When the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melted down in 1986, perilously close to Inna Mitelman’s home in the Soviet Union, the only warning her family got came from a relative in Australia.
“We were told nothing,” Inna recalls, speaking to Woman’s Day from her home in Melbourne.
“My aunty saw the news reports and called my mum, saying, ‘Get out of there!’ So we went to stay with some relatives in Russia.”
Little did Inna’s family know at the time how close they were to the worst nuclear accident in history. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the nuclear power station disaster at Chornobyl, now part of Ukraine.
The accident saw around 30 people die immediately, and caused thousands of deaths and illnesses across generations.
During a “safety test” in April 1986, the core of one of the power station’s units ruptured. Explosions followed, then a fireball blew the steel and concrete lid from the reactor, sending huge amounts of radioactive material into the air.
Acute radiation affected thousands of people after the disaster.
A seemingly idyllic Soviet childhood
The Soviet Union attempted to cover up the disaster, but the radiation was detected in Sweden, revealing a deadly danger to much of Europe. At the time, Inna was 10 and living in a Soviet town, now part of Belarus, with her family, less than 100km from the reactor. She and her little sister Rimma, two, lived in an apartment block with their engineer father Illa and economist mum Irina, among other flats filled with young families.
“It was the perfect life for kids,” she says.
“We were outside all the time playing. It was a hard life for adults with the lack of freedom, but it was really good for us.”
Her best friend Natasha lived in the apartment next door.
“We were inseparable,” Inna remembers.
“We’d walk into each other’s apartments without knocking.”
Residents had their radiation levels checked on departure.
The first sign that something was terribly wrong
At the time of the disaster, there was no sign that anything was wrong until hundreds of refugees started streaming into Inna’s town. They were power station employees and their families, who had been evacuated from Pripyat, the workers’ village near Chernobyl.
“There were kids in pyjamas wrapped in blankets,” Inna recalls.
“We were told there had been an accident, but therewas no mention of any danger.”
Stray dogs roam the empty streets.
Everyday precautions in an uncertain time
The only warnings were for people to stay inside as much as possible, keep windows closed and wear a hat outside. In the aftermath of the tragedy, there were food restrictions across Europe due to radiation contamination, but in the Soviet Union, Inna does not recall any significant changes to her diet, apart from sometimes drinking powdered milk instead of fresh.
Inna’s family later moved to Kazakhstan, before eventually migrating to Australia.
“I was very strongly opposed to going,” tells Inna, who was a teenager by then.
“I had a boyfriend who I thought I would marry and a dog I had to leave behind.”
With best friend Natasha and her dog, whom she had to leave behind.
The lasting health impact of Chernobyl
Though Inna and her family fell in love with Australia, they didn’t escape Chernobyl’s legacy. Inna’s mum Irina, 74, developed thyroid cancer, like thousands of others from the fallout area, as well as kidney and skin cancer.
“She’s been through a lot,” says Inna, who has also developed thyroid problems, which doctors warn have a 50% chance of developing into cancer, given she is a “child of Chernobyl”.
A year after the reactor meltdown, Inna learned her best friend and neighbour Natasha died from a brain tumour, believed to have been caused from radiation.
Inna with her mum Irina in Belarus.
The long road to healing
“It was terrible – an absolute trauma for me,” Inna says.
“It took me many years to recover from that.”
Today, Inna is a single mum of two boys, Mikey, 18, and Gabriel, six, and a naturopath with her own practice. She also lectures in biomedical science at Melbourne’s Torrens University. After 30 years in Australia, she finds it hard to believe she and her family survived the disaster.
“Chernobyl was absolutely horrific,” Inna says. “I’m amazed that we got through it.”
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