Chernobyl

Today is the 20th anniversary of the 1986 accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine – the world’s most devastating nuclear disaster in history. The radiation cloud killed at least 31 immediately and 40,000 were evacuated.The explosion at Chernobyl was undoubtedly the world’s greatest nuclear accident. While only about 3% of the reactor core escaped,it was enough to kill those near it, and damage food and crops worldwide. Much of Eastern Europe and Scandanavia was irradiated. Subsequent deaths and illnesses from radiation exposure continue to this day.

There is a long list of facts about the effects of this accident at the Chernobyl Children’s Project International site. This project provides medical, humanitarian and community development programs designed to provide hope to the youngest and most vulnerable victims of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 – the children. The UN has officially recognized that 3-4 million children were affected by this disaster. The people of Belarus, the country most affected by this disaster, who received 70% of the radiation because of the way the wind was blowing on that day, continue to suffer medically, economically, and socially.

Here is a map of the global radiation patterns from Chernobyl:

The film “Chernobyl Heart”, broadcast on HBO, is a film about the disaster that depicts the continuing effects of radiation on the children of Belarus and was inspired by the work of Chernobyl Children’s Project.

from the United Nations page “Chernobyl Info”:
Exclusion Zone Permit

This is a permit to enter the “exclusion zone” — the contaminated region around the Chernobyl reactor — issued to Chernobyl Children’s Project International volunteer Kathy Ryan in October 2002. On this particular day, CCPI volunteers visited some of the elderly “refugees” who continue to live illegally in abandoned villages in Belarus.

The permit notes that it was issued by the Belarusian “Committee on the Problems of the Catastrophe at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.”