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Management Academy assesses damage from Chernobyl accident at $235 billion
Devastation at the resettled town of Pripyat near the Chernobyl power plant after the accident
April 16, Pozirk. The Minsk-based Management Academy has prepared a brief on the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident for lecturers at monthly political briefings for youths, workers and intelligentsia. It provides staggering numbers on the extent of damage caused by the explosion at Ukraine’s nuclear power plant just across the border from Belarus.
The academy assesses the total damage at $235 billion, which is equivalent to Belarus’ 32 annual budgets of 1985.
Radioactive contamination completely emptied 479 settlements and affected 56 districts, 3,600 settlements with a population of about 2.5 million, including 1.5 million children.
Belarus managed to reclaim over 1 million hectares of the total contaminated area of 1.866 million and restore 1,657 (45 percent) of the 3,251 contaminated settlements to normal conditions.
The booklet says that authorities have not detected milk with excessive Caesium-137 levels since 2014 and meat since 2021.
The state register of individuals exposed to radiation contained about 800,000 people.
Incidence of thyroid cancer surged after the accident, but has now decreased to “the average population level.”
The government spent more than $19 billion on Chernobyl consequences alleviation programs from 1990 to 2025.
The paper cites data from Biełstat: as many as 930,600 people, including 181,000 children, lived in contaminated areas on January 1, 2025.
Last year, Alaksandar Łukašenka urged his officials to step up efforts to decontaminate affected areas and take the land back into agricultural production.
“What have we been doing during these 30 years if 900,000 [people] still live in the contaminated territory?” he questioned officials at a government conference in Minsk.
He noted that no one should live in the contaminated territory.
The No. 4 reactor exploded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the early hours of April 26, 1986.
Although the plant is located in Ukraine, about 70 percent of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus, heavily contaminating one-fourth of the country, one-fifth of its agricultural land and affecting at least seven million people.
Resettled people allowed to visit graveyards in contaminated area without permits
April 14, Pozirk. The Homiel Regional Executive Committee will allow resettled people to visit graveyards in the radiation-contaminated areas without permits between April 18 and 21, in connection with Radunica, Belarus’ day (April 21) of commemoration of the dead. The …
