No more Chernobyls

Time heals everything, doesn't it? It has been 30 years since the name Chernobyl became the infamous nuclear accident that devastated the lives of millions of people in Western Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine. Thirty years on, and the nightmare for thousands of people is still frightening.

View of the destroyed no. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power station. Following the explosion the fire and radiation leaks was not brought under control till 9 days after the accident.

The Chernobyl catastrophe released one hundred times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet many seem to just dismiss the accident as a part of history and forget what large doses of radiation actually do to human lives. Sadly, focussing solely on the disputed statistics of Chernobyl has dehumanised what happened. The effects of Chernobyl touched millions of people and thousand still endure very visible and painful effects.

We are telling the stories of just a few of those thousands, to bring to light the reality of nuclear energy. Independent scientists and economists know that nuclear energy is the most expensive electricity source available, counting the cost of building, running and decommissioning the power stations. But an economic analysis alone cannot calculate the costs due to the damage done to our genes, the very foundation of life.

There are many other costs to take into consideration - the insurance and the cost of potential accidents, the long-term disposal of waste when no reliable solution has yet been found. Nuclear power is not a solution for climate change. The massive subsidies needed to keep the nuclear industry alive are slowing and undermine the renewable energy revolution that is the real solution to climate change.

All the above are facts about nuclear energy, however, no scientist or economist can tell you a life story of misplacement, diseases, trauma and fear. . . Only the victims can

The latest updates

 

Nuclear power and the collapse of society

Blog entry by Rex Weyler | May 5, 2017

On March 1 1954, on Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, the US military detonated the world’s first lithium-deuteride hydrogen bomb, a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The radiation blew downwind,...

Chernobyl's children of hope

Blog entry by Andrey Allakhverdov | April 26, 2016

The word nadeshda means hope in Russian. The Nadesha rehabilitation centre was founded to give hope to children living in towns and villages contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster. Thousands of children across Belarus have...

Radioactive Chernobyl forest fires: a ticking time bomb

Blog entry by Anton Beneslavsky | April 20, 2016

For five years now I’ve been a member of the professional firefighting group of Greenpeace Russia staff members that is supported by well trained volunteers and I’ve travelled thousands of kilometres across Russia to extinguish fires.

We’ve had enough of eating and breathing Chernobyl

Blog entry by Rashid Alimov | April 11, 2016

I’m in the Bryansk region of Russia. Despite being over 180 kilometres from Chernobyl and thirty years after the disaster, my geiger counter still picks up elevated levels of radiation.   This invisible radiation hazard is a...

15 things you didn't know about Chernobyl

Blog entry by Celine Mergan | April 11, 2016

In the early morning of April 26th, 1986, reactor four of the Chernobyl nuclear station exploded. It caused what the United Nations has called "the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of humanity." Chernobyl was the...

1 - 5 of 16 results.

 

Categories