The Reaction
The Cover up
Soon after the Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet Union tried to cover up the severity of Chernobyl to try and prevent panic by not tellling other countries and news stations. Due to lack of diplomacy about the disaster, more people were endangered as radiation spread through the Ukraine and countries as far away as Sweden, and people were getting radiation poisoning. Due to this, people started to vomit their lungs and liver, get rashes all over their skin, and feel very weak and sluggish.
A child affected by radiation from Chernobyl, EIT.edu, 2013.
"Oh God, it rains!" Reads graffiti in Frankfurt Germany, CBS News, May 1986
Protests
People started to die or get very badly injured and because of this, people started to realize how serious Chernobyl was and began protesting to end nuclear energy once and for all. These riots and protests attracted government attention and through global diplomacy, the International Atomic Energy Association made nuclear energy safer than it ever was before.
"The world has already been overwhelmed by one Chernobyl and one exclusion zone. It cannot afford it anymore. It must learn its lessons from what happened in and around Chernobyl on April 26, 1986." –Serhii Plokhy, Author
This report shows how little even the british news knew about the disaster. This lack of diplomacy and actions shows how the USSR did not want to be held responsible for this accident. If the Soviet Union had confessed right away they may have been able to avoid radiation spreading as far as it did.
People protesting Chernobyl, theguardian, August 1989
Nuclear power protest logo, Wikipedia, date unknown