Chernobyl Liquidator’s Medal

From the Collection: A decoration for those who helped contain one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.

On April 26, 1986, the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant at Chernobyl in the Ukrainian SSR suffered what is arguably the worst nuclear disaster in history when a safety test on the number four RBMK-1000 resulted in a massive explosion and fire.

Soon after the explosion firefighters arrived to begin to battle the blaze, unaware of the radioactive nature of the blast, and were followed over the ensuing days and weeks by military personnel and a massive coordinated effort to extinguish the fire and contain the massive amounts of radioactive material being ejected from the now open reactor. The mammoth operation also included the evacuation of several villages and even the entire city of Pripyat, a relocation of some 350,000 people from their homes in what is known today as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

240,000 personnel were deployed from various Soviet services to respond to the disaster, including firefighters, reactor personnel, military units and others. Those who participated would become known to history as the Liquidators, and many, if not most, would suffer frm serious health issues as a result of their actions. To this day, the true death toll of these brave souls who did their duty to contain this disaster is the subject of no small amount of debate.

The Soviet Union authorized a medal to be issued to Liquidators, consisting of a red cross under a disk containing a drop of blood with cyrillic letters indicating alpha, beta and gamma rays over a drop of blood, with the legend: УЧАСТНИК ЛИКВИДАЦИИ ПОСЛЕДСТВИЙ АВАРИИ ЧАЭС (Participation of Liquidation of the Consequences of the CHNPP Incident).

Liquidators in protective gear decontaminate vehicles during the containment operations at Chernobyl. Image from Wikimedia