. Two years later, a twelve year old boy nearly died when a 150 foot deep sinkhole opened beneath his feet. Within three years most of the residents has accepted buyout offers and moved away. In 1992, the state of Pennsylvania invoked eminent domain on all of the town's property. Ten years later, the United States Postal Service revoked the town's zip code.
The meltdown at Chernobyl occurred much more quickly and displaced many more people, but Centralia shares the same key characteristics: accidents involving the energy industry which resulted in wiping entire towns off the map. Chernobyl will remain radioactive for centuries. The eight mile seam of coal beneath Centralia will burn for another 250 years.
The aftermath of Chernobyl killed thousands and displaced thousands more. As the radiation spread across borders it created an international incident, one which the Reagan Administration pushed in a Cold War climate. The fires of Chernobyl highlighted the dangers of nuclear power.
The disaster at Centralia displaced about 2000 people in the eastern coal belt of rural Pennsylvania. Coal, a fuel of the Industrial Revolution, drove the railroads across the Americas. It is familiar and lacks the radioactive public relations of nuclear.
Yet the parallels remain. Today, Centralia is a wasteland. The few buildings that remain are surrounded by fields where carbon monoxide laden smoke rises from the earth, where rocks lying on the ground are so hot that touching a matchhead to them will ignite it.
We need energy to power our machines, fuel our vehicles, even create the fertilizer that grows our good, and our global need for energy is increasing. I believe that we're going to have more Centralias and Chernobyls, and I hope that we'll learn lessons that will help us cope with the aftermath.
And I can't help but wonder what we'll call them.
posted by Christopher A. Dellario at 2:34 PM
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