Whoa! This more detailed outline is totally going to work! I just started rereading yesterday’s post and left off in the middle with the thought “yah, yah, yah, I get it – where’s today’s work assignment?!” whereas the previous few days, I’d read the day’s previous work and often, a couple days back’s work also. Woot!

Ok, Chernobyl:

* I am going to include the little bit I started about Chernobyl is today’s post because it’s such a tiny amount that it’s better to bring it forward:

Chernobyl:

• Chernobyl was an existing town of 14,000, 14.5 km northwest of where the power plant was built; however a new city, Prypiat, or Pripyat, was built closer to house the workers. This new city had 50,000 residents at the time of the blast.
• Both cities are in the northern Ukraine, near the border with Belarus and about 100 km from Kiev.
• Chernobyl first appears in records in 1193, as a hunting lodge.
• Pripyat was founded in 1970, on the right bank of river of same name, Pripyat.
• originally, plant was supposed to be only 25km from Kiev, but Ukraine Academy of Sciences and other groups protested
• Both cities were evacuated in 1986
• Chernobyl is named after the Ukrainian word for “mugwort”, “chornobyl”.
• “Chornobyl” “is a combination of chornyi (чорний, black) and byllia (билля, grass blades or stalks), hence it literally means black grass or black stalks.”
• “Chornobyl” is sometimes erroneously thought to mean “wormwood”, probably due to a NY Times article on Chernobyl, in 1986.
• Chernobyl has a “rich religious history” but a lot of fighting over and around it. In 18th C, was major center of Hasidic Judaism, but by end of WW II, most Jews killed.
• 1929-33, mass killings by Stalin’s collectivization campaign and ensuing famine
  • 1936, Polish community deported to Kazakhstan
• Pripyat was not a “closed city” as many USSR cities with sensitive military, scientific or industrial facilities were.
• before Chernobyl, nuclear power plants were seen as safer than other types of power plants, by Soviet Union
• pride in their engineering
• the slogan “peaceful atom” was popular in Soviet Union at this time
• 1st Ukrainian atomic town
• The choice of location for the city was optimal, due to the existence of a nearby railway station, a highway, and of course, the river.
• Built in form of micro-districts, that radiated from the city’s centre
• builders successfully used illuminated signs, bright panels and decorative ceramics on building facades

Image from: http://www.chornobyl.in.ua/pripyat.htm