Japan VS Pripyat

     With Japan’s recent disaster, people are comparing it to the disaster in Pripyat that happened on April 26, 1986. On that day so long ago, 50,000 people had fled after Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor exploded I a devil’s brew of cesium, strontium, iodine and plutonium. The city was new when it was destroyed, only 16 years old. Now grass grows through cracks in the streets and dry leaves shudder from the memories of the dark past in this not-so-forgotten city. Many people are comparing the horrors of Japan to the dramatic tragedy of Pripyat because of the money it will cost to reconstruct the city. “As a rule of thumb, the more developed the country, the higher the cleanup costs will be,” said Grimston. “However, it will be hard to separate out responsibility and costs between the earthquake, the tsunami and the responsibility to the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the Fukushima No. 1 plant,” he said.