It was a weird day in the news today; the big story is of course the plane from Beijing tumbling out of the sky and skidding across Heathrow Airport, fortunately and incredibly without anyone getting seriously hurt. This is weird because here at Knowledge Towers we were planning a holiday, and opted to go up to Scotland rather than get on a plane, but as I work under the Heathrow flightpath I see a lot of planes coming in to land, and thought just yesterday that avoiding planes for a. ecological reasons or b. fear was pretty pointless; these planes come in at about 3 a minute so not getting on one would, regrettably, be a drop syphoned from the carbon ocean. Also, the way they glide serenely over suburban London makes you wonder how you could ever worry about them not making it down, I thought to myself, and 24 hours later, another one made it down in a manner of speaking, but I say if the wheels fall off, it's a crash. So that's a bit... weird.
The other piece of news was also remarkable, in that it was perhaps the most wondrous thing I've ever heard; Robbie Williams' last album sold so badly that unwanted copies are being sent to China, to be melted down... and used to make roads! Oh how I longed for this day etc. But anyway, while I may have given a contrary impression in these first two paragraphs, I don't want to just keep recycling the news. The Quest for Knowledge involves digging a little deeper, my friend, and today I stopped at nothing; I bought the Daily Mirror (38p - knowledge don't come cheap), saw they were giving away a DVD in Somerfield, got off the bus TWO STOPS further than normal, and picked up a copy of 'Events that Shook the World - Chernobyl'.
Admittedly, I haven't bothered to watch it yet, but it did come with a souvenir front page from the day the story broke, which is chiefly noteable for two smaller features - firstly Noel Edmonds, looking 'slightly different' and telling all and sundry 'Why I'm Marrying Wonderful Helen' - disappointly, I've discovered this marriage lasted all the way to 2004 - and secondly, a picture of Cliff Thorburn, which is a bit like having Rick Astley on the front page, so loudly does it scream 'eighties' - honestly, when was the last time a snooker player was on the front cover of a paper? Anyway, on the back of the page there's a nifty fact sheet all about the Chernobyl disaster filled with unbelievable stuff, in particular this piece of information, which certainly curtailed my chuckling over Edmonds smouldering away on the other side:
The reactors that were not destroyed in the Chernobyl disaster (namely Reactors 1, 2 and 3; 4 was the one that exploded) continued to operate until 2000.
The reason for this is down to power supply shortages in the Ukraine; basically, there was no other choice. When you consider that all four reactors have now been covered in concrete, and are having a special airtight shell built over them to prevent even a particle from escaping, it demonstrates how desperate the situation must have been for them to keep running it. The whole Chernobyl incident is fascinating to me, mainly because it's such a disastrous collision of problems from the past and worries we thought were in the future. The explosion happened on April 26 1986, but no-one in the West had any idea until Sweden starting picking up high radiation levels the next day; the USSR basically tried to hush up a nuclear explosion. They then had to pick up the pieces, trying to recover an impossibly dangerous situation using outmoded techniques and equipment (several firefighters died after being sent into the reactor without adequate protection) and the nearest town, Pripyat, was hurriedly evacuated, with families having to leave their possessions behind.
It's still empty today, and despite being oddly fascinating to me (it's on my 'to visit' list - just below Disneyland) is surely the most awful, depressing place on Earth. A lot more of Europe could stand as Pripyat does now, empty, silent and doused in lethal radiation, had a second, 'chain reaction' explosion occurred at Chernobyl. The fact that the rescue operation managed to avert this disaster despite a total absence of modern technology, and in the process save Europe from a nuclear holocaust is a miracle even greater than a plane landing safely without any wheels.
1 comment:
Hey matey, I've been reading y'blog with great interest. It's all v'interesting stuff, and made me chortle a few times as well!
You might be interested to hear that (apparently) most airlines stick very rigidly to their flight schedule, meaning that - yes - they will quite happily fly an empty plane halfway across the world. I'm afraid abstaining from flight wouldn't make much of a dent unless you physically destroy the plane you're not getting on.
Anyway, keep it up!
Post a Comment