Nuclear nightmares: Twenty years since Chernobyl
Robert Knoth (dutch photographer) and Antoinette De Jong (journalist) published, in collaboration with GreenPeace, a hearth-breaking reportage about nuclear devastation in Kazakhstan, Belarus, the Urals and Siberia called “Nuclear Nightmares: Twenty Years Since Chernobyl“.
The project has covered four locations in the former Soviet Union where major nuclear accidents or atomic testing have taken place. It shows how millions have to live with the social, environmental and economic consequences and of course with the detrimental effects of these disasters on their health.
Starting in April 2006, at the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl-disaster the project will stress that Chernobyl was by no means exceptional: it was just another example in a series of devastating nuclear accidents that have taken place in the last 45 years in the Former Soviet Union.
The project is very much linked to the current discussion about climate change and the need to secure our energy supply of tomorrow. Nuclear energy is being presented as an alternative to fossil energy sources. Further development of a nuclear industry will prove to be difficult without Russia.
I am shocked beyond belief at the horror and misfortune that the people of those regions have had and continue to endure, but we should try to educate our generation and the ones yet to come in the future. Nuclear power and its proliferation won’t never be “under control”; Will our governments as well muddle on as we are going, accepting a few other deaths in the name of the “greater good”?
- Italian slides created by GreenPeace are available here.
