#ulanakhomyuk

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Вічная Пам‘ять: May the memories of every plant worker and liquidator forever be a blessing.

[joshualjohnson]

And of course Emily Watson crushing it in HBO’s “Chernobyl”. #chernobyl #chernobylhbo #hbo #ulanakhomyuk #portrait #portraitdrawing #drawing #sketch #emilywatson #jljillustrates #joshualjohnson https://www.instagram.com/p/By1Qz1eH3YK/?igshid=3y22wya2kwm5

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Be the #UlanaKhomyuk you wish to see in the world. And go watch #Chernobyl on HBO. It is hard to imagine this all took place in my lifetime, and I can’t imagine the level of fear, pressure, and painful frustration felt by those with knowledge who went ignored or were silenced. We need to learn from this disaster to avoid another global one. We need to listen to scientists - for not just the happiness of all mankind but our very existence. #climatechange #chernobylhbo #bethechange #disaster #science #scienceisreal #thereisnoplanetb #climatescience #courage #environmentalscience #sciencematters #factsmatter https://www.instagram.com/p/ByXuKYeAURd/?igshid=pj52kd8hep3o

[blumeruiponce]

#chernobylhbo #chernobyl #ulanakhomyuk #iustration #ilustracion #drawoftheday #emilywatson https://www.instagram.com/p/Bziyy71HhN_/?igshid=63lpc6lto60u

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I think my meme army speaks for itself

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Valery Legasov’s obituary in “The New York Times.” It’s devastating, but not surprising, how little we knew about Chernobyl; and even more devastating is the lack of respect our scientist was shown 💔

“Valery A. Legasov, a physical chemist who headed the commission that investigated the Chernobyl nuclear power accident, died on Wednesday, Soviet media announced today. He was 51 years old.

His death came a day after the second anniversary of the explosion and fire at the nuclear power station in the Soviet Ukraine. It was the world's worst nuclear power accident and at least 31 people were killed.

Neither the official Tass press agency nor the evening television news broadcast Vremya, which also reported the death, gave a cause or place of death. It was not known if Mr. Legasov was exposed to dangerous levels of radiation while investigating the Chernobyl accident.

The Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and other top Communist Party officials and scientists signed the obituary carried by Tass.

Mr. Legasov's name was not mentioned in the dozens of Soviet media reports on Tuesday's anniversary of the accident. He did not appear Wednesday at a Moscow press conference in which senior Soviet nuclear power specialists discussed the present situation in the Chernobyl area.

His foreign colleagues in nuclear power research had praised his openness in discussing the causes and effects of the Chernobyl accident, in contrast to the initial Soviet delay in releasing information about it.

Mr. Legasov was first deputy director of the I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy and a member of the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The official obituary praised his work in the use of nuclear reactors to generate electricity and also his work with inert gases.

A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 1988, Section 1, Page 11 of the National edition with the headline: Valery Legasov, 51, Chernobyl Investigator.”

@tryingtobealwaystrying @the-jewish-marxist @thegreenmeridian @valerafan2 @tanja2377

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An article published on May 15, 1986 in The New York Times on the race to try and save the first victims of Chernobyl.

“U.S. Doctors in Soviet Are Racing Nuclear Death”

For the last two weeks, Moscow Hospital No. 6, a nine-story brown-brick building on the outskirts of the city, has been the center of a desperate effort to treat the most seriously afflicted victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Soviet and American doctors and an Israeli specialist, using equipment and drugs airlifted from around the world, have raced against the killing effects of radiation exposure in an attempt to save the lives of 33 men and 2 women who spent the first hours after the April 26 accident within yards of the damaged reactor.

One of the American physicians, Dr. Robert Peter Gale of the U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles, said that as of Wednesday evening 7 of the 35 had died of radiation and 28 remained alive. 

Higher Figure Reported

Tonight, Mikhail S. Gorbachev said in a nationally televised address that the death toll had risen to 9 - 2 killed in the original explosion and 7 who have died since of radiation. He said that ''as of today'' 299 people had been hospitalized with radiation disease of varying degrees. That figure was 95 more than reported by Soviet officials last week.

