Where could an organization by the name of "The Planet of Hope" be located? In the midst of a blooming landscape
of terraced, organic gardens? In a model community with no carbon footprint thanks to renewable energies?
No, The Planet of Hope (Planeta Nadezhd) has its offices in a remote region contaminated with radioactivity some 600 miles south
of Moscow within the so-called 'Closed City' of Majak. There, in 1957, the failure of a cooling system for a tank storing
thousands of tons of nuclear waste caused an explosion that released some 2 million curies of radioactivity into the
atmosphere. Untold numbers of people from the region have since died of leukemia, lymph node cancer, and other maladies
caused by the widespread contamination. Now classified as a Level Six disaster on the International Nuclear Event
Scale, the catastrophic event was kept secret until 1992.
Nadezhda Lvovna Kutepova, 40, who has lost a number of close family members to radiation-related diseases, founded
the Planet of Hope in 1999. From its very beginnings, this self-help organization's main purpose has been to inform
those who live in the region about radiation doses and corresponding health dangers – and about their rights as Russian
citizens. Planet Hope has entered into partnerships with international activist groups and environmental organizations,
has created a victims parliament, and facilitates for people across the Urals access to specialist radiation knowledge.
Despite intimidation from authorities, the group has conducted analyses of probes from the prohibited zone, as
well as taken its protests for justice, openness, and human rights to Moscow's Red Square.
Nadezhda's fellow campaigner, the radiologist Natalia Manzurova, 59, is one of the few 'liquidators' who survived
a stint of duty in the radioactive region bordering Chernobyl. Natalia suffers from lymph node cancer; her neck carries the
"Chernobyl necklace" – as veteran liquidators call it – a sign that half of her thyroid gland was removed.
Manzurova told representatives from Women in Europe for a Common Future: "I don't know
how many years I have left ahead of me. But I want to tell the people about Chernobyl for the rest of my life! It is not
my life and my life story, but the story of our entire land."
Recently, Natalia, who must conserve her energies, wrote a
letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel seeking to undo a business deal that would freight German nuclear waste to Majak.
Kutepova and Manzurova tell us about another creeping source of danger in the region, one that is ignored, as usual, by
the authorities: the lakes and rivers are drying out. Receding waterlines expose to the atmosphere sediment contaminated
with radioactivity. Almost more unsettling is the advice from the government meant to keep people calm. A regional
official told Manzurova on the phone: "Citizens have nothing to fear, the authorities are closely monitoring the situation."
Ecologists say that immense wildfires, like the ones that rocked Russia and occupied world headlines for weeks on
end in 2010, were by no means one time disasters. Global warming works as a giant dehumidifier in forests and on
moors, reconstituting the nuclear catastrophes from the sediment of yesteryear. Radioactive particles from trees and
other types of vegetation burnt by summer fires in the Majak and Chernobyl fallout area can be carried hundreds of miles
by wind.
Although every corner of the world is connected by a web of over-information, it is the solitary early warnings
from people like Kutepova and Manzurova that give our planet reason for hope.
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is presented by the
Franz Moll Foundation
for the Coming Generations
to
for putting truth and hope first,
courageously helping people across
the Chelyabinsk region understand
and adress their radioactive legacy
