Today marks the 30th anniversary of arguably one of
the world's worst disasters, when the ill-fated Chernobyl Nuclear facility
suffered catastrophic Meltdown!
As noted above, today in Pripyat, (Ukraine) a
terrible catastrophe occurred, which the
then USSR, nee Mother Russia' for which Pripyat was then one of its
subjects - turned a blind eye towards, by not only being slow to react, with
evacuation orders not coming for 36hrs! But also allowing the annual May Day
parade to occur five days later in Kiev - while only admitting some damage had
happened at Chernobyl in a tersely worded statement - only after Sweden had
threatened to tell the International Atomic Agency fallout had occurred!
As I can only
imagine what these pictures depict, since what other types of birth defects
have they caused besides cancer? Which strangely is one of the most lucrative pharmaceutical
drug making businesses in the United States today...
And where did five years G-O? When I last wrote
upon Thy 25th Anniversary of Chernobyl, when HVM Racing and Simona de Silvestro
were in the midst of running their Glow in The Dark Entergy Clean Air car...
Although the All Electric, Meanest-Greenest
Formula E racing series hadn't made its debut yet, which I have nothing against
except the fact that it seems nothing's ever been divulged about where the
power to charge Thy batteries comes from, let alone their manufacturing
processes, waste disposal, etc. Which reminds me of another storied buried in
Thy No Fenders repository when Claire mentioned the polluted manufacture &
disposal of tyres!
Whilst everyone, including myself is caught
up in the Mesopotamia 'O F1 Musical
Chairs Qualie, and thou redundancy 'O Thy Power Units NOT being L-O-U-D
enough!
For which I'm totally happy with the lower number of Decibels, although perhaps Formula 1's
Baby Boomers are simply getting harder of hearing, EH?
And I'm very impressed by their technology,
for which the Sport's cutting-edge technology was a large drawing point! As the
thermal efficiency improvement to nearly 50% is phenomenal!
Yet nary a peeps' made over this , whilst I-T
still seems like on so many levels F1's sending a mixed message. Like why in
thee HELL isn't the field being paced by a 'Uber SWEET Hypercar, i.e.; Hybrid
technology? Not to mention once again A-L-L the manufacturing processes,
disposal and correlating environmental issues, i.e.; battery charging power
derived from Nuclear, Coal, Natural Gas or Fossil Fuels?
While I haven't
even touched upon Fukushima, which along with Chernobyl are the only two acknowledged
Nuclear accidents rated at level-7, the highest rating possible! Or what's
known here in Eastern Washington as Downwinders syndrome from someplace
called Hanford; Can Y'all say Manhattan
Project and Plutonium!
Whilst I wasn't aware
of the fact that Sweden, Ya Sure Yuh Betcha! Had been mightily affected by
Chernobyl's radiation cloud due to wind currents, or that they'd pushed the
Soviet Union to actually divulging something had occurred...
Alas, since this is supposed to be a motor
racing BLOB' as Thy late 'Awntie Harriet christened I-T! Putting thingys' into perspective,
as my Chernobyl post (above) of five years ago denotes, it was Business as
Usual in Formula 1, as the late Ayrton Senna had just captured Pole aboard
his Lotus-Renault before Thy San Marino
Grand Prix took place the following day,
Sunday April 27, 1986!
Not to mention the
first ever Formula 1 race occurring behind the very same "Iron
Curtain" later that summer in Budapest...
Meanwhile the CART/PPG IndyCar series had
contested the first two rounds of the '86 season, beginning at Phoenix
International Raceway on April 6th, which Kevin Cogan won - followed by a much
younger Michael Andretti taking victory upon Thy streets of Long Beach April 13th, a Fortnight before
the disaster of Chernobyl.
As both winners were busy scoring their
debutant IndyCar victories, as it would
be Cogan's, or is that THAT DAMN COOGAN? Hya! Lone B-I-G CARZ' win, while Mikey
A' would score 41-more times, en route to third most IndyCar career victories,
(42) a mere three ahead of some Dude named Scott Dixon, who's currently tied
with BIG AL' (Unser Sr.) for fourth-most career wins. (With Mario Andretti second with 52 and A.J. Foyt
Top Banana with 67 career wins overall...)
As Championship Auto Racing Teams next race
wouldn't occur until May 31st at someplace in Indianapolis, where Bobby Rahal
would ultimately drink Thy milk in victory lane after a late-race restart pass
of then leader Cogan, and the rest as they say is history.
Hmm? Although
obviously NOT related, isn't I-T ironic that Rahal's team owner Jim Trueman
passed away from cancer just eleven days later, like countless Russian civilians
have also succumbed due to radiation exposure from Chernobyl...