Dr. Gale said that based on his first-hand information and data provided by the Soviet health authorities, the death toll from the accident, including one person killed by steam burns and another hit by falling debris the night of the accident, was now nine and would probably increase.

The scope of the disaster, the worst in the history of nuclear power, presented the doctors with unique problems, the American physicians and the Israeli specialist said in interviews. Among the problems were these:

* The number of seriously contaminated patients urgently needing bone marrow transplants was greater than the total number of such transplants conducted in Soviet history and 10 times greater than major transplant centers in the West ever faced at one time. The destruction of bone marrow, the ultimate source of the body's blood and immune defense cells, is one of the most life-threatening consequences of exposure to intense radiation.

* Tissue-typing, essential to determining the level of radiation exposure and finding suitable marrow donors, was impossible in many cases because the radiation had already destroyed blood components, particularly the white cells essential to accurate typing. They said this forced the use in six cases of a marrow substitute extracted from the livers of aborted fetuses, a procedure known as a fetal liver transplant.

* Some patients, confronted with advanced medical practices for the first time, balked at receiving a transplant. Dr. Gale reported that the sister of one victim refused to provide marrow although she was the only ideal donor. Potential donors in London and New Orleans were alerted to stand by for emergency transplants but were ultimately not needed.

* Some patients were radioactive from having inhaled or swallowed contaminated particles, requiring special procedures to avoid harm to doctors, nurses and laboratory workers handling the victims, their tissue samples and body secretions and excretions. Two patients died from liver and lung failure produced by radioactive particles deposited in those organs, according to Dr. Gale.

* A number of victims were suffering from severe radiation burns and related skin problems, as well as stomach and intestinal decay produced by radiation exposure, complicating treatment, Dr. Gale said. He reported that spontaneous bleeding was also a problem because of the destruction of platelets, the blood's clotting agents.

* Without any preparation, Soviet doctors and medical practices were thrown together with Western physicians and traditions, producing not only an unlikely alliance but also one complicated by problems of communication, incompatibility of measuring standards and unfamiliarity with medications and clinical procedures. 

Soviet Doctors Unavailable

Soviet doctors were not available for interviews, and Western reporters were barred from talking with patients or visiting the hospital. Dr. Gale is scheduled to hold a news conference in Moscow on Thursday.

Dr. Gale, a specialist on bone marrow transplants, said that as of Wednesday 13 bone marrow transplants and 6 fetal liver transplants had been performed. He said that not all these patients remained alive, but he declined to say how many had died.

''This is the first event of this kind,'' he said. ''It's unprecedented to have this many transplants going on simultaneously. There's no place in the world that could handle something like this alone.''

Dr. Gale said plans for dealing with the medical consequences of a similar disaster in the United States were minimal. ''I am unaware of any planning by the Government or the medical community in the United States to handle victims of radiation exposure on this scale,'' he said. Lists of Potential Donors

Dr. Gale, who is 40 years old, is chairman of the advisory committee of the International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry, a consortium of 128 transplant teams from 60 nations. The registry maintains computerized lists of more than 50,000 potential donors.

An intense, thin man with graying hair, the physician arrived in Moscow on May 2 at the invitation of the Soviet Government. His services had been offered by Armand Hammer, the American industrialist whose ties with Moscow date to 1921, when he was introduced to Lenin after helping combat a typhus epidemic in the Soviet Union.

Dr. Gale was joined several days later by Dr. Richard Champlin, a colleague at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center, and Dr. Paul I. Terasaki, a professor of surgery at the U.C.L.A. Medical School who is a specialist on tissue typing.

Also joining the group was Yair Reisner, a biophysicist from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, who developed techniques for preventing graft-versus-host disease, a tissue-rejection problem that often develops when marrow is transplanted from an imperfectly matched donor.

In his speech tonight, Mr. Gorbachev noted the assistance of Dr. Gale and Dr. Terasaki - he did not mention Dr. Champlin and Mr. Reisner - and thanked the foreign ''business circles'' that provided equipment and medicines. 

