The Chernobyl nuclear disaster 33 years on

The 33rd “anniversary” of the world’s worst nuclear disaster is upon us as we remember the April 26, 1986 explosion and meltdown at Ukraine’s Chernobyl reactor. Many papers, books, and even a novel have been written about the Chernobyl accident, as well as films, including dramas as well as documentaries.

The lasting legacy of Chernobyl will be with us forever, as damage due to radiation exposure is passed down the generations, and on-going exposures to humans, as well as animals and plants in the Chernobyl Zone, continue to do lasting harm.

On Beyond Nuclear International this week, we feature the firsthand experience of Natalia Manzurova, a Chernobyl “liquidator” who has lived with horrendous health effects ever since. Manzurova, with the help of US activist, Cathie Sullivan, also wrote a book about her ordeal — Hard Duty. 

And we run a review of Kate Brown’s landmark book, Manual For Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future. Her deep look into the Chernobyl aftermath came out shortly after another definitive analysis, Adam Higginbotham’s book, Midnight in Chernobyl, which examines exactly what happened. And that came out just after Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy who lived through the disaster as a young university lecturer living 500km downstream from Chernobyl at the time.

Libbe HaLevy’s Nuclear Hotseat this week features an interview with Kate Brown. 

Last year, because there are so many myths in circulation about Chernobyl, Beyond Nuclear released a special edition of its Thunderbird newsletter, Chernobyl:The Facts, to set the record straight.

Scientific illustrator, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger's beautiful but tragically revealing drawings of deformed true bugs hit by Chernobyl fallout, are often displayed as art, but their scientific warnings should be heeded. Many of these ilustrations are collected in scientific studies as well as a spectacular coffee table book.

A new Cuban film, Un Traductor (A Translator) a true life drama about a Havana academic who is brought in to translate for Russian patients and their families flown in from Chernobyl, is featured this week in FilmFest DC and reviewed on BNI.

Dr. Tim Mousseau, a researcher who with various colleagues has done numerous and definitive studies on the impact of Chernobyl (and now Fukushima) on plant and animal life in the region, has a new study out that points to reduced success in breeding among a type of rodent living in contaminated areas of Chernobyl. The more radiation, the greater the impact. Previously, we featured Mousseau’s earlier work which debunks notions that animals around Chernobyl are “thriving.”

There are many more films, plays, books, studies — too many to list here. Some notables include Chernobyl Forever, Chernobyl Heart and numerous others. For a good list of films on the subject of nuclear power, see the Uranium Film Festival list. In some cases, when you click on the title, the complete film is available for viewing.