Notes from Україна

Panoramas from the Chernobyl Zone

2007-10-02T23:55:00.000-04:00

A colleague sent me the link to a wonderful website today. Check it out!

The incredible images were captured by a photographer named Michael Rothbart. He is currently working on a photo project documenting how people cope while living in radioactive areas of the former Soviet Union. He just got back to the US after spending eight months in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Seeing these panoramas really makes me feel like I'm back in the Exclusion Zone... creepy.

Chernobyl Fungus Feeds On Radiation

2007-09-22T09:27:00.000-04:00

The fungus Cladosporium sphaerospermum can use dangerous radiation to grow.

Read about it here.

Crazy stuff! Like something from a science fiction novel. But then again, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. When I went to Chernobyl, everything reminded me of something from a science fiction novel.

I'm surprised the article didn't mention whether or not the radiation-munching fungi could potentially be used to clean up contaminated areas. That was the first thing that popped into my head when I read it.

More over, Pixar: Chernobyl 3D movies

2007-09-18T13:40:00.000-04:00

Some wonderful videos about SIP:

Want to know more about the conceptual design and construction plan of the New Safe Confinement shelter? Watch here:

Want to know more about shelter stabilization? Watch here:

Parlez-vous Français?

2007-09-18T13:27:00.000-04:00

$505 Million Deal for Chernobyl Shelter

By MARIA DANILOVA – 23 hours ago

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian officials signed a $505 million contract with a French-led consortium Monday for construction of a new shelter for the Chernobyl reactor, the site of the word's worst nuclear accident.

The project, financed by an international fund managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, will be designed and built by the French-led consortium Novarka, which includes the companies Bouygues SA and Vinci SA.

The new shelter — an arch-shaped steel structure 345 feet tall and 490 feet long — will enclose the concrete sarcophagus erected hastily after the 1986 accident. That structure has been crumbling and leaking radiation for more than a decade.

"I am convinced that today, possibly for the first time, we can frankly tell the national and international community that the answer to the problem of sheltering the Chernobyl nuclear plant was found today," President Viktor Yushchenko said at the signing ceremony, according to the presidential Web site.

The plan is to eventually dismantle the sarcophagus and the exploded reactor inside the new shelter. Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing radiation over a large swath of the former Soviet Union and much of northern Europe. An area roughly half the size of Italy was contaminated, forcing the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people.

Ukraine has repeatedly asked for money from the European Union and other Western sources to fund a new shelter.

Anton Usov, a spokesman for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said it will take about 1 1/2 years to design the shelter and another four to build it.

The entire project of sheltering the reactor, which began in 1997 and also includes strengthening the existing sarcophagus, monitoring radiation and training experts, is estimated at $1.39 billion, Usov said.

Officials also signed a $200 million contract with New Jersey-based Holtec International for decommissioning the power plant. The project includes building a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel from the plant's three other reactors, which kept operating until the station was shut down in 2000.

That undertaking is also financed by international donors in a fund managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

"The successful implementation of the project depends not only on the progress of the construction work, but also on the continued commitment of both the Ukrainian authorities and the international community," European Bank for Reconstruction and Development President Jean Lemierre said in a statement.

In the first two months after the disaster, 31 people died from illnesses caused by radioactivity, but there is heated debate over the subsequent toll.

A 2005 report from the U.N. health agency estimated that about 9,300 people will die from cancers caused by Chernobyl's radiation. Some groups, such as Greenpeace, insist the toll could be 10 times higher.

Collateral damage

2007-09-08T13:23:00.000-04:00

There have been some interesting articles recently about the effects of Chernobyl in Scandinavia.

Evidence of Chernobyl nuclear accident still in Finnish fish and mushrooms

"The toxicity of predatory fish and mushrooms still exceeds the EU recommendations in Western Finland. The fish and mushrooms tested in the southwestern town of Vammala still exhibit elevated levels of the radioactivve isotope caesium-137 and mercury, even 20 years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident."

Is Chernobyl behind academic slump in Sweden?

"It is 21 years since the nuclear plant at Chernobyl went bang, and the extent of the damage wrought by the radioactive fallout is still becoming clear. According to a report in Chemistry World, US researchers have discovered that Swedish children who were in the womb at the time of the accident might have been mentally damaged by their exposure. The findings, which suggest the developing foetus may be more sensitive to radioactivity than previously thought, are based on a survey of the academic achievements of more than 560,000 Swedish children born between 1983 and 1988. "

It's truly disturbing how widespread the affects of Chernobyl are. Clearly, Ukraine and Belarus are not the only countries suffering from the disaster.

Back in the swing of things

2007-08-27T21:09:00.000-04:00

Since I'm back at Duke, I probably won't be able to update this blog as frequently as I used to. But I will certainly be continuing to write about my research and any interesting things I find related to Chernobyl. For example, check out the following links (provided to me by a photographer friend who is creating a photo documentary on Chernobyl):

A site that provides background to the graffiti on Pripyat's walls: http://www.26-04-1986.com/

Photographer Igor Kostin's work on the Chernobyl accident, published in a German Newsmagazine:
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,PB64-SUQ9MTMzMTImbnI9MQ_3_3,00.html

Two photographers' sites dealing with radiation victims:
http://www.robertknoth.com/cherno6x6_9.html
http://flickr.com/photos/90545870@N00/page2/

Anton Kratochvil's work on the Belorussian children: http://www.viiphoto.com/detailStory.php?news_id=481

Farewell, Ukraine!

2007-08-23T08:41:00.000-04:00

One of my last activities in Kyiv was watching the local Premier League team, Dynamo, play Karpaty (from Lviv). I'm not usually keen to watching soccer, but this game was incredible. The final score was 7-3, with Dynamo clinching its first victory of the season.

I am writing this post from JFK after a long but uneventful flight from Kyiv. It's wonderful to revel in the American-ness of this airport after being abroad for so long. Look, there's a Starbucks! Someone reading US Weekly! Little kids dressed in colorful plastic Crocs! Fat people!

It's lovely.

Since my connection to Norfolk, VA, has been delayed for over an hour (that's JFK for you, I guess), I think now is a good time to update this blog about my last few days of research.

On Monday, after interviewing some liquidators, I walked over to the dosimetry department to undergo a full body radiation scan. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. I had to lay prone in a small, metal-lined room for half an hour. There was a web cam installed inside, which is how I got this picture:

Fortunately, I came out as clean as a whistle. My Cesium-137 level was only 30 (I think the units are Beckrels? It's hard to tell because my form is in Russian). The average healthy Kyiv resident carries a load of about 400. The dosimetrist actually expected to see a much higher reading considering that I had been eating a lot of local produce, but I guess five weeks just isn't enough time to acquire any sort of irradiated dose.

On Tuesday, I arrived at RCRM at 10 AM, hoping to interview a potential Ark worker who was in the hospital for check-in control. I ended up getting more than I bargained for; in addition to an interview, I got to watch the man go through the entire process of becoming an ICARR participant. It went something like this:

Step 1: The worker is offered the ICARR consent form.

Step 2: The worker reads and signs the ICARR consent form. He is given a copy for his records.

Step 3: An official at RCRM prints out a full page of identical bar code labels from her computer. These bar codes are the participant’s unique ID number, and they allow ICARR scientists to identify him anonymously. One of the bar code labels is stuck to the signed consent form.

Step 4: The worker is brought to another room, and scientists take from him what looks like a lot of blood. It ends up being only 40 ml, separated into 4 or 5 test tubes, each of which is labeled with a bar code.

Step 5: The worker is paid his "incentive" of 100 Hryvnas (= 20 USD). He is given a receipt for the exchange, which is stored in a binder along with his consent form.

Step 6: An official at RCRM sits down at a computer and logs on to ICARR’s online information exchange system. She enters the participant’s bar code into the system, along with a few other descriptive data points (male or female, etc). From now on, the worker is officially in the ICARR system, and scientists from the US or Ukraine can use the online data exchange program to enter or retrieve his health data. There are drop-down menus where various medical reports (cardiology, gastroenterology, etc) can be made about him in the future.

Step 7: An official at RCRM takes the participant’s blood samples to a laboratory in the immunology department. There, DNA, plasma, etc. will be extracted.

Step 8: Eventually, the biological materials will be divided into two, with one copy staying in Ukraine and the other being shipped to the US for research.

After witnessing the ICARR procedures, I interviewed four more liquidators and called it a day.

It was bittersweet saying goodbye to my Ukrainian friends and colleagues at RCRM and RTI. This trip has been such an incredible experience, and I will miss Kyiv a lot. But, I’m sure we will all keep in touch, and I am ready to go home and start school again. It’s been a long summer!

I'll leave you with a photo from the Kyiv zoo:

Catching up on last week: My trip to Crimea

2007-08-21T14:33:00.001-04:00

On August 12, I decided to take a short break from Chernobyl research to experience a new part of Ukraine. (I had interviewed just about every liquidator in the hospital at that point, so I had no pangs of guilt about leaving for a few days.) So, Reid and I hopped aboard a Yak-42 airliner (one member of Donbassaero's impressive fleet of Antonovs and Yakolevs...) headed towards the Black Sea.

Crimea is an interesting place. It is far more "Russified" than Kyiv, which is understandable given the fact that a much higher percentage of its population is ethnically and culturally Russian. Everyone speaks Russian, all of the signs are in Russian, and there are still many Russian flags flying above Crimean cities. I honestly felt like I had left Ukraine for its neighbor to the east, without having to pay $100 for the visa.

In fact, it was a surprise to many when Crimea became a part of independent Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The event led to tensions between Russian and Ukraine, and since the entire Soviet Black Sea Fleet was still stationed on the peninsula, there were worries of armed skirmishes. Crimea went through a period of self-government in 1992, but eventually agreed to remain a part of Ukraine, provided the Kyiv government expand its already extensive autonomous status. Today, Crimea has the special status of "Autonomous Republic," operating as a parliamentary republic with no president.

Reid and I went to two different cities in Crimea: Yalta and Sevastopol. Yalta was a wonderful, bustling place chock full of Soviet kitsch.

The views were gorgeous. It's no wonder the tsars liked to take their vacations here. There aren't very many places on earth where you can be at the mountains and the sea at the same time.

At first glance, Sevastopol was less beautiful than Yalta. Set away from the Crimean mountains, it is a military town, home to both the Ukrainian and Russian Black Sea Fleets. However, once we started exploring, we found some amazing sights. The ruins of the ancient Greek city of Chersonesus were stunning:

And the nearby village of Balaklava offered some great views:

It also offered a once-top-secret Soviet submarine factory, which we were free to explore at a cost of 10 Hryvnas (=2 USD):

I wonder how many American spies would have given their lives to see this thing forty years ago?

Crimea was the most beautiful place I've ever seen, hands down. I'm so glad I went. It was a real adventure for me to travel through a vacation destination not for English-speakers, but for Russians. Dasvidaniya!

My second excursion to Chernobyl, told through photos

2007-08-19T15:11:00.002-04:00

I've decided to present the second Chernobyl trip a little differently than the first. There were simply too many fabulous photos to choose from, so instead of going through the trouble of uploading them all to Blogger (a slow and arduous process that I was not looking forward to), I've prepared a photo album of sorts with captions explaining each of the images.

To view it, just follow this link:

Чорнобиль (Chornobyl), Trip #2

And click on the first photo. To flip through the album, just click on the photo that is currently on your screen, or click "next" in the upper-right-hand corner of your screen.

I couldn't fit all of the photos in one album, so I had to create a second one on the same site. It's available at this link:

Чорнобиль (Chornobyl), Trip #2 (Continued)

The links to these albums (and others) are also available under the "My Photos" section on the tool bar to the right.
_________________________________

In case you're curious, the boy with me is my boyfriend Reid (also a senior at Duke) who was wonderful enough to come visit me in Ukraine for 10 days (and crazy enough to want to go to Chernobyl, too).

The world's most bizarre day trip: Chernobyl

2007-08-17T09:50:00.001-04:00

I apologize for the blogging hiatus, but the past two weeks have been an absolute whirlwind. Since my last post I’ve taken two separate Chernobyl excursions, flown in a creaky, Soviet-era Yak-42 airliner, swam in the Black Sea, and explored a secret Soviet submarine factory. I’ve seen so much and done so much that I’ll never be able to sum up my array of experiences in a lifetime of blog entries... Still, I will try my best to give you an idea of what I did during this ultra-packed stretch of my Ukraine trip through words and lots of pictures.

Let’s start from the beginning. On August 8, I went on my first excursion to Chernobyl. RCRM booked the trip, so my companions were all scientists and doctors from the hospital. The excursion was arranged by the Chernobyl NPP, and our guide was a plant employee who spoke Russian.

My second trip came three days later, on August 11. This excursion was arranged by a great local travel agency called Solo East. It was less official than my other tour, and more geared towards English-speaking tourists. This tour was better in many ways because the guide took more risks to show us places to take photos. However, I had to pay about $145 for the Solo East tour, whereas the official tour was free. I will dedicate this first post to my official tour, and the next post to my Solo East tour.

The weather was appropriately dreary the morning of August 8. From the hospital, we packed into a van and drove north for about 2 hours until we reached the first checkpoint.

This gate marks the entrance to the 30-km Exclusion Zone. A stone-faced guard examined all of our passports before granting us entry. From there, we drove for another 30 minutes until we arrived in the village of Chernobyl (not to be confused with the Chernobyl NPP, which is about 10 km away), where we stopped briefly for snacks. Chernobyl is a functioning town, but most of its inhabitants are NPP workers who only live there temporarily during working shifts. It’s technically supposed to be an evacuated village, but there are about 100 “self settlers” who returned after the accident against the wishes of the government.

From Chernobyl village, we made our way down the road to the Chernobyl NPP.

We drove around a bit to snap photos of the damaged reactor, above. Then, we pulled into the plant’s administrative offices (which were located in the same row of buildings as the damaged reactor… yikes) for a lecture.

In the model above, you can see the four reactors that were once operational at the Chernobyl NPP; all of them are contained in that long building in the center, with the damaged reactor #4 on the far right (encased in the black shelter).

After the lecture, and to my complete surprise, we drove right up to the damaged reactor.

There was a small museum there, which contained a very neat and painstakingly detailed model of the damaged reactor.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the original reactor sarcophagus was only meant to last 20 years, so it has many structural problems today, 21 years after the accident. Our guide described some of the work that has already been done to stabilize the reactor. On the bottom half of the poster below, you can see two diagrams of the shelter wall: a “before” and an “after” shot.

As you can see from the drawing on the left, the shelter’s scaffolding was not supporting this particular wall very well, so the weak wall had to bear most of the weight of the roof. This situation was very dangerous since one heavy rainstorm could potentially increase the weight of the roof enough to crumble the wall. In the diagram to the right, you can see the changes they made to translate the weight off of the wall and onto the scaffolding. Fixes like this one are only temporary, however, which is why the Ark is being constructed.

Above is a wall poster from the museum about the SIP project, a.k.a. Ark building project.

We next made our way to the abandoned city of Pripyat, located 2 km from the plant. This was my favorite part of the trip. Pripyat had been a bustling young town of about 50,000 people (mostly NPP workers and their families) when the Chernobyl disaster occurred. After the accident, it was completely abandoned. During evacuations, people were told to bring with them only their money and important papers as they would be returning in 3 days. Thus, everything was left in Pripyat as it had been in 1986; only Mother Nature and a few looters have disturbed the town since then. It was a haunting site.

One of the women in our group was a Pripyat evacuee in 1986. We explored her old apartment together:

We also went into the city’s cultural center. It was disturbing to see the amount of destruction 20 years can do.

When I was in Pripyat, I couldn't help imagining myself in a sci-fi scenario. I felt as if I had been thawed after being frozen for thousands of years, only to find that humans had mysteriously disappeared during this time, leaving just the ruins of human civilization in tact. I wonder how many more decades it will take until Pripyat is completely unrecognizable - 100 years? 500 years? It was a bizarre, unforgettable experience to be in Pripyat.

Before leaving the Exclusion Zone, we all endured a frightening few moments as we stepped into a body dosimeter. Fortunately, all of us registered "clear."

Stay tuned - I have a whole other version of this story to tell in my next post.

Musings about the liquidators

2007-08-09T10:21:00.000-04:00

As you can see from the interview summaries I posted last week (here, here, and here), the Chernobyl liquidators share many of the same grievances. Namely, they feel cheated by government officials, whom they think ought to provide them with more social benefits for the sacrifices they made in the Exclusion Zone.

The liquidators are certainly entitled to such benefits. In fact, they are essentially war veterans because, whether they had a choice about it or not, they willingly faced an insidious force to protect their country. Just like war veterans, they sacrificed their own well being for the well being of their countrymen. Nevertheless, I see two factors that complicate the situation regarding their social benefits:

1. There have been few scientific links made between illnesses of the liquidators and ionizing radiation. As you can see from the interviews, almost all of the liquidators attribute their current state of health to radiation exposure. But, you must also keep in mind that these men are growing older, and illness is a natural part of the aging process. Ultimately, the liquidators are not that much sicker than other Ukrainians in their age bracket. From the International Atomic Energy Agency:

The cancer and death rate studies that have been conducted among samples of the recorded liquidators have shown no direct correlation between radiation exposure at Chernobyl and increased cancer or death rates. The correlation between psychological problems and the status of liquidator is more clearly drawn, although the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic troubles in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus may also be factors for psychological stress.

2) Ukraine is a poor and - to be quite honest - somewhat corrupt country. It’s not as if the liquidators are the only deserving group to not receive enough benefits from the government. Seniors, children, invalids, veterans, etc. are also struggling to live on the meager hryvnas given to them by the Ukrainian government. Now, I don’t want to downplay the heroism of the liquidators, and they are certainly entitled to public funds, but are they more entitled than sick children? Veterans of the Afghan War? The elderly? Their plight is a valid one, but it also one that is shared by every Ukrainian claiming public benefits.

Lately, I have been learning a lot about the economic situation in Ukraine from real Ukrainians, and the picture they have painted for me is not a very happy one. Jobs are scarce, especially outside the cities. Wealth is distributed very unevenly, leaving virtually no middle class. Politicians and a few businessmen possess the bulk of the country’s money, so it’s hard for Ukrainians too pull themselves up without 1) doing something illegal; 2) making connections with the politicians; or 3) some combination of both (as is often the case). There is a sense of hopelessness among some Ukrainians, who realize that no matter how hard they try, and no matter how educated they are, they will never be able attain a certain standard of living. It’s depressing to see and learn these lessons, and it makes me appreciate how lucky I am to have been born in America, where the prospect of upward mobility is such a given in our culture that it is often taken for granted.

Ukraine wants to join the EU. But, until it works out its economic and political problems, I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Somehow, the country needs to remove corruption from its government and create more jobs for people. I’m not an economist, but it seems to me that these are two quite hefty tasks.

More sightseeing in Kyiv

2007-08-06T14:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I had another interesting weekend of sightseeing in Kyiv! My first stop was the Chernobyl Museum, located in the quaint mercantile quarter of Podil:

The museum did a great job of presenting its collection of historical artifacts (ID cards, newspaper articles, even a gilded church alter that was salvaged from an evacuated village) in a symbolic and very dramatic way. For example, in the exhibit below, you can see an apple tree (the museum’s symbol for the Chernobyl disaster) growing through a cradle. Surrounding the cradle on the floor are photographs of Chernobyl evacuees. Very moving.

Above is a picture of my English-language tour guide pointing out the boundaries of the Exclusion Zone. I was surprised to learn that such a small museum offered an English-language tour, until I realized that the majority of it patrons seemed to be American tourists. My theory is that this is because the museum is prominently featured in Lonely Planet’s guidebook on Ukraine, which is pretty much the only English-language travel guide available about the country. Turns out, most Ukrainians haven’t even heard about the Chernobyl museum (including the doctors at RCRM, who treat Chernobyl victims on a daily basis…).

Above, another dramatic exhibit.

After visiting the museum, my Ukrainian friend insisted I try some real Ukrainian fast food:

The name of the restaurant, “Smacha Kartoplia,” means “Tasty Potato” in English. To order, you pick two salads from a display, which are then plopped into the middle of a twice-baked cheesy potato. We got crab salad and mushroom salad in ours. (Note: In Ukraine, the word “salad” by no means denotes a healthy bed of mixed greens – as you can see, it’s always some combination of meat, pickles, and mayonnaise.)

After gorging on tasty potatoes, we worked it all off by climbing Andriyivsky uzviz, or Andrew’s descent, to St. Andrew’s Church:

The bronze people I am clutching above are characters from an old film called Za Dvoma Zaytsamty. The title means “chasing two hares” and comes from an ancient Ukrainian proverb. In the movie, a poor Ukrainian barber in late-19th-century Kyiv puts on airs to woo two wealthy women but is exposed for his duplicity.

Above, statue of Cossack hero Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

Since it was Saturday, the brides were out in droves again. Here is a young couple posing for a photo in front of some statues of great Slavs. I think they represented Princess Olha, St. Cyril and St. Methodius (the founders of the Slavic alphabet), and Apostle Andriy.

We took the “funicular,” or cable car, down the steep hillside back to Podil.

I love this city! Next post – as promised – my take on the situation of the liquidators.

The Chernobyl liquidators: incredible men with incredible stories (Part 3)

2007-08-03T10:34:00.000-04:00

This weekend, I will write an analysis of what I've learned so far from the liquidators and about the liquidators. But for now, here are a few more interview summaries:

Liquidator #7 - bus driver and strawberry wine enthusiast

Liquidator #7 was working for a construction organization in 1986. He remembers that it was a religious holiday (probably Orthodox Easter) when he first heard about the accident. His family had gone to church, and on the way back, they saw many buses headed to Chernobyl.

He also remembers that he had a garden full of strawberries. He was told not to eat them after the disaster because they were contaminated, but he had also been told to drink one glass of red wine every day as protection against radiation. So, he picked the strawberries and stored them in the sun until they became like wine. Since strawberry wine is red, he and his family and friends drank it all month, just like the officials said. The wine was very good, and he was very happy about this.

Liquidator #7’s job in Chernobyl was as a bus driver. He transported people to and from the clean part of the Exclusion Zone to the "dirty" part, where the Chernobyl NPP was. In 1986, he did this in Chernobyl for only one day. Then, he did it again from 1988 to 1990. It was one of the best paying jobs in Chernobyl at that time. He could spend 2 weeks at home and 2 weeks at work, and the payment was 4 times as big as it was in Kyiv. He chose to go to Chernobyl for the money.

There was nothing to be scared of, in his opinion. He changed his clothes often, and he cleaned himself a lot. His bus was quite contaminated, so he had to wash it many times.

He has had health problems since 1990, and he is ready for death. He does not know if radiation caused his illnesses – but half of his friends are now dead. They were liquidators, too.

If he could go back, he would make the same decision to go to Chernobyl. This is because he has children and grandchildren, and they have to be saved.

He does not think the Ukrainian government has treated him well at all. In his opinion, the politicians think only about themselves, not about the Ukrainian people. In his own words, “damn the government.”

Liquidator #8 - gas, oil, and kerosene delivery man

Liquidator #8 was born in the Luhansk Oblast in 1951. He heard about the accident at home, from his friends. He had no reaction to the news.

He was called to liquidation by the military department of his city in 1987. He had no choice about going there. His name was put on a special list. Everyone on this list was given a medical exam, and the next day they were all sent to Chernobyl.

Liquidator #8 was a driver in Chernobyl, transporting gas, oil, and kerosene. He was in the Exclusion Zone for 3 months. He had some problems with his health while he was inside the Zone – headaches and a cough – but when he left, everything became okay for a while. He was not informed about the risks of working in Chernobyl. He was only told which roads he was supposed to drive on. He was not scared.

Liquidator #8 has had very big problems with his health since 1987. He has not been able to work since 1990. He has problems talking and writing, and he has very bad headaches. He received an official irradiated dose of 8.149 roentgens; however, he thinks that his actual dose was higher. He thinks radiation caused his health problems.

He is very sad about the situation he is in. In his mind, he was “broken” during his time in Chernobyl, but he has received no benefits for the work he did there.

Given the current level of attention he receives from the Ukrainian government, he would not have agreed to be a liquidator if he could go back in time. The pension he receives for his lost health is too small. He would like to receive more social benefits from the government, such as a bigger pension and a better apartment than he has now.

Liquidator #9 - wall destroyer

Liquidator #9 was born in the Sumy Oblast in 1958. He heard about the Chernobyl disaster on the television. His reaction was negative, but he had no anxiety about it.

The military asked him to go to Chernobyl in 1987. His name was on their “list.” He had no choice in going; in fact, he feared that he would go to prison if he refused.

Liquidator #9’s job was to remove the old, bad layer of matter from the reactor walls. He was not told about the risks. Since he had no choice about going to Chernobyl, it “did not matter whether he was scared or not.” He was called there for 180 days, but he ended up being in Chernobyl for only 42 days.

He received an irradiated dose of 9.1 roentgens. Since 1987, he has had headaches, back pain, and leg and hand pain. It seems to him that his irradiated dose caused these problems.

Even for a lot of money, he would never go back to Chernobyl.

He does not think that the Ukrainian government cares about the liquidators.

The Chernobyl liquidators: incredible men with incredible stories (Part 2)

2007-08-01T13:57:00.000-04:00

Hallway in the radiation clinic at RCRM, where liquidators come for medical treatment

I've been working furiously to transcribe the rest of these liquidator interviews. Below are three more. I think you may find them even more interesting than the first three. (Liquidator #6 was especially chatty.)

Liquidator #4 - delivery driver

Liquidator #4 was on vacation in his dacha in 1986. He had no reaction to the news of the Chernobyl disaster. He did not think it was serious.

He was a delivery driver in Chernobyl. He made his first trip to the site on the 5th of May. He took part in the transport of wares, water, and food. He was ordered to Chernobyl by the government. He did not have a choice in going there.

He was aware of the risks of working in an irradiated environment, but he was not scared. He was in Chernobyl until the end of summer, making delivery trips every other day.

Liquidator #4 has had problems with his vessels and thyroid gland recently. He also has had some back pain. He does not know if radiation exposure caused his health problems. However, he recalls that when he was making trips to Chernobyl, he had medical exams every month. The doctors did not find any problems with his health (although they did tell him it would be best for him to stop making trips to Chernobyl).

His car was cleaned many times while he worked in Chernobyl, because it was quite contaminated with radiation. In fact, it was once cleaned so well that the paint was stripped off. He never had to destroy it.

On a scale of 1 to 5, he rates his care from the government at a 2. He has concerns that some of the money that is allocated to Chernobyl liquidators and evacuees is being laundered by politicians.

If he could go back to 1986, he would not be a liquidator.

Liquidator #5 - special structures expert

Liquidator #5 was a military specialist in “special structures” in 1986. The Soviet Army gave him only 30 minutes to report to the Chernobyl site after the accident happened. He did not have a choice in going there.

He was not scared, and he said that he was informed of the risks of working in an irradiated environment. According to him, under the Soviet Union, all children studied radiation in school. It was part of the civil defense program.

Liquidator #5 was in the Chernobyl zone for 75 days, nonstop. He took part in the building of roads to the reactor and to the Chernobyl station. He received an official irradiated dose of 18 roentgens, but he is not sure if this number is accurate.

Liquidator #5 has had many health problems since 1986. In his own words, his “organism” is destroyed. He has ulcers, big problems with the vessels in his legs and head, hypertension, and so on. He thinks that his irradiated dose caused his health problems because he was healthy before the Chernobyl accident.

He cannot even estimate the help that the government has given him, because it is so low.

Knowing what he knows now, he would go to Chernobyl again. This is because the health of his children and his family must come first; his own health comes second in such a situation.

Liquidator #6 - upstanding Communist

Liquidator #6 heard about the Chernobyl accident while traveling to Russia to visit his parents. He was driving through Kharkiv, Ukraine, when the road police stopped his car. They asked him if he knew about the accident. He did not, so they told him the details. At first he thought that the news was not true, because he knew that nuclear reactors had seven levels of defense. But the road police insisted that it had happened, and they went on to measure his car for radiation (which was present).

In 1986, Liquidator #6 was working for the same construction firm that had built the destroyed reactor in Chernobyl. In fact, he was secretary of the Communist Party within this organization. When he and his fellow workers were asked to volunteer to be liquidators, he saw that no one wanted to do it. Because he wanted to set a good “Communist” example for them, he was the first to say, “I will go to Chernobyl.” He was quite surprised by the second person to volunteer: it was a Latin American worker who had been educated at Patris Lumumba University in Moscow. It was funny to him that this Latin American man was so willing to go to Chernobyl for the defense of Ukraine.

Officially, all liquidators were supposed to be 35+ years old and to have had their children already, but his group consisted of three quite young men. He was the oldest. They were taken by car to Vyshhorod. A group of forty people was formed there, and all of them were taken by bus to Chernobyl. His job was to supervise the transport of inert materials such as sand, bitumen, and gravel. In one day, he remembers transferring 20,000 cubic meters of material.

In his opinion, no one was scared to work in Chernobyl because no one knew anything about radiation. He personally was not scared because he had been in Syria in 1973, when it was attacked by Israel. There, he took part in the evacuation of 7,500 people. Driving an Italian bus, he evacuated women and children, and bombs were dropping constantly. In Chernobyl, there was nothing to be scared of – no noises, no smells, no heat. He had no reason to be scared.

Officially, his group of three was supposed to be changed after 7 days because they were working 800 meters from the NPP. However, they were not changed, and they ended up working a full month under the reactor.

He remembers that on May 20th, more than 4,000 people from all over the Soviet Union were in Chernobyl. Almost all of them wore white lab coats lined with 250 mm (EDIT: the translator probably meant µm) of metal. The Soviet government thought that such coats would protect people from the radiation. However, in his opinion, the lab coats were an insufficient defense.

Liquidator #6 has had lots of health problems since 1990. He had prostate surgery in 1999 and a stroke in 2000. Before that, he had a stomach ulcer, hypertension, pancreas problems, blood pressure issues, and so on. He received an official irradiated dose of 26 roentgens, but he thinks that this number is wrong.

He believes that radiation caused his health problems. He was very healthy before the Chernobyl accident; he worked a lot and had a very strong “organism” and immune system. But after the accident, he began to recognize big problems with his health. He has calculated that he has a total of 16 chronic diseases now. In his own words, there are no organs that work well in his body.

He regrets his decision to go to Chernobyl. The “Chernobyl situation” (the liquidator problem) is very bad now. Liquidators need 26 million hryvnas per year to cover the cost of living and receiving health care, but they only receive 10 percent of this sum from the government. He has no money in his family budget to cover his health costs.

He is angry with the Ukrainian government. Since they destroyed his health, he thinks that they should pay for it. He needs 300 or 400 hryvna per month to cover his disease treatments, but he officially receives only 12 hryvnas per month. He has had to ask the president of the Chernobyl Union for money.

The Chernobyl liquidators: incredible men with incredible stories (Part 1)

2007-07-31T14:07:00.000-04:00

Memorial to Chernobyl liquidators at Mitino Cemetery, Moscow

The past two days have definitely been the most interesting for me research-wise since I arrived in Ukraine. I've been interviewing Chernobyl liquidators non-stop, and it's amazing to me how brave, how open, and just how damn interesting they all are.

So far, I have finished transcribing three of the interviews from my audio recordings. Thus, without further ado, let me introduce you to Liquidators #1, #2, and #3:

Liquidator #1 - physics teacher

Liquidator #1 was a physics teacher in the Zhytomyr Oblast in 1986. His workplace was 22 km from the Chernobyl NPP. He recalls that the reaction to the accident in his village was not very serious. Most people did not understand what had happened. However, as a physics teacher, he understood the severity of the disaster better than most.

Liquidator #1 voluntarily took part in the evacuation of his region, helping evacuate children in particular. One of the things he did was help children find their parents in the event that they were separated.

He lived in the Zhytomyr Oblast until 1998, at which time he moved to the Carpathian region (in the west). It was a little scary for him to work so close to the NPP after the accident happened. Evacuations were not well organized at all; people were told that they could return later, which was a lie. Old people in particular resisted.

We talked about his many health problems – cardiovascular diseases, pyschological diseases, neurological diseases. Liquidator #1 thinks that his health problems are partially due to radiation exposure, since his parents and grandparents all had unusually clean bills of health. Since 1988, not a year has passed where he wasn’t hospitalized.

Still, Liquidator #1 feels better now than he did 12 years ago. He has quit smoking and drinking, and he has started seeing a neurologist and a psychiatrist. He noted that under the Soviet Union it was frowned upon to see such doctors. People did not want to be categorized as psychologically-ill. Today, there is more freedom to choose the physician you need.

If he could go back in time, he would not change his decision to be a liquidator. He thinks that people need to help each other. He does not consider what he did to be very “special.”

He thinks that the care he receives from the Ukrainian government could be better.

Liquidator #2 - Metrostroy operator

Liquidator #2 was a Metrostroy operator in Kyiv in 1986. Metrostroy was the construction agency that built the Kyiv Metro. He and his colleagues were asked to go to Chernobyl soon after the disaster. In fact, they were the second group of workers to go there. (The first were the firemen.) Their job was to seal the floor of the reactor with metal insulation and concrete so that irradiated matter would not seep into the groundwater.

He agreed to go to Chernobyl out of patriotism. In his own words, if he did not do it, who would? He compared his choice to the choice of Soviet soldiers in WWII.

Liquidator #2 was informed of the risks of working in an irradiated environment. He was not frightened. Still, he received an irradiated dose of 28.2 roentgens over the three days he worked in Chernobyl. After recording this dose, he was forced to stop working at Chernobyl because the legal maximum dosage in 1986 was 25 roentgens. (Today, the official dosage limit is 2 roentgens per year.)

He has had health problems since 1986, which he partially attributes to his irradiated dose.

If he could go back to 1986, he would make the same choice to go to Chernobyl. In his own words, “this is our country, and somebody has to do it.”

We discussed the amount of attention the Ukrainian government gives liquidators. Liquidator #2 thinks that it is not enough, but it is still a little bit more attention than is given to pensioners, children, etc.

Liquidator #3 - mechanic

Liquidator #3 was a mechanic in the Poltova Oblast in 1986. The Soviet Military Office drafted him to Chernobyl, where his job was to remove irradiated matter from the third reactor’s roof. He had no choice about going there; he had to be a liquidator.

He was never officially told about the risks of working in an irradiated environment.

He received an irradiated dose of 25 roentgens over the two and a half months he spent in Chernobyl. Since this was the maximum limit in 1986, he had to leave the site after recording this dosage.

Liquidator #3 thinks that his irradiated dose has caused his many health problems.

He does not think that the Ukrainian government has taken good care of him. He wishes they would give him more “human attention.” He has been forced to figure out his problems for himself, even though he served his country in Chernobyl and in the Afghanistan War.

So, would you like to work on the Ark?

2007-07-29T16:28:00.000-04:00

Check out that Ukrainian sky...

Reproduced below is a list of the risks faced by personnel who are working on the Ark:

Potential radiation risks of the "Shelter" personnel are the following:
Job activities inside the 'hot cell' (the "open" plutonium area);
External exposure;
High risk of radionucleotide inhalation;
High risk of radionucleotide absorption through cuts and/or wounds;
High risk of a combination of severe injuries and intensive contamination of open tissues or inhalation of radioactive materials;
Influence of high temperatures, hypoxia, and heat stress; and
Synergism of radiological risk within general industrial risks.
The additional hazardous factors are as follows:
Aggressive chemical aerosols, including welding aerosols;
High humidity and uncomfortable temperatures at any time of the year;
Absence of a forced exchange ventilation system inside the Object Shelter;
Insufficient and artificial illumination;
Presence of "confined spaces" in most of Object Shelter's rooms;
Work at heights;
Presence of debris and difficult access to workplaces in elevated ionizing radiation fields;
Influence of personal protective equipment; and
Probable synergistic effect of numerous hazardous factors.
Also, personnel will be exposed to factors stipulated by a shift type mode of work in the Exclusion Zone - shift in dietary regimen and type, accommodation in hotels, regime-stipulated restrictions in the Exclusion Zone, etc.

Not the most pleasant job, eh? In my interviews, I've been asking ICARR scientists what they thinks motivates the Ark workers to seek jobs in Chernobyl. So far, the answer has always been, "They can't find a job anywhere else."
___________________________________

This week I will be interviewing Chernobyl liquidators. These people were drafted to the Chernobyl site immediately after the disaster and helped to clean up the plant premises and the surrounding area. Generally, they were men aged 20 to 45. They were mostly plant employees, Ukrainian firefighters, plus many soldiers and miners from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and other parts of the then Soviet Union.

The exact number of liquidators is unknown as no completely accurate records were kept of the people involved in the clean-up. However, more than 700,000 people who were involved (both on- and off-site) in tackling the accident’s aftermath were eventually granted the status of liquidator, and were provided special government benefits.

Ukraine spends about five percent of its annual budget on benefits for Chernobyl liquidators, which include a housing subsidy and free public transportation use. They come to RCRM for health care.

I'd like to know just how informed they were about risk when they went to work at the Chernobyl site... Also, why did they decide to go there? (or did they even have a choice?) Here are some of the questions I plan to ask them:

Where were you when you first heard about the Chernobyl disaster?
What was your reaction to it? Did you think it was serious, not serious?
Who asked you to be a liquidator?
Why did you agree?
Did you want to go to Chernobyl?
Did you have a choice about going there?
Were you aware of the risks of working in Chernobyl? Did anyone tell you about the dangers? (If no: Would you have agreed to be a liquidator if you had known about the risks?)
Were you scared about going there?
What did you do as a liquidator?

Etc, etc. I think the liquidator interviews will be very relevant to my project because I should be able to draw parallels between their situation and the situation of the Ark workers today.

Unfortunately, since the men won't speak English, I'm sure the language barrier will be an issue. (It's even an issue with the scientists who speak decent English.) I will have a translator with me - probably one of the RCRM people - but I've noticed that some questions just don't translate well. Here's to hoping the big ideas get through, at least.
___________________________________

On a lighter note - I did some more sightseeing this weekend:

Statue at the Dnipro metro station.

Incredible Chimera building, now used as a presidential administrative office.

A close-up of one of the chimera.

Friendship of Nations Monument, celebrating the 1654 "unification" of Russia and Ukraine.

At the Pyrohovo Museum of Folk Architecture & Everyday Life. It's an open-air, living history museum (think Williamsburg, VA) that is divided into seven "villages" representing different regional areas of Ukraine.

There were lots of windmills on the property.

This was taken in the Carpathian village, I think.

If you'd like to see more pictures, I've posted the links to my online photo albums on the bar to the right.

It's been a week!

2007-07-25T14:46:00.000-04:00

(from pizdaus.com/)
Lenin sinks a three.

Tomorrow morning marks my first week in Kyiv, and what a week it's been. I've made some friends, seen some sights,

eaten some real Ukrainan food, and learned a whole lot about ICARR.

I also began conducting interviews with scientists at RCRM. Sometimes the language barrier makes it hard for my interviewees to understand certain questions, but with patience I can usually make myself understood. I've found it useful to give a typed copy of my questions to my interviewees, since many of them are stronger at reading English than at hearing it. I've been recording my interviews with a digital voice recorder, and I plan to spend some time this weekend listening to them and transcribing them.

I am looking forward to talking to Ark workers, hopefully next week. (Since it's summer, check-in controls and special controls happen less frequently, and we didn't have any this week.) I should also know more details about my trip to Chernobyl with RCRM.

I'm absolutely exhausted... research is hard work!

Q & A about ICARR and Chernobyl

2007-07-24T10:42:00.000-04:00

Fountain at Maydan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square)

Yesterday, I spent the day reading RTI International’s proposal to the Department of Energy regarding the ICARR study. The hefty document was published about a year ago, on June 13, 2006. It answered many of my lingering questions about ICARR, which I have summarized in Q and A format below.

However, before I begin, I would like to introduce some new terms.

In Ukraine, what I have been calling “the Ark building project” is more commonly known as “the Chernobyl Shelter Implementation Plan,” or “SIP.” I will be using both terms interchangeably from now on.
Ukrainian scientists have a special name for the old, deteriorating sarcophagus: “Object Shelter” or “Shelter Object.” It sounds a little strange in English, but I will be using the term from this point on when it is convenient for me to do so.
NSC = New Safe Confinement = “The Ark” (see below)
The acronym “ICARR” technically refers to the group of institutions who form the International Consortium for Applied Radiation Research (Duke, RTI, RCRM, etc.). The real name for project itself is the “Chernobyl Research and Service Project (CRSP).” However, according to my mentor, people are now just calling CRSP “ICARR,” as I have been.
Up to this point I have been using the Russian transliteration of “Chernobyl” instead of the Ukrainian “Chornobyl.” I generally prefer to use the Ukrainian version (which is why I write Kyiv instead of Kiev), but since I have used “Chernobyl” for over two months (and since it’s the most familiar version for Americans) I’m not going to change it now. But just know that Chernobyl and Chornobyl are one in the same thing!

Q & A

_________________________________

Q: What organization funded the Ark building project (a.k.a. Chernobyl Shelter Implementation Plan [SIP])?

A: The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, which is comprised of 28 countries, including the US.

Q: Which engineering firms were hired to design the Ark?

A: Bechtel International Systems (they designed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the Athens Metro, and the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State), Battelle Memorial Institute, and Electricite de France.

Q: What are researchers so interested in SIP?

A: There is currently a lack of baseline and longitudinal time series measurements on the health effects of low-level radiation in humans. The ICARR project would solve this problem. By studying workers conducting renewed clean-up efforts at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP), researchers may be able to characterize how the human body reacts to low-level radiation before, during, and after exposure.

Q: When did SIP begin, and how many workers are expected to work on it?

A: Hiring of workers began in 2004; 10,000 to 15,000 people will have worked on it by 2010.

Q: What are the roles of the various institutions involved in ICARR?

A: RCRM conducts entry and follow-up medical surveillance and worker safety programs.
RTI International creates and maintains the project’s data coordinating center. It also serves as the main contractor.
Duke University organizes the service and research projects.
UNC-Asheville (and also RCRM) conducts biological and public health oriented research.
Together, these four institutions comprise the International Consortium for Applied Radiation Research, or ICARR.

ChNPP by satellite

Q: What are ICARR’s major activities?

A: 1) Conducting hypothesis driven genomic, biological, and prospective epidemiologic research approved by an external committee, and 2) providing medical care and public health services to improve the quality of life for workers. Bio-specimens are being collected and stored; information is being shared between the four ICARR institutions via a health information exchange system on the Internet; and a time series of measurements on workers is being collected.

Q: So ICARR is not a specific research project in itself, but rather the name of the plan to create a scientific infrastructure in Chernobyl?

A: Correct. ICARR is laying the foundation for researchers to design prospective studies – observational or experimental – as well as for them to provide public health and medical services in Chernobyl.

Q: How does the ICARR project (a.k.a. CRSP) compare to other studies on low-level radiation in humans?

A: ICARR is the largest project ever undertaken to collect and analyze a combination of clinical and genomic information related to low-level human radiation exposure as exposure occurs.

Q: How did the researchers manage to convince the Department of Energy to fund such an expensive project?

A: In their proposal, they repeatedly emphasized that a major health threat to the US and world community is the purposeful misuse of ionizing radiation as a weapon of terrorism. They made it clear that ICARR would help to counteract this threat by generating research.

Q: What hypotheses are ICARR project developers putting forth?

A: That ionizing radiation, even at low doses, can be manifest in changes of molecular profiles obtained from whole blood, and that these profiles can be used to develop predictive models for exposure. Also, that this information can be mechanistically linked to diseases and outcomes of interest, and that specific exposure-response biomarkers can be determined.

Q: How much fuel remains in the Shelter Object?

A: Since the disaster on April 26, 1986, over 95% (or 180 tons) of irradiated nuclear fuel is still inside the Shelter Object.

Q: What were the health effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the community?

A: There has been an increase in leukemia and cardiovascular disease in liquidators, evacuees, and residents. Also, there was an increase in thyroid cancer in children. Interestingly, according to the DoE proposal, there has been no increase in birth defects. (The film Chernobyl Heart begs to differ – see my previous post here.)

Q: What exactly are the risks for workers in Chernobyl?

A: Due to the “unique origination of the Shelter Object,” radiation hygienic conditions cannot be made in compliance with world safety standards. Workers will be exposed to fission and activation products (90Sr and 137Cs) as well as TUE radionucleotides (238Pu, 239Pu, 240Pu, 241Pu, and 241Am). Employment at SIP is particularly dangerous because these radiological risks are combined with the general industrial risks associated with building a giant steel-and-concrete structure. The job places extreme requirements on workers’ somatic health and psycho-physiological capabilities.

Q: Are the workers reimbursed for participating in ICARR?

A: Not exactly. Participants are informed of the research objectives of the study, and their participation is sought in the spirit of altruism and community health promotion. However, when their blood is first taken, participants are reimbursed 100 UAH (= 20 USD) for their time. 100 UAH is about one-tenth of the average Ukrainian monthly salary.

Q: Can you describe the different medical examinations that workers must undergo?

A: 1. Individual Inspection Control Exam – a periodic medical exam, the timing of which is determined by the medical classification of the worker (i.e. how likely he is to get sick).
2. Special Control Exam – an extensive medical and psychological exam conducted on workers who are found to exceed existing standards for radiation control. It is used to reclassify and reconfirm worker eligibility.
3. Current (Pre-Shift) Exam – a daily exam conducted at the ChNPP.
4. Periodic Control Exam – a general medical exam conducted once yearly.
5. Output Control Exam – an extensive series of medical and psychological exams conducted on all workers leaving employment at SIP.

Q: Can you describe the process for gathering specimen from Ark workers?

A: At each worker’s baseline and follow-up medical exams, a researcher collects blood for DNA genotyping and epigenetic analysis; RNA for gene expression analysis; and serum for protein and metabolite profiling. The process takes about 5 minutes. After collection, the specimens are split into duplicate sets, bar-coded, and then sent one to a Ukrainian facility, and one to the US.

Q: How detailed is the information that ICARR researchers have collected on workers?

A: The combination of longitudinal clinical information and biological data gives researchers an exquisitely detailed molecular phenotype of each worker related to his ionizing radiation dosage.

Q: What’s an example of the types of research that will be conducted within the ICARR infrastructure?

A: One of the start-up projects was designed by a scientist at Duke. He plans to do gene expression analysis of the peripheral blood from Ark workers to develop a molecular signature of human radiation exposure. His goal is to be able to quantify or predict an individual’s susceptibility to disease based on radiation dose.

Q: What’s an example of the types of services that will be provided to workers within the ICARR infrastructure?

A: Stem cell therapy services will be provided to the 200-400 workers at highest risk of exposure who are involved in early structural stabilization. Researchers in Ukraine have stored their hematopoietic progenitors for this specific purpose.

Ukrainian Street Performer Breaks it Down

2007-07-23T16:57:00.001-04:00

I made this video of a break dancer performing in a square on Khreshchatyk St, right near my apartment. These guys are out there every evening, and I love watching them.

Bridge Jumping on the Dnipro

2007-07-23T16:55:00.001-04:00

Here's a short video I made yesterday of bridge jumpers at Hyrdropark, a beach/recreation center on an island in the Dnipro river. Can you catch all three jumpers? Also, don't miss the friendly Ukrainian 6 seconds from the end.

Sightseeing weekend - Rodina Mat and the Caves Monastery

2007-07-22T06:55:00.000-04:00

This weekend, a friend from RTI took me around some of the major sights in Kyiv. Everything I saw was surprisingly beautiful and awe-inspiring.

The statue above is Rodina Mat (literally Nation's Mother, but formally called the Defense of the Motherland Monument). She's 62 m tall, bears a soviet seal on her shield, and is highly visible from many parts of the city.

Notice how her sword is blunt? According to my friend, the original builders were forced to cut off the tip because it had made Rodina Mat taller than the tallest of the nearby Orthodox churches, which was not allowed.

I told her that we have a similar rule at Duke: no building can be taller than the Duke Chapel. In fact, the only one that comes close to its height is the Schwartz-Butters Building, at the top of which is Coach K's office. (That tells you something about how Duke students view the relationship between basketball and God.)

This is a picture of me in the Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra, where tourists and Orthodox pilgrims alike flock. A lavra is a senior monastery, while pecherska means "of the caves." This is holy ground - the holiest in the country. My guidebook says that its the single most fascinating and extensive tourist sight in Kyiv, and I believe it. The Lavra's tight cluster of gold-domed churches was a absolute feast for my eyes:

Near the monk's living quarters.

At the entrance. Supposedly there are also underground labyrinths filled with mummified monks, but we were too late to enter. Since they are a must see, I will probably come back sometime and take the English-language tour of the lower Lavra.

Me, with Dnipro River. I am posting this picture primarily because of the woman in the background. Ukrainian women dress to kill, and nothing is off limits style wise here. See-through shirts, crop tops, and high heels (often 4 inches high or more!) are all common dress.

My friend, who is a girl about my age, explains the phenomenon this way: there are fewer men than women in Kyiv (and Ukraine in general), so the girls have to dress sexy for reproductive survival. Unless a girl wants to be alone for the rest of her life, she must concentrate all the time on attracting a mate. As a result of all of this, she says, many Ukrainian men have started to a little act cocky, because they know they are in such high demand. My friend considers this a real problem for girls like her herself, who are more traditional and expect boyfriends to be gentlemen. :)

Near Slava (Glory) Park. It is traditional for newly-wed Ukrainian couples to have their picture taken near famous local monuments and sights. I must have seen at least 10 brides in this square alone.

At another WWII monument near Rodina Mat. It is located in a tunnel under an elevated walkway. There were many other incredible sculptural bas-reliefs like this, all in the Socialist Realist style.
____________________________________

That's all for now. I'm off to the beach this afternoon. We'll see how the banks of the Dnipro compare to the Chesapeake Bay.

Welcome to Kyiv!

2007-07-21T04:04:00.000-04:00

Requisite Lenin statue on Blvd. Taras Shevchenko

I arrived in Kyiv at 9 AM on Thursday morning. There is a 7-hour time difference between Ukraine and Virginia, so needless to say I was a little jet lagged. The first thing I noticed about Kyiv was its smell; there is a sort of constant musk here that is unlike anything I’ve experienced before. The second thing I noticed was the heat: it reached almost 100 degrees on Thursday.

RTI International arranged to have a driver pick me up at Borispol Airport, and together we drove to RTI’s offices, which are on Kyiv’s main street, Khreshchatyk, in an old, soviet-style apartment building.

There is a dearth of real office buildings in Kyiv, so it’s not unusual for businesses to use an apartment for their office space. RTI’s office/apartment is very modern, and about 30 people work there. On Friday, I even had the opportunity to attend an “office birthday party” there, which was much cooler than it sounds. The boss – a nice Slovak man who, hilariously, looks just like Ricky Gervais – hired a band and brought an enormous spread of food. In true Ukrainian manner, every five minutes or so someone from the office would make a speech about the birthday girl, singing her praises and raising a toast.

The folks at RTI brought me to my apartment at around 12:30 PM on Thursday. It’s a lovely place smack dab in the middle of Khreshchatyk Street. Nearby me are a market, an underground mall, more up-scale shopping, and many of the major government buildings (including the President’s Office and the Rada).

My building on Khreshchatyk

The view from my window.

I’m am so, so thankful that I took that Ukrainian class this summer, because there is absolutely no way I could have survived on my own in this city without it. As expected, many people speak Russian here, but everyone understands Ukrainian, and all of the signage is in Ukrainian. I’ve already used the language a lot, although not in very sophisticated ways. (E.g., at the market, pointing to a peach, shouting “Ya ho-choo!”, and stuffing 4 Hyrvna in the vender’s fist.)

Although RTI International, an American organization, made all of the arrangements for me to come to Kyiv, my research mentor is actually affiliated with the Ukrainian Research Center for Radiation Medicine, or RCRM. The Center is too far away to walk from Khreshchatyk, so I had to (gasp!) ride the metro on Friday morning. That was certainly an experience... the Kyiv metro does not have an intuitive design, and to make matters worse, all of the signage is in Cyrillic. It's truly a miracle that I made it through, and I have never been more proud of myself.

RCRM is a village of buildings that house offices, clinics, and laboratories:

EDIT: Despite the Soviet style, it was created in 1999 especially for dealing with the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. My mentor, Dr. Loganovsky, works in the main clinic. Each floor in his building is dedicated to treating different ailments associated with radiation exposure; there is a cardiology department, a pulminology department, etc. His is the psychoneurology department. There, they mainly treat organic mental disorders.

After sipping coffee together and discussing my project, Dr. Loganovsky asked another doctor on the ward, Maria, to take me on a tour of RCRM. She will serve as my mentor after Dr. Loganovsky goes on vacation in early August.

We soon made our way to the radiation dosimetry building. A very nice man showed me two pieces of equipment for detecting radiation in people. The first was a simple chair that is sat in by a patient for about 3 minutes. The man actually scanned me in it, but my levels were so low that the machine could not produce a reading.

The second apparatus is a more accurate “fully body counter” that takes about 20 minutes to produce a reading. To use it, a person crawls into a bed located in a small room lined with thick lead sheets. (According to the man, this lead was salvaged from old, WWII-era Soviet ships.) Under the bed are six scanners, and above the bed are two circular scanners that swing into place over the patient’s lungs. There is also a forehead scanner for detecting radionucleotides in the skull bone.

The man in the dosimetry department was very interested in scanning me with the full body counter. He rarely sees such “clean” subjects, he said. Even in Kyiv, there is a certain level of background radiation that is detectable in people who have lived there for a while. I honestly think he just saw me as an opportunity to calibrate his machinery. Nevertheless, I would have done the full body scan, but Maria was in a rush to leave. So, I told him, “another time.” (It will be interesting to scan myself again right before I leave, just to see if I managed to pick anything up!)

Before leaving RCRM, I asked Dr. Loganovsky if he or his colleagues went to Chernobyl often. I meant for this question to segue into an offer to go there, and he understood immediately.

“What, you want to go there? Young researchers always want to go there. Maria won’t go, but I go often. And we can try to get you there.”

Getting the clearance to go to Chernobyl is very difficult, he warned me. One must go through the government, and it often takes weeks. But he reassured me that it is perfectly safe. Fingers crossed!

________________________

The last thing they showed me at RCRM was a giant freezer full of samples, waiting to be shipped to Duke for analysis. Despite the fact that the freezer is set at -80 degrees, a small part of me wanted to crawl inside and let myself be sent back to Durham, where the language, customs, and people are more familiar.

But the rest of me was deliriously happy and content to be an ex-pat in Ukraine. Kyiv is a beautiful city, throbbing with culture and history. Although everything is foreign, including the smells, I am starting to really like it here.

Last post from America

2007-07-16T22:37:00.000-04:00

I got home from Pittsburgh at 2 AM this morning, which gives me only today and tomorrow to prepare for my flight on Wednesday.

Given that instead of packing, I spent most of today in a Volkswagen dealership, magically turning this -

- into this -

- I have even less time to pack than I anticipated. So, this post will be short and sweet.

I'm nervous about leaving for Ukraine. I know that the trip will be a life-changing experience, but I also have incredibly high expectations for myself that may prove difficult to live up to. I am so lucky to have found such an interesting thesis topic and to have been given an opportunity to pursue it in this way. If I don't do this project the justice it deserves, I know I will be frustrated with myself...

Hopefully this nervousness will wear away soon after I arrive in Kyiv. In fact, I'm confident it will, because this is going to be a fun and exciting adventure with no room for fear and nerves!

I'm bringing a good digital camera to Ukraine, so I will be supplementing my posts with lots of nice pictures. (No more of the camera-phone-quality stuff, thank goodness!) I may even try to make a movie or two.

Wish me bon voyage! And, if you have a few minutes, read this article from Discover magazine:

The First Nuclear Refugees Come Home
Chernobyl-area natives return to find a city of ghosts. By Maryann de Leo

______________________

[Just to explain the photos above: my car was totaled a few weeks ago after being struck on the side of the road (where it was parked) by a speeding criminal in a stolen car under police pursuit. I was in bed when the accident happened, and no one was injured. Insurance is giving me a hell of a time, but I should get back most of what I paid for the car. In the meantime, I went ahead and bought basically the exact same car from a dealer here in Virginia. "Safe Happens" is no joke - despite all that exterior damage, the cabin of my Jetta was untouched. After seeing that, I'm definitely a VW girl for life!]

Some notes about the Ukrainian language

2007-07-10T19:38:00.000-04:00

Since my summer course is coming to an end, I think it’s time for me to write about my impressions of the Ukrainian language:

1) Ukrainian is HARD.

It’s funny…I (reluctantly) took French in high school and college, and before this summer I would have told you that it was the absolute hardest language. However, after taking Ukrainian, I realize that the process of learning French was actually much quicker and much, much easier than the process of learning Ukrainian. Ukrainian is just so utterly different from English. According to the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State, Ukrainian is a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. This means it has “significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English” and takes, on average, 44 weeks or 1100 class hours to master. Other Category II languages include Farci, Vietnamese, Thai, Hindi, Hungarian, Urdu, and Hebrew.

French, Spanish, Italian, etc. are all Category I languages. They are closely related to English and take only 23-24 weeks or 575-600 class hours to master.

2) Ukrainian differs from English in interesting, but often frustrating ways.

First of all, Ukrainian uses a different alphabet than English. For me, the most noticeable consequence of this was that vocabulary did not stick in my head like it sometimes did in French. It’s very hard to memorize a word that looks different from anything you’ve heard in English and sounds different from anything you’ve heard in English.

For example, in French, the word for “blue” is simply “bleu.” It’s easy to retain in your memory because it looks English and sounds English. But in Ukrainian, it’s блакитний, which is pronounced kind of like bla-ke-tnee. Now, how on earth am I supposed to remember that?

Unlike English, Ukrainian is a declined language, which means that nouns and adjectives have different endings, depending on how they are used in a sentence. In English, we use word order and intonation for basic meaning; very few of our words change endings. In Ukrainian, however, it is the endings that convey meaning. Word order is flexible, something that is just used for emphasis and subtle shades of meaning. This definitely takes some getting used to… Ukrainian speakers can just throw the words out there any which way they want, but the meaning of the sentence is still retained.

So, for each noun and adjective you encounter in Ukrainian, you must learn their particular pattern of endings, based on the noun’s gender, number, and the case required for the function of the noun in the sentence.

The idea of case is something we don’t have in English. The best way to think about case is that it is a road map that tells you where things are going in a sentence and how they connect together. There are seven cases in Ukrainian: nominative, accusative, genitive, prepositional, dative, instrumental, and vocative. There are general uses for each one (dative for indirect objects, vocative for direct address, etc.), but there are secondary and tertiary uses as well. And, because case is so important, you can’t swallow your endings while speaking Ukrainian. You have to be thinking closely about it all the time.

And verbs… oh the verbs… they’re another story altogether. Conjugation seems so simple at first. Unlike English and French, there aren’t a lot of tenses in Ukrainian – just past, present, future, and imperative. However, Ukrainian is unfortunate enough to possess a little thing called “verbal aspect.” Basically, each verb has two forms, imperfective and perfective. The imperfective is used to denote the occurrence of an action, with focus on the action itself: action in progress, incomplete, repeated. The perfective, on the other hand, denotes a whole action, with focus on the result, inception, or limited duration of the action. Some boundary of the action is expressed in the verb itself.

For example, the sentences “Have you taken out the garbage?” and “Did you take out the garbage?” would require different verbs in Ukrainian. Ugh. It’s hard.

3) Despite all of this, Ukrainian is a charming, beautiful language.

Here's just one reason why I love Ukrainian: The word for “flip-flops” - в'єтнамки - sounds like “Vietnamki” and is derived from the Ukrainian word for a Vietnamese female.

This time next week, I’ll be on the plane to Kyiv. I can’t wait!

Chernobyl Sarcophagus Construction Workers

2007-07-05T22:45:00.001-04:00

This is a fascinating video about the process that prospective Ark workers must go through in order to to work in Chernobyl. It was made by an American researcher in Kyiv who is also working with RCRM. His research is related to mine, and I hope to collaborate with him when I arrive in Ukraine (in less than 2 weeks!).

I highly recommend his video blog at: http://chernobylresearch.blogspot.com/.

HIV/AIDS in Ukraine: Lessons learned from the "Альянс"

2007-07-03T00:37:00.000-04:00

My Ukrainian professor spent all of last week preparing us for a meeting with a mysterious “Ukrainian delegation." This group had asked to visit our class at Pitt on Friday morning, and my professor had obliged. When we asked her about the composition of this “delegation” (Are they students from Ukraine? Professors?), she said she did not know. When we asked her why they wanted to waste their valuable time in the US witnessing the painful, frustrating process of three Americans learning Ukrainian, she also did not know. It was a riddle, and my classmates and I had no idea what to expect.

Still, we diligently prepared a presentation on our class activities, full of references to Cossacks and horilka; practiced a skit about birthday parties; and memorized the answers to several questions that we were sure the members of the delegation would ask us (“Why on earth are you studying Ukrainian?” being the most anticipated). All of this was done in Ukrainian, of course.

Friday morning came, and the “delegation” was a no show. My professor was not troubled, however, because she had received an apologetic call earlier, and they had invited us to pay them a visit at one of the local hospitals after lunch in lieu of their visiting us at Pitt that morning.

So, mystery solved. Turns out, the delegation was composed of physicians and public heath experts involved in HIV/AIDS work in Ukraine.

They had come to America for a short time on a kind of medical exchange program.

Of course I was thrilled at such a turn of events, although I can't say the same for my two classmates, neither of which is interested in health policy. (One of them is a graduate student studying Ukrainian folklore, and the other is a linguistics and religion major at Pitt.) Now, instead of seeing the meeting as a conundrum, I saw it as an opportunity to meet experts in Ukrainian public health who might be willing to help me on my project.

When we arrived at the hospital on Friday afternoon, we went to a small room and watched the 10 or so members of the Ukrainian delegation give a power point presentation (in Russian, with an English translator at hand) on the efforts of their organization, called the International HIV/AIDS Alliance. It was a truly fascinating lecture. I had no idea about the enormous problem Ukraine is having with AIDS. Here’s a quick summary that I gleaned from the presentation and from the Alliance’s website:

Ukraine is experiencing one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the world. It is estimated that 1.4% of people aged between 15 and 49 are living with HIV. This is the highest percentage in Europe, and according to UNAIDS/WHO, the actual number of people infected is considerably higher than official statistics suggest. And the epidemic is still growing. In 2006, 16,078 new cases of HIV-infection were officially registered, up from 13,770 in 2005.

Some basic facts about Ukraine and HIV:

	Total population 46,481,000
	Life expectancy (W) 73 (M) 62
	People living with HIV 410,000
	HIV prevalence 1.4%
	Deaths due to AIDS 22,000

Southern and eastern regions of Ukraine are the most affected, including the oblasts of Dnipropetrovs’k, Donets’k, Odesa, Mykolaiv and the Crimean Republic. While a third of the population lives in these regions, they represent two-thirds of all officially registered HIV cases. Western regions of Ukraine remain the least affected. I don't know why this is... All I know is that the south and east are more "Russified" than the west in terms of language and culture. Perhaps the southern and eastern areas are also poorer than the west? If anyone knows, let me know.

The International HIV/AIDS Alliance office in Ukraine was established in December 2000 with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Its total available funding until 2008 exceeds $70 million.

The Alliance in Ukraine prioritizes community support to reduce HIV infection in the population groups most vulnerable to HIV (injecting drug users, female sex workers, men who have sex with men, prisoners and street children aged 10-18 years); develop community support for HIV-positive people and those close to them; reduce the stigmatisation of, and improve services for, people living with HIV and those groups most vulnerable to HIV; and identify, share and replicate best practice in most effective public response to the epidemic.

The Alliance's contributions appear to be very important. According to the delegation, although the Ukrainian government has continued to increase its funding for HIV/AIDS programs, the amount of money it provides is still quite pitiful given the scope of the problem. For example, right now, most of the money that funds antiretroviral treatments comes from international organizations like the Global Fund, not the state budget. Only 39% of the people who need ARV therapy in Ukraine actually receive it, due to the financial constraints of both the individuals and the NGOs who are trying to subsidize their treatments.

I'd like to learn more about the HIV/AIDS crisis in Ukraine. After the presentation, I struggled through a conversation in Ukrainian with a member of the delegation who lives in Kyiv. We swapped contact information, so hopefully we will have a chance to meet again and discuss all of this...

But maybe in English next time? :)

Updates and costumes

2007-06-26T23:18:00.000-04:00

The Duke IRB liked my protocol a lot. Flattery aside, however, they had "a number" (read - "a million") suggestions for ways to improve my consent forms and other documents.

In order to gain the board's approval, I must incorporate their suggested changes into my materials and also prepare a separate consent protocol for the interviewees that are Ark workers/ICARR participants. As the IRB pointed out to me, these people shoulder the most risk by talking to me, so I must take extra precaution to ensure that their interviews are kept confidential.

My other "subjects," such as the ICARR scientists and the local health experts, do not risk unemployment or litigation by talking to me (as the workers potentially do). So I can keep their interviews public and on the record as I had planned, provided I receive their consent of course.

Just another draft or two, and this IRB business will finally be done!
_____________________________

My roommate (on the left) is going to kill me (on the right) if she finds out I am posting this, but I just can't resist:

Ви думаєте, що я справжня українка?
(Do you think that I am a true Ukrainian?)

Desperate for (IRB) approval

2007-06-23T23:30:00.000-04:00

All week, I’ve been working hard on my application for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval of my project in Ukraine. This all-consuming process is something I really should have done before I left school, but it completely slipped my mind in the rush of finals. So, instead, I'm rushing to get it done now amidst classes, language labs, and four-hour homework sessions.

Procedures for protecting the rights and welfare of human subjects are the same, no matter who conducts the research; thus, student researchers like myself are held to the same standards as faculty researchers. If an undergraduate at Duke wants to conduct research that involves human subjects in any capacity, he or she must fill out a long, complicated application and send it to the Duke IRB before beginning the study.

There are different review procedures for research with human subjects, depending upon the research activity and the level of risk. These are (1) review for exemption, (2) expedited review, and (3) full review. When the IRB receives my application, they will determine what type of review my protocol needs. If a project qualifies for review as exempt research, the Director of the IRB program is authorized to approve the application. If it is not exempt, but qualifies for expedited review, one member of the IRB can approve the application. Exempt and expedited reviews can be done at any time. However, if subjects will have to accept more than minimal risk to participate in a study, the application will be reviewed by the full IRB.

I’m hoping and praying that my project qualifies for exemption or expedited review. If it doesn’t, I will be completely at the mercy of the IRB’s timetable, and there is a chance that I won’t gain approval until after I arrive in Ukraine. (However, since I am only conducting interviews and not, say, testing the effects of electroshock therapy on terminally ill children, I don’t think full IRB review of my project will be necessary… but the possibility still exists.)

Although the form took a lot of time and effort to complete, I’m very glad I did it. It really made me think through my research approach at a level of detail that I hadn't before. For example, I had to explain the potential risks and benefits of my research. Here is an excerpt from one of my application responses:

Re: The risk of a breach of confidentiality: "In most cases, interviews will be "on the record" and public, so I will not have to promise confidentiality or worry about a breach. However, it is likely that I will also be interviewing people less formally while in Ukraine. These subjects may share information with me that could have adverse effects should a breach of confidentiality occur. For example, in an informal conversation, an Ark worker may describe to me how he covered his radiation-detecting work badge with lead so as to work extra hours to earn extra money, despite the fact that he may have received a dangerous dose of radiation by doing so. This information could potentially damage the worker’s employability at the Ark should his boss discover it."

The most painful part of the application was preparing the protocol materials themselves. These included consent forms, audio release forms (since I will be recording my interviews), sample interview questions, and recruitment forms. I also had to describe how I will ensure that these materials are culturally appropriate. Fortunately, my Ukrainian professor has agreed to pre-test my interview questions, consent forms, etc. as well to help me translate them into Ukrainian and Russian. I'm very grateful for that... without the promise of her help, I am sure the IRB would have flagged my project as risky.

It sure takes a lot of work to get permission to just talk to people! I will let you know when I hear back from the IRB staff.

Side note: I am in Boston for the weekend, and I had another unexpected, wonderful Ukrainian experience. I will write about it soon.

GUAM

2007-06-21T08:20:00.001-04:00

An interesting article from http://politicom.moldova.org/stiri/eng/53697/.

Ukraine has joined with other former Soviet states Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova to form GUAM, an pro-Western organization that is seen as a counterweight to the Kremlin-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS):

(AFP, Bakutoday.net) Leaders of four ex-Soviet countries vowed Tuesday to boost cooperation and seek closer ties with the West as they aim to shake off Russian influence.

The presidents of Georgia and Ukraine, Mikheil Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko, were in the Azerbaijani capital Baku for a summit with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev.

Their four countries make up the GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) group of former Soviet states, which is seen as a counterweight to the Kremlin-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who was also attending as an observer, promised to support their efforts to limit what he called "energy blackmail" by Moscow.

At their meeting the four GUAM states promised to pursue plans to ship oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia and Ukraine to Europe.

Their efforts were heartily welcomed by Kaczynski, while the staunchly pro-Western Saakashvili hailed the meeting as "a geopolitical revolution."

In a clear reference to Russian control of European energy supplies, Poland's Kaczynski said that "under conditions of energy blackmail, energy projects (with GUAM states) are of great interest."

Azerbaijan is the start point of a strategic new oil pipeline to the West that has been backed by Washington as a way of reducing Moscow's grip on oil supplies from the former Soviet Union, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.

Aliyev, whose country's oil and gas reserves are keenly sought by fellow members of GUAM and by the European Union, said the organisation was gaining in international weight.

"GUAM, in a short time, has turned into a serious organisation. Its goals are of interest to many countries," Aliyev said.

By boosting transport and energy links, GUAM members are "building a bridge between Europe and Asia," he said.

Saakashvili thanked Azerbaijan for increasing gas exports to his country after a large price-hike by Moscow at the end of last year that some critics saw as politically motivated.

"It was a heartfelt gesture and an important strategic decision," he said, adding that GUAM was surpassing the CIS as a basis for cooperation.

"GUAM seriously differs from the CIS, which has become only a club for meetings of heads of state," he said.

Kaczynski, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and Romanian President Traian Basescu attended the talks in a show of support for GUAM's pro-Western aspirations. Kaczynski said he would support the efforts of some GUAM members to join the European Union and NATO.

Aliyev said the members would also present a united front in dealing with separatist conflicts in their countries. Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova are all dealing with breakaway regions.

But Russian newspapers on Tuesday detected cracks within the GUAM group.

While Georgia and Ukraine have primarily viewed GUAM as a
pro-Western regional bloc, Azerbaijan has been more cautious and Moldova's position is unclear.

The Russian newspapers said Moscow would take comfort from the absence on Tuesday of Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin and the sending of his prime minister instead.

Voronin is to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday, Kommersant newspaper reported.

"Moscow managed to strike a pre-emptive blow against its opponents," the paper wrote. "Voronin has apparently decided to stay away from the company of Russia's enemies.

Publication date: 20 June 2007

Is a language simply a dialect, plus an army?

2007-06-18T23:27:00.000-04:00

When I first began learning Ukrainian, I assumed that it was essentially a dialect of Russian. After all, Russia and Ukraine have a long history together, and the question of dialect versus language is a tricky one. Generally, it is agreed upon that if you understand perfectly, you speak the same language. If it takes some effort to understand, then you speak different dialects of the same language. If you cannot understand at all, you speak a different language. It's as simple as that.

Unfortunately, Ukrainian doesn't fit neatly into one of these three molds vis-à-vis Russian. The languages are certainly related; according to my professor, a Russian who has been exposed to Ukrainian can usually figure it out. However, the languages are sufficiently different that a Russian from, say, Siberia, who has never met a Ukrainian person before, will probably not be able to understand.

I have proof of this notion. A friend of mine at Pitt grew up speaking Russian with her parents in Brooklyn, but was never exposed to Ukrainian. When I asked her if she could understand Ukrainian, she said she could to a certain point, after which it becomes too garbled. According to her, a Ukrainian speaker sounds "like a Russian who has been punched in the mouth." On the other hand, her father, who grew up in Belarus, can understand Ukrainian perfectly.

The reverse is also true in theory - Ukrainians who have heard Russian before should be able to understand it, while those who have not, should not. But in reality, nearly every Ukrainian can speak Russian fluently, so it's not a very relevant point to make. Indeed, some of the only people in the world who know just Ukrainian are students like me, who have taken or are taking the language outside eastern Europe. My professor even warned us that our knowledge of Ukrainian may be more "correct" than many native speakers', simply because our ears haven't been tainted by Russian.

Another interesting point: because Russian is so pervasive in Ukraine, a sort of creole language has become popular in many parts of the country. My professor, who is from Kharkiv, says that this mixed language is mostly found in the east. In the west, there are more people who speak Ukrainian at home (as opposed to Russian, or the mixed language), so there are many more "pure" speakers.

Someone once told me that a language is simply a dialect, plus an army. In the case of Ukrainian's relationship to Russian, this probably isn't true. All modern linguists agree that Ukrainian and Russian are separate languages that diverged from a common source many centuries ago. (To be specific, during the 13th century, two major dialects of Rus began to arise. The northeast dialect was the basis for the future Russian language, while the southwest dialect was the basis for the future Ruthenian language, which in turn developed into Ukrainian.) Nevertheless, from a historical perspective, the Ukrainian language has served both as a galvanizing factor motivating people who believed in the need for an independent Ukraine, and as a source of contention for those seeking to diminish the prospects for Ukrainian statehood. What a unique, complicated situation.

Was it prudent for me to take Ukrainian this summer, given that Russian is often the more popular spoken language in Ukraine? If my goal had been simply to speak to people in Kyiv and Chernobyl, then probably no, it would have been wiser to take Russian. But I also took this class to get a feel for Ukrainian culture - how Ukrainians think, what to expect from the nation and its people. I am learning that, so I do not regret my decision.

Plus, as Ukraine becomes a more powerful nation, and more and more schools start to offer the language, and more and more students decide to learn it, then my Ukrainian skills should prove very useful - maybe even invaluable - in the future!

Staying alert

2007-06-14T22:06:00.000-04:00

I recently discovered a great feature of Google called "Google Alerts." The program allows you to closely monitor specific topics in the news without having to do a manual search. I have it set up so that any news or blog posts containing the words Ukraine, Chernobyl, or Duke will be consolidated and sent to my email account at the end of the day, every day.

Although I've only been receiving alerts for a few days, I've already learned so much about Ukrainian politics, economics, and culture. For example, I now know that:

1.

"People who live in Gvozdavka-1 [a village near Odessa] know that thousands of Jews were killed in the area during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, but the evidence didn't surface until April, when workers laying gas pipes happened on the burial ground." (Read about it here.)

"Ukraine is the next country to witness tremendous growth in mushroom production." I hope those mushrooms are being tested for radiation - they are one of the foods most susceptible to radioactive contamination! (Read about it here.)

"Ukrainians who left their homeland back in the 1990s in search of a better life abroad are being drawn back to the country in growing numbers. Recruitment firms say that the reverse brain drain is a significant trend fueled by the country’s booming economy... Official state migration statistics show a larger inflow of migrants than outflow during the January-March 2007 period, with nearly 11,000 immigrants into the country compared with around 7,000 Ukrainians moving abroad." (Read about it here.)

A common Russian – Ukrainian "station of the space exploration" is to be created in Pryelbrusje. (Read about it - in broken English - here.)

And my favorite news alert of the week: "PepsiAmericas, Inc., the world’s second largest manufacturer, seller and distributor of PepsiCo beverages, and PepsiCo itself, announced a landmark agreement on June 7 to jointly acquire 80 percent of Sandora LLC, Ukraine’s number one juice maker... Home to some 46 million consumers, Ukraine is considered to be one of the fastest growing beverage markets in Europe." (Read about the acquisition - and Ukraine's fast-paced juice market - here!)

I definitely recommend Google's alert system to anyone who wants to track a topic in the news. But be warned - Google alerts are a big distraction. I really should be studying Ukrainian at the moment, but my mind can only handle so much in one day. My professor is a sweet lady, but her teaching methods are very European - memorize, memorize, memorize - and it's starting to wear on me.

Nevertheless, I'm definitely learning a lot! I am currently searching for an apartment in Kyiv, and I have found that I can read snippets of the housing descriptions in Ukrainian.

Mmm... Syrnyky

2007-06-11T16:03:00.000-04:00

This past Friday from 3:00 – 4:30 PM was Polish and Ukrainian Happy Hour at Pitt’s SLI. Accordingly, my Ukrainian classmates and I were put to work at noon making a traditional Ukrainian dessert, syrnyky, for 120+ people. The result was delicious and a big hit among the other students. (To me, it tasted like fried cheesecake.) The recipe, provided by my professor, is as follows:

Syrnyky (cottage cheese fritters)

мій професор (my professor) with the syrnyky

(syrnyky is plural form of the word syrnyk, the first syllable is stressed)

500g of cottage cheese (about a pound)
half a glass of sugar
3 eggs
2 cups of flour
Half of one stick of melted butter
1 cup of sour cream
a little salt

Whisk eggs with salt and sugar into thick froth. Add minced cottage cheese, one and a half (1.5) glasses of flour. Knead thoroughly. Put the dough onto the board sifted with flour, and form a thick roll. Slice it into pieces as thick as a finger. Put each slice into flour, and make its form like a cutlet with a knife:

Fry in butter in a frying pan at the medium heat, both sides. Serve in sour cream.

The finished product. Смачного!
(Smačnoho = Bon Appetit)

_________________________

Friday night was a fun one! I went with some friends in SLI to “Srpska Noc” at Pittsburgh’s local Serbian Club. We listened to live Serbian music and watched locals dance the kolo all night long.

You know, I might as well be in eastern Europe already!

Chernobyl Heart

2007-06-07T21:13:00.000-04:00

I just finished watching a really moving film called Chernobyl Heart. I stumbled upon it randomly a few months ago upon doing a search at the Duke library. The film has been sitting in my hard drive for ages, but since I don’t have TV here in the 'Burgh, I finally got around to watching it tonight.

Chernobyl Heart is an Academy Award-winning documentary from HBO that takes a look at children born after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, many of whom have a deteriorated heart condition known colloquially as – you guessed it – “Chernobyl heart.” The title also refers to the generosity of volunteers at Chernobyl Children’s Project International who dedicate their lives to caring for the sick kids.

The children (mostly Belorussian) are suffering in unimaginable ways as a result of radioactive contamination. In addition to congenital heart defects, many are born with their brains on the outside of their skulls, with massive tumors, or with unusual genetic disorders. Needless to say, it was a difficult film to watch.

In Belarus, heart problems in children born post-Chernobyl have increased dramatically, with other health problems increasing as well. One doctor at a hospital in southern Belarus claimed that only 15 to 20% of babies are born healthy. (The country as a whole remains 99% contaminated.)

Much of the documentary was shot inside institutions with dreary names such as “The Abandoned Children’s Home” or “The Minsk Mental Hospital,” where sick kids have been permanently forsaken by their parents. (Although such an act seems unthinkable by American standards, I find it almost understandable in these cases. The children in Chernobyl Heart are so severely handicapped that caring for one would require an enormous supply of money, and in an economically destitute region such as Belarus, cash is in very short supply. Also, providing such a child with the proper medical care would require an expertise that most Belorussians simply do not have; in fact, many of the children would not be in the conditions they are in had the right care been provided immediately after birth, like draining fluid from the brain.)

I cannot imagine what it must be like to work in such an environment as the "Abandoned Children's Home" on a regular basis. The workers that the filmmaker interviewed appeared to carry incredible emotional burdens as a result of their jobs.

One moment of positivity came at the end of the film. An American doctor is shown performing heart surgery on a little girl that had been previously deemed "inoperable" by Belorussian medical experts. When the American surgeon tells the girl's parents that the surgery was successful - that the hole in her heart had been sealed - they begin to cry and overwhelm the doctor with their gratitude. Unfortunately, only about 300 Belorussian children per year have the opportunity to get such a surgery, and the rest usually die within 2-5 years.
_____________________

A general conclusion that the film makes early on is that the victims of Chernobyl were not those who were adults in 1986, but those who were very young at the time of the accident, or still in the womb, or continue to be born in contaminated areas. I was born on January 12, 1986, just a few months before the Chernobyl accident. I was an infant when it happened. Many of those who were affected by Chernobyl are exactly my age. Had circumstances been different - had I been born in Belarus or Ukraine - I may have suffered from heart disease, or thyroid cancer, or leukemia... just like the kids featured in this movie. What a disturbing thought.

If you don't have an opportunity to see Chernobyl Heart, there is an extremely well-done photo-essay on the same subject on the web. You can view it here. It is produced by "Magnum In Motion," a company that does fabulous work in general. I highly recommend it.

день 2! (Day 2!)

2007-06-05T23:05:00.000-04:00

Want to know more about українська мова (Ukrainian language)? Click on the Cyrillic!

First day @ Pitt

2007-06-04T23:46:00.000-04:00

Today was my first day of Ukrainian classes at the University of Pittsburgh.

The entire Summer Language Institute met as a group this morning. What an eclectic and interesting mix of people! All ages are represented - there are even retired people in the program - but the majority of students seemed to be at the graduate level. So far, the people I've met are wonderful.

After lunch, we separated into our "target language" classes. There are a grand total of 3 students in beginning Ukrainian, including me. Our professor seems great - she really wants to cater the course to our personal needs and learning styles. She taught Russian and Ukrainian as foreign languages in Ukraine for many years, and now she teaches at SUNY Albany.

Today, we listened to Ukrainian music, met three of our "other classmates" (finger puppets with Ukrainian names), went over the syllabus, and learned part of the Ukrainian alphabet:

I am having the most trouble with the vowel that looks like a backwards N (second row, sixth column). There is no English equivalent. In order to pronounce it, you have to jut out your lower jaw, squeeze your upper and lower palettes together, and say "yuuuuuuuu."

This language will be a challenge to learn, but I think it will be fun.

New faces in familiar places

2007-06-02T16:38:00.001-04:00

Have you ever experienced that phenomenon where, as soon as you learn about something new, you start noticing it everywhere? And it always seems as if the new thing just suddenly began popping up in your life, like a freak coincidence, but when you really think about it, you realize it's always been there - you just hadn't been looking for it?

Well, imagine my astonishment when I walked out of my condo this morning and saw this:

In case you can't read that license plate, here it is again:

As you already know from the title of this blog, that word is "Ukraine" in Cyrillic, with the owner taking normal license-plate creative license by replacing the H with an N. And the owner had even applied the umlaut mark on the "I" using two little blue stickers! Who was the owner of this mystery Ukrainian Tacoma? And why was he parked in my neighbor's driveway?

Well, a few hours later, I found out. My mom spotted a thin, scruffy looking man exiting our neighbor's place. She asked him if the car was his - it was - and if he could stay for a minute and talk to me - he could. The man's name is Andrey, and he is a Ukrainian construction worker for a remodeling company who has been working on my neighbor's condo for six months. And I never once noticed him or his car until today. Go figure! I guess Україна simply wasn't on my radar screen six months ago.

Although he was born and raised in Lviv, Andrey is now an American citizen. His "coming to America" story is really fascinating. Fifteen years ago, Andrey was granted refugee status because he is Pentecostal Christian, a faith that was frowned upon as a cult religion in Ukraine back then. (Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholic were the main religions - anything else was considered a "sect.") According to Andrey, Reagan and Gorbachev signed some sort of agreement that allowed people under religious persecution to leave the USSR and come to the US, and it was this agreement that allowed him to emigrate. He initially settled in a Ukrainian neighborhood in Chicago, but moved to Virginia Beach eight years ago.

When I mentioned that I would be researching Chernobyl, he had some interesting stories to tell. He said that his friend in the Ukrainian special forces had spent six months guarding the Exclusion Zone after the accident. This friend had written to Andrey about the incredible size of the fruits and vegetables in the area; according to him, there were strawberries the size of apples growing in the fields near Chernobyl. "Did you eat them?" Andrey asked his friend. "Of course! They were enormous!" the friend replied. Andrey also talked about how his friend would walk past crystal clear lakes in the Exclusion Zone and see fish with mustaches, extra fins, giant heads...

Andrey has not been back to Ukraine since emigrating, but he still had some good advice to give about living there. He suggested that I visit a church if I ever needed someone to talk to in English. Since so many American churches do missions to Ukraine, nearly every Ukrainian Pentecostal or Ukrainian Baptist church will have someone who can talk both Ukrainian and English. He also told me to avoid Ukrainian "vending machines," which consist of lemonade on tap that, upon paying 3 pennies, will dispense into a communal cup that one must wash and return after using (but which, of course, almost never actually gets washed by the pervious user).

Andrey was nice enough to give me his e-mail address, so I will probably send him a message before I leave. It's funny how nice and receptive people are when you show an interest in their culture - Andrey talked to me and my mom for almost 45 minutes!

Tomorrow I leave for Pittsburgh. It's a 7.5 hour drive (ugh) and the forecast calls for rain...

A few more thoughts from Borderland

2007-05-30T13:05:00.000-04:00

Ask a Ukrainian when he stopped believing in communism, and you will get a variety of answers. Some will quote the invasion of Czechoslovakia, some the Afghan war, others the discovery of Stalin's mass graves at Bykivnya. Many, says Anna Reid, will give you a blank look, because they have not really stopped believing in communism at all. But by far the likeliest reply is "Chernobyl:"

"A saga of technical incompetence and irresponsibility, of bureaucratic sloth, mendacity and plain contempt for human life, the Chernobyl affair epitomized everything that was wrong with the Soviet Union." (194)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the details of the accident, which occurred at 1:23 AM on the night of Friday, April 26, 1986, here is a brief summary. Basically, the cause was neither equipment failure nor human error, but an experiment that went awry. In order to test how long a reactor could operate with no external power supply, plant engineers purposefully lifted all but 6 neutron-absorbing control rods out of the core of reactor #4, and disabled the automatic shut-down system which would have normally kicked in in the case of a power failure. As soon as the external electricity supply had been switched off, power levels inside reactor #4 began to rise, escalating into a full-scale nuclear explosion.

This is a depiction of the contamination cloud (roughly following that reported by Time Magazine on May 12, 1986). Since the USSR was silent about the accident until after it had been detected by its neighbors to the north, the first reports of radioactivity actually came from Finland . With time, some detectable radiation spread throughout the world. (From http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/cherno.html.)

The Soviet system's response to Chernobyl has been likened to its behavior during WWII - Reid describes it as sluggish, chaotic, profligate with human life and bolstered by the crudest propaganda. Indeed, today's uncertainty over the health consequences of Chernobyl is largely the fault of a deliberate cover-up by Soviet authorities. Registers of clean-up workers and evacuees were left incomplete, making post-Chernobyl medical histories hard to track. Also, believe it or not, in 1988 a decree was issued forbidding doctors from citing 'radiation' as a cause of death on death certificates! Such widespread uncertainty about the health effects of radiation has prompted the need for the ICARR study, among others, over 21 years after the accident.

In fact, independent research on the effects of the accident was derided or hushed up under the Soviet regime. Reid tells an interesting story about a group of journalists who made a short film on collective farms near Chernobyl in 1988. They documented a foal who had been born with 8 legs, eye-less pigs and head-less calves, etc. More than half the children in the area had swollen thyroids, and cancers of the mouth and lip had doubled there since the accident. Government response to the film was vilification and denial, which was choreographed, says Anna Reid, by Kyiv's Research Center for Radiation Medicine, where I will be working this summer! Supposedly, scientists from RCRM lambasted the film as "incompetent:" livestock deformities were due to inbreeding, they said; mouth cancers to poor dental work; thyroid problems to poor diet. Records later showed that radiation levels in the area had been 3x higher than at the nuclear power plant itself in the months after the accident. Yikes. Although I'm sure RCRM is a fully competent scientific organization today, it's disturbing to know that it played a role in the cover-up of Chernobyl's effects under the Soviet regime.

When Anna Reid published her book in 1999, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was still in use. (Operations finally ceased in 2000 due to international pressure.) In her book, she includes an interesting interview with a shift controller at the plant:

Anna Reid: 'Why don't you work somewhere else?'
Young Worker: 'If you were Ukrainian, you'd be begging for a job here, because otherwise you wouldn't survive! The bazaars are full of teachers, doctors - educated people, all out of work.'
Anna Reid: 'Aren't you afraid of getting cancer?'
Young Worker: 'And if I were a taxi-driver or a kiosk owner? I'd only get killed in a car crash, or by the mafia. We're safer here... If the West wants to close the old Soviet reactors it's because Western companies will get the orders for the new ones!...Success to you! Come back! And bring your children!'

This interview is disturbing to me on many levels. First, it confirms my hypothesis that people are desperate for jobs in north-central Ukraine, and that they are willing to take risks with their health in order to work. Second, it shows a clear contempt for Westerners, which could prove to be a severe roadblock to my research. Will the Ark workers want to interact with me, an American girl who is privileged enough to attend a $40,000-a-year institution, and who's most "risky" job entails filming Duke football practices from a scissor lift a few times a week for a comfortable wage of $9/hour?

I guess we'll see.

Workin' in the coal mine

2007-05-28T21:52:00.000-04:00

While reading Anna Reid's book, a few things she said struck me as relevant to my project. The first was in her chapter about the industrial town of Donetsk, located in one of the most "Russified" regions of eastern Ukraine. Reid shares with her readers a conversation she had with a coal miner named Alexey. He describes to her the shoddy construction of the mine in which he works (the pine logs meant to "hold up the walls of the tunnels" are "very expensive and we don't have enough of them"), and he is not at all embarrassed when Reid repeats to him the startling mortality rate of miners in the Donetsk region (212 men dead in mining accidents in a single year, or four lives per million tons of coal produced).

According to Reid, Alexey had once been on an exchange program to Cardiff (in Wales I think?) and was amazed by the quality of that town's mine:

"When we told them how we worked here they just couldn't believe it. We looked at everything they had - the special baths, the clothes, the equipment - and we practically burst into tears." (47)

Reid questions Alexey about his feelings toward the new Ukrainian government, and he responds by saying that he and his men don't much care who they are governed by. He says they know that Russia doesn't need them, that it already wants to close its own mines. What he does want is better pay (any pay at all, in fact, since he hadn't received wages for six weeks) and freedom to run the mine the way he wants:

"It takes six months to make any decision, because everything has to go through Kyiv. The energy ministry takes our coal at three dollars a ton, but we the producers aren't allowed to sign our own contracts, though we could sell the same coal at $20 or even $60 a ton" (48)

I gather from this exchange that Ukrainian occupational health standards are nowhere near those in the US, and that Soviet-style collectivisation practices still exist in independent Ukraine!

To me, coal mining is a very comparable occupation to "Ark building" in Chernobyl; both are risky jobs, and in both cases, unseen dangers can lead to chronic harm (namely, air born particles in the case of mining can lead to lung disease, and radiation in the case of building the Ark can lead to cancers). If occupational heath standards are not up to snuff in the Donetsk mines, I wonder what conditions are like in Chernobyl?

Yushchenko vs. Yanukovych

2007-05-27T01:01:00.000-04:00

Speaking of the Ukrainian vs. Russian dynamic...

** CNN: Crisis calmed, Ukraine to hold early election **

Tensions between [President] Yushchenko, who has sought to lead Ukraine into the European Union and NATO, and his rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who seeks to preserve Ukraine's close ties with Russia, have been building since the president ordered parliament disbanded in April and called new elections.

Yushchenko (left) and Yanukovych

"Ukraina" is literally translated as 'on the edge' or 'borderland'...

2007-05-25T13:04:00.001-04:00

I just finished reading a great book on Ukrainian history, Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine.

Author Anna Reid, who was a Kyiv correspondent for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993 to 1995, tells the story of Ukraine by dedicating each chapter to a different city or region. For example, in the first chapter, entitled "The New Jerusalem: Kyiv," Reid traces the great Slav civilisation of the tenth century that created and maintained Kyiv.

I found Borderland to be a very readable book because Reid mixed personal anecdotes and literary references with her (extensive) historical research. Ukraine is a vast country with a complex history, but Reid was able to successfully summarize its past by creating a "quilt" of sorts, constructed with patchwork stories about all of Ukraine's diverse inhabitants.

From the first page:

Flat, fertile, and fatally tempting to invaders, Ukraine was split between Russia and Poland from the mid 17th century to the end of the 18th, between Russia and Austria through the 19th, and between Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania between the two world wars. Until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it had never been an independent state.

Being a borderland meant two things for Ukraine. First, it inherited a legacy of violence, and second, it was left with a tenuous sense of national identity. I think the issue of language helps to elucidate the latter point. In the eastern part of the country, almost everyone speaks Russian. In fact, in the Crimea (a south-eastern region on the Black Sea,) many residents refuse to accept that Ukraine is an independent nation at all - they still consider themselves Russian citizens. However, in the western part of the country, nearly everyone speaks Ukrainian. Indeed, Lviv (a large city near the Polish border) became the birthplace of the Ukrainian independence movement. Also, Ukrainian is a more rural language associated with the peasantry, while Russian is spoken in most big cities.

I think the cultural dynamic between Russia and Ukraine is fascinating. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out in Kyiv and Chernobyl, the places where I will be spending most of my time. I hope I made the right choice when I decided to learn the Ukrainian language this summer instead of Russian...From what I've read, most Kyiv residents are bi-lingual, but I have no idea what language is dominant in the north-central region of Ukraine, where Chernoybl and Pripyat are located. Fortunately, Russian and Ukrainian share some vocabulary, so there is a chance that I will be able to understand one by knowing the other.

This post is getting long, but before I stop writing I want to share with you an interesting map that shows the Ukrainian-speaking world:

There appears to be a significant Ukrainian community in Canada. Who knew!

Welcome!

2007-05-19T23:24:00.000-04:00

For twelve weeks this summer - the months of June, July, and August - I will be immersing myself in a culture that is very foreign to me. In mid-July, after six weeks of Ukrainian language training, I will be traveling to Ukraine for a six week research-service experience. I have created this blog to reflect on my research, share my stories, and express my joys and concerns about this exciting new adventure!

A summer of firsts

This will be my first summer away from Duke since beginning college, and the trip to Ukraine will be my first experience traveling overseas. Also, this summer will be my first time doing a real independent, self-structured research project. I have done research before, but always under the strict guidance of a mentor, and always on a suggested topic. This summer I will be largely on my own, although I do have mentors in Durham and Kyiv. My topic is self-designed, this trip is self-designed, and my methods are self-designed.

My research

The focus of my research is a joint study on the health effects of exposure to radiation being conducted in Chernobyl, Ukraine, by Duke, Research Triangle International (RTI), UNC-Asheville, and Kyiv's Research Center for Radiation Medicine. You can read the project's press release here.

The basic gist is this: After the Chernobyl accident in 1986, officials constructed a concrete "sarcophagus" around the nuclear power plant to contain radiation; however, after more than 20 years, the hastily-built concrete shield is falling apart. In a new study, dubbed the "International Consortium for Applied Radiation Research" (which I will shorten to ICARR for the purposes of this blog,) researchers from Duke, RTI, etc. will monitor workers who are are currently building a better, stronger radiation containment system at the plant, called "the Ark." These researchers are hoping to expand their understanding of the health effects of ionizing radiation, especially on the genetic level, by studying the Ark workers. The original Science article about ICARR, published last year, may be read here. It is a great piece of science writing - well-written and succinct.

When I heard about ICARR almost a year ago, it immediately fascinated me. The study raises important questions about treating people as ends in themselves, and not merely as means to an end. How should the researchers reconcile individual workers’ roles as employees with their status as research participants? Also, since jobs are scarce in north-central Ukraine, won't workers have incentives to take risks with their own health? The history of bioethics has shown that people under psychological, social, or economic constraint are particularly acquiescent. (Consider, for example, the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments in Macon County, Alabama.) It may be that the Ark workers are people who, because of their station in life, do not have an equal chance to withhold consent when asked to build the Ark and/or participate in ICARR. Is this fair?

Our ethical intuition is that people participating in research studies have a right to know things and make up their minds, especially if their health is at stake. The research community has come a long way since Tuskegee, and ICARR has built in to it a protocol for informed consent. Nevertheless, ICARR has many unique political, social, and ethical characteristics that make it different from other research projects. I see a great opportunity in Chernobyl to create an ethical model that guides future work of this kind.

Over the past two semesters I have been developing a series of research questions, which I hope to answer this summer:

1) How can Duke, RTI, UNC-A, and RCRM conduct its research in a way that respects the rights and interests of the Ark workers?

2) Is it possible to improve current operational procedures in Chernobyl so that the rights and interests of Ark workers are better protected?

3) What is the best way to build the Ark so that bad health outcomes for workers are minimized?

Methodology

My primary research techniques will be interviews and case studies. Although the latter can be done in the United States, the former requires that I travel to the Ark building site in Ukraine. Such a trip will allow me to evaluate the sample collection process, informed consent process, and local monitoring and worker safety programs first hand. Also, I have identified some sites of policy expertise, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, to do interviews en route.

Ideally, the finished product of all of this will be a series of recommendations for researchers in Ukraine. My goal is to create a useful document that will inform the decision making process in Chernobyl.

Time line for the summer

From June 4 until July 13, I will be taking an intensive Ukrainian language class through the University of Pittsburgh's Russian and East European Summer Language Institute. It should be a blast. There are over a hundred students in the program who will be learning a variety of eastern European languages, from Bulgarian to Polish to Russian. Ukrainian seems to be one of the least popular choices - as far as I know, there are only two students enrolled in the Ukrainian class, including me - but I see this as a positive thing. For all intents and purposes, I have a personal Ukrainian tutor for six weeks.

Almost immediately after the Pitt course ends, I will be leaving for Kyiv. Since I want to spend a solid 5-6 weeks in Ukraine, I need to depart ASAP in mid-July. The first day of fall classes at Duke is August 27th, so I will try to return to the States before then.

I am incredibly excited about my Ukrainian adventure! I expect to have many amazing experiences, and I will be sharing them with you through this blog every step of the way.