Lack of Israel Ties Disregarded

The Soviet authorities, disregarding the absence of diplomatic relations between their country and Israel and waiving normally stringent customs and immigration procedures, gave Mr. Resiner a visa when he landed at the Moscow airport.

''I didn't know what to expect,'' Mr. Reisner said. ''I thought they might send me back.''

Dr. Gale said the physicians were confronted with ''battlefield'' conditions at Hospital No. 6, the Soviet Union's leading center for the treatment of leukemia, aplastic anemia and other deadly blood disorders and immunologic breakdowns.

He said 204 victims of the Chernobyl disasater had been evacuated to the Moscow hospital, all suffering from radiation-related problems. ''They all received significant doses of radiation,'' he said.

The 35 most seriously afflicted, according to Dr. Gale, included reactor technicians and security guards on duty when explosions ripped through the power station at 1:32 A.M. on April 26, igniting fires, crippling the No. 4 reactor and spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere. Others included firemen and a physician who rushed to the scene, he said.

Dr. Champlin and Dr. Gale said the severest cases, which grew in number from 18 to 35 within days of Dr. Gale's arrival, had absorbed the full blast of radiation and radioactive particles released by the damaged reactor.

Dr. Champlin said the hospital, accustomed to performing one bone marrow transplant every few weeks -there had been a total of 20 such operations in the Soviet Union before the Chernobyl accident - was suddenly faced with the necessity of doing as many as 35 in one or two weeks.

The major problem faced by the doctors was the rapid deterioration of blood in the patients resulting from the destruction of their bone marrow. 

'First Job Was a Triage'

Without white cells to use in tissue-typing, selection of suitable donors would be almost impossible, Dr. Gale said. The condition of the patients also made it difficult to determine the level and kind of radiation exposure they had absorbed, and therefore what their chances of survival were with or without a marrow transplant.

''The first job was a triage,'' Dr. Gale said.

The process of determining which patients should receive transplants was complicated by the fact that a marrow transplant can itself often lead to death because of rejection, infections and other problems.

''We didn't want to give a transplant to someone who might recover on their own without one,'' Dr. Champlin said.

Radiation has a devastating effect on bone marrow, according to the American doctors, since it tends to hit hardest those tissues that divide and replicate most rapidly. Bone marrow cells produces billions of blood cells each day.

A marrow transplant itself is a relatively simple procedure, according to specialists. Marrow is aspirated from the donor by syringe, usually from the crests of the pelvis bones. After the marrow cells have been separated from the blood and other unneeded substances, the transplant is done by infusion into the recipient's veins.

Success, however, depends on an almost perfect match of tissue type between donor and recipient. Identical twins or siblings are the best donors. In addition, for at least several weeks after the operation and until the new marrow takes hold and starts producing healthy blood cells, there is a great danger of life-threatening infection from even the most minor germs. 

Matched With Sibling Donors

Some of the Chernobyl victims were quickly matched with sibling donors, and transplants were done by teams of American and Soviet doctors, according to Dr. Gale.

In six cases where tissue matching was impossible, the doctors turned to fetal liver transplants. Soviet doctors had fetal liver tissue for two patients, Dr. Gale said.

He reported that by chance he had attended a bone marrow transplant conference in Keystone, Colo., the week before the Chernobyl accident and knew from conversations there that tissue for four fetal liver transplants was in frozen storage in a foreign country.

He said the authorities in the country, which he declined to identify, had shipped the tissue to Moscow. 

Western Lists Checks

In several cases where tissue type was determined but suitable donors were not available in the Soviet Union, the computerized donor lists in the West were checked and potential donors identified in London and New Orleans.

In one case, Dr. Gale said, the Soviet patient died before additional steps were taken. In another, the intended recipient turned out to have suitable family members but refused to subject any to the surgical procedures required to extract marrow.

''We couldn't ask a foreign donor to do something the man's family wouldn't do,'' Dr. Gale said.

One of the most emotional moments, he said, came when the sister of a victim declined to be a donor. ''She said she didn't want to go under general anesthesia and that her brother was going to die anyway,'' Dr. Gale said. 

