VOA常速英语:切尔诺贝利留下的影响

We entered what is known as the Palaci State Eco Radiological Reserve in southern Belarus, where radiation makes it impossible for human life to return, experts say, anytime soon. It will take another 300 years to make this territory absolutely safe. With no humans around, wild animals have taken over the land, where times stopped short after the Chernobyl accident in 1986. The reactor is just a few kilometers south in neighboring Ukraine. More than 22,000 people inhabitants of these villages had to abandon their ancestral lands forever, leaving behind their entire lives. Villages that have now become a silent museum of disaster. But just three kilometers from the perimeter of the forbidden zone, human life has retaken its place. Natalia returned to the village her family left in 1986 despite being evicted by the state. I was born here at Krasnaya. I studied here. When the radiation took place, we were taken to another area. I married there, lived there a bit, but I disliked that and we came back, and I have lived here for 23 years already. This is a rural area and most of the inhabitants work on state-owned collective farms. They complain of miserable wages.

Svetlana, a mother of four children, who says she is exhausted by working conditions. The salaries are very small, very small. It is impossible to survive a month having such salaries. The work is quite heavy. As a milkmaid's replacement, for instance my salary is 320 rubles, maybe 330, Belarusian rubles, not to be confused with Russian rubles. Low wages mean people must grow crops and raise animals for their own consumption. Experts call it risky since this land is contaminated. Until the moment this area becomes economically well developed, and people start getting proper wages and having proper jobs, they won't be able to afford to go to the supermarket and buy. But for residents who do not see radiation as a problem, the choice is one of either eating or not eating. If it were not for my own household garden, it would be absolutely impossible to survive having such a salary, do you agree with that? We survive only thanks to our vegetable garden. The population of Southern Belarus is trapped between polluted soil and a subsistence economy. And in that dilemma, the fear of hunger outweighs the fear of the harmful effects of radiation. For Ricardo Marquina in Bregen Belarus, I'm Roderick James VOA news