Remembering Chernobyl

Thirty years later, the effects of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine are still being felt.       A 30-kilometre zone surrounding the nuclear reactor is still uninhabitable, with only radioactive animals wandering the wasteland. The radioactivity in the air is estimated to be 10-100 times greater than the amount that is considered safe. The 100,000-plus people who lived in the area were only evacuated more than 10 days after the nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. This criminal delay is believed to have caused at least 4,000 deaths in the last three decades and untold tens of thousands will die early deaths because of the radioactivity. The incidence of babies being born with deformities is much higher in Ukraine than the rest of the world as are cases of rare forms of cancer. Subsequent investigations have shown that a combination of design deficiencies and operator errors caused the disaster. Speaking on the occasion of the 30thanniversary of the Chernobyl disaster,  Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the disaster his country’s greatest challenge since the Nazi occupation in the 1940s and what he referred to as the “ongoing Russian aggression”. It is undoubtedly true that the Soviets deserve a lot of blame for their culture of secrecy, which contributed to the scale of the tragedy. The Soviet Union did not have any safety plans in place, was slow to acknowledge the disaster and woeful in clean-up efforts.

While the Soviets could surely have done better to minimise the impact of Chernobyl, the lesson we should have learned from the disaster is that nuclear power is inherently risky. Inevitably, there will be an accident and, given that the effects of radioactivity last generations, this is a risk not worth taking. That should have been apparent even before Chernobyl, after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979. Even after Chernobyl, the 2011 nuclear plant meltdown in Japan after an earthquake should have given the world pause. Pakistan too needs to be wary since it is currently constructing nuclear power plants in Karachi. Above all, all the nuclear powers in the world – the US chief among them – should realise that the temporary tactical advantage gained by possessing nuclear weapons will quickly be countered as rivals develop nuclear weapons of their own. All that is left then is a very strong possibility of accidents like the one at Chernobyl destroying towns, cities and countries.