tredford01

As the government now looks to nuclear power as a solution to global warming, we should look back 20 years to an event that changed the way the public view this source of power forever. Chernobyl was one of the worst nuclear disasters to take place, with effects still being felt today.

The accident itself is generally accepted to have been caused by a poor design of reactor, and human error. In the early hours of the 25th of April 1986, Reactor 4 was scheduled to be shut down for maintenance, and an experiment to, ironically try to increase safety. A chain of events unfolded, resulting in two explosions and the contamination of vast areas of land in the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosions, a number of mistakes, costing the lives of many rescue workers, were made and a general lack of knowledge of the dangers of radioactive contamination was present.

With an estimated potential death toll of four thousand, the accident has had a profound long term affect on the three countries directly affected, and also on the rest of Europe and the Northern Hemisphere.

The radioactive cloud released at the time of the explosion travelled across Europe, contaminating crops and animals, reaching as far as the United States and Japan. There are still restrictions imposed on some hill farms in Cumbria and Scotland as a result of the cloud.

An exhibition being held this year, looks at the long term effects of the accident from the perspective of twenty people who experienced it in different ways. Being hosted in several countries around the world, it looks at disaster from the perspective of among others, a farmer, a reindeer herder and a professor.

This is an important time for questions on how we should fuel our future. While we should draw on the lessons learnt from incidents such as Chernobyl, it is essential that we can have an informed and grown-up debate. Citing Chernobyl as a typical nuclear power station would be a mistake, and as such it makes a poor defence for the anti-nuclear side of the argument.

Dates and venues for the Chernobyl2020 exhibition can be found at www.chernobyl2020.com.