Some historