Natalia Manzurova: Chernobyl Survivor - Pulitzer Center

[bananas]

Run time: 07:57 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y7BgEOzXYY   Posted on YouTube: April 26, 2011 By YouTube Member: PulitzerCenter Views on YouTube: 52   Posted on DU: April 26, 2011 By DU Member: bananas Views on DU: 394

 

http://pulitzercenter.org/video/chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-survivor-natalia-manzurova-fukushima

Natalia Manzurova was a 35-year-old nuclear engineer in Russia when she was assigned to be part of the clean-up crew at the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, the site of the worst nuclear accident in history.

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During her four and a half years burying contaminated houses, plants and animals, Manzurova would come to experience the noxious effects of nuclear power firsthand. She bears the “Chernobyl necklace”—two scars on her neck from operations to remove cancer from her thyroid.

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“Next to the operation theatre in the gynecology department, we saw a big can that is usually used in villages to carry milk. I opened the lid of this can and saw that there were fetuses that were from about the 7th to 8th months of pregnancy.”

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“There was a secret order by the government that all the pregnant women inside the 30-kilometer exclusion zone were to undergo either a cesarean operation or were to be induced so that they would give birth prematurely,” she said. “Only later the question came to my mind: What happened? Were these small children still alive when they were put into these big cans? It was evident they were forgotten in haste.”

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