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April 26, 1986, Pripyat, Ukraine.

On that very morning, Valentina and Oksana, bitter enemies, wake up to a red sky with blue clouds in the south. Not knowing what it was, they head off to school like normal. Except it isn't normal. Policemen are everywhere, and no one will tell them anything. Turns out, the nearby power plant, Chernobyl, exploded. After THREE DAYS the government finally started evacuating the city, and Oksana's mother was taken away because her radiation level was "too high". Oksana joins Valentina and her mother, and eventually, they travel to Kiev, around 60 miles away. There they stay with Petrovna, who after learning about them having radiation on them, kicks them out. Unfortunately, there are only two tickets to Leningrad so Valentina's mother has to stay behind. They live with Rita Grigorievna, Valentina's grandmother, for about 6 months. There, they encounter a new school, a foreigner's shop, and Oksana begins to work for Comrade Orlov to get a ticket to Minsk to get back to her mother. During Oksana's birthday party, her mother comes to take her back to Minsk. When she gets to her mother's apartment, Oksana realizes that, instead of trying to get her daughter back, her mom worked on getting a new husband. She then sees that he is just like her old Papa, mean and arrogant. Oksana sends a letter to Valentina, explaining her situation, whose mother has now come back to stay. Unluckily, Dyadya Boris found the message, and hit her. Meanwhile, in Leningrad, Valentina and her family are working on getting Oksana false identity papers to Uzbekistan to live with Rita's old friends. Eventually, they come to Minsk and rescue Oksana, and send her off to the foreign country. Now that everything is fine, Valentina's family moves to a new apartment, and Oksana is safe in Uzbekistan. My rating is 5 out of 5 stars.

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The main characters, (from left to right) Valentina and Oksana.

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Reactor number four at the nuclear power plant, Chernobyl, went crazy during a really horribly designed experiment, leading to an explosion and fire that totaled the reactor building and released large amounts of radiation into the air. They shut down the reactor's power-regulating system and its emergency safety systems, and they removed all the control rods from its core while allowing the reactor to run at really low power. The Soviet Union was dumb and didn't want anyone outside of the country to find out, since meltdowns "did not happen" apparently.

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This is Pripyat before 1986. The city prospered from the nearby power plant, for its citizens got things like sweaters from Poland, dresses from Finland, and chocolate imported from West Africa.

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The Red Forest sits right outside of Pripyat. The coniferous needles are actually orange, not red. It's this shade because of the large amount of radiation poisoning that was spread during and after the accident at Chernobyl. The inhabitants of Pripyat traveled through this area while evacuating the city.

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Leningrad is the main setting of the novel. This town is where Valentina and Oksana stay until the end of the book. Now Leningrad is a city with many colorful buildings.

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Soon after the accident, the IAEA provided immediate support to the Soviet Union in the area of environmental remediation, decommissioning and management of radioactive waste, to strengthen the safety levels at the plant. The IAEA worked closely with other United Nations organizations under the "International Chernobyl Project," which provided an assessment of the radiological consequences of the accident and evaluated protective measures. The results were presented at the international conference entitled One Decade After Chernobyl: Summing up the Consequences of the Accident held in April 1996.

Shortly after the Chornobyl accident, the IAEA drafted two conventions that were ratified by Member States - the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident and the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency, which establish the international framework for emergency notification, information exchange and the provision of international assistance on request. The Conventions mandate the IAEA to act as the international hub coordinating these activities.

In 2003, the Chernobyl Forum was established by the IAEA in cooperation with the governments of the most affected countries - Belarus, Russia and Ukraine - as well as with relevant international organisations to address recovery operations and to carry out radiological assessments of the affected areas. The results were presented at the 2005 IAEA conference on Chernobyl: Looking Back to Go Forward[1].

The findings of the 1996 and 2005 conferences were considered by The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) as part of its mandate to assess and report levels and effects of ionizing radiation. UNSCEAR findings are fully reflected in the IAEA standards, which are regularly reviewed and updated.

The IAEA has worked closely with UNSCEAR and other international partners to independently assess the radiation impact on the health and environment since the accident and the science based evidence collated is based on factual and precise data collected at the site and surrounding areas. The information has been submitted to the United Nations and approved by the UN General Assembly.

This document that provides more details on IAEA actions after the Chornobyl accident and the international collaboration that has been undertaken since.

[1] Proceedings of an International Conference on Chernobyl: Looking Back to go Forward; organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency on behalf of the Chernobyl Forum and held in Vienna, 6-7 September 2005. IAEA, Vienna, 2008 (ISSN 0074-1884; STI/PUB/1312; ISBN 978-92-0-110807-4)

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The 1986 Chornobyl nuclear power plant accident

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On 26 April 1986, the Number Four reactor at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what then was the Soviet Union during improper testing at low-power, resulted in loss of control that led to an explosion and fire that demolished the reactor building and released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.

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Did you learn anything from this book report?

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The info was pretty basic, but nice to know. 

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Yes, this was very helpful (for social studies>:)

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Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion Disaster Explained (Hour by Hour)

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An important theme in the book is that not everyone is kind, no matter how kind you think they are. The text states, "But... he had been wrong about Jews. Babulya and Valentina were nothing like he had said. They were kind and smart and funny. He had been wrong about them. Which meant he could have been wrong about other things. Like her." In this chunk of text, Oksana realizes that her Papa was incorrect about her being a bad person. The truth is, she is artistic and creative, but because of her father telling her how selfish and ignorant she is, Oksana doesn't believe the people who marvel at her sketches.

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With further information about the nuclear disaster, this book made a ton more sense. The red sky was due the the absurd amount of radiation being blasted into the air. the 134 people involved in the accident and cleanup received 70,000 to 1,340,000 mrem. The average radiation that a human receives in a year is 0.62 mrem. In the back of the book, Anne Blankman wrote a summary of the happenings at the disaster. This was really helpful and informative about Chernobyl and the stuff that went down.