Final Decisions by Russians

He said final decisions about treatment were made by the Soviet doctors, who also did ''most of the hands-on work.'' He reported the Soviet team was headed by Dr. Angelina K. Guskova, the director of the hospital, and Dr. Aleksandr Baranov, the head of hematology.

Dr. Gale said he planned to return to Los Angeles this week but would fly back to Moscow next week. Dr. Terasaki left earlier this week, and Dr. Champlin said he would leave within the next few days. Mr. Reisner also expects to depart soon, according to Dr. Gale.

''I'm running out of steam,'' Dr. Gale said Tuesday.

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Article source: nytimes.com/1986/05/15/world/us-doctors-in-soviet-face-a-battlefield.html

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“‘Fools,’ said I, ‘you do not know

Silence, like a cancer, grows

Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my arms that I might reach you,’

But my words

Like silent rain drops fell

And echoed in the wells of silence.”

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At this time 32 years ago, Academician Valery Alekseyevich Legasov died by suicide.

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He served as the Chief Scientific Advisor in the clean up of the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. He stayed far longer than many of his colleagues, believing it was his duty to remain at Chernobyl to contain the damage.

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Upon discovering the cause of the disaster, Legasov urged the Soviet state to fix the fundamental flaws in the other RBMK reactors that caused Chernobyl to occur.

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In exchange for his selfless work and dedication to human life, he was bullied and discredited by his colleagues and the Soviet state. He and his family were tormented.

.

Yet Valery continued to speak out, all while suffering from the prolonged exposure to radiation. Before he died, he recorded his memoirs on a set of five tapes. They were gathered by a trusted friend, and eventually passed to a writer at Pravda. Because of this act of bravery, the flaws in the other RBMK reactors were repaired.

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Even in his death, Valery and his family continue to face smear campaigns against their character. On this day, we want you to know that we stand with you. Valery Alekseyevich Legasov was a hero, and well never let anyone forget it.

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“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.”

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“Do you understand?”

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All I could think about when I saw @tryingtobealwaystrying’s amazing post highlighting this man’s lies.

You can run and hide from the media, your people, and the world; but they saw you, and they will never forget. And neither will we.

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Some good news in a bad news cycle...

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Okay, you guys- Dr. Fauci is a damn genius and a hero. He’s going where he knows he’ll get access to the greatest number of people. He’s not just turning to conventional news outlets- he’s also going on YouTube with highly respected influencers to make sure that AS MANY PEOPLE AND DEMOGRAPHICS AS POSSIBLE are informed.

He is a modern-day Valery Legasov. Listen to him and pass on his information! Fight the misinformation and protect our most vulnerable populations ❤️

@tryingtobealwaystrying @the-jewish-marxist @thegreenmeridian

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And finally, my badass homegirl: Ulana ❤️

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When your colleagues know that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is one of your children so they send you articles to be kind...

But then are all of those articles are about the fire and you have a panic attack 😑

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It was quite hot in the country this past week, but a visit from Auntie Lana to see little Elenochka always bring cool weather. . #Autumn #Thurmont #Maryland #BabyElena #Elenochka #Leaves #UlanaKhomyuk #ChernobylHBO #AuntieLife #AuntieEm #YesIKnowHowDementedIAm (at Thurmont, Maryland) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4adHOfAUQP/?igshid=rhrpu9nl7fz4

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‪Ulana Khomyuk. Nuclear physicist. Badass. Empath. Investigator. Proud ally of Valery Legasov. Heroine. ‬
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‪In honor of my man, Professor Legasov, and the brave scientists that Ulana represents. Vichnaya Pamyat. Вічная Пам’ять. ❤️ .
@clmazin @jaredharris @allegrariggio 
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4TifO7AJHx/?igshid=nznniq1kwvhx

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Took part of my costume out for a test spin yesterday. My name is Ulana Khomyuk, chief physicist, Byelorussian Institute for Nuclear Energy; however, yesterday I was taking a rare day off to teach my goddaughter about speaking truth to power… and swinging. I’ll be back in full professional garb on Halloween 🎃
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(at Thurmont, Maryland)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4QbOG2H0Yk/?igshid=1xhhitxx7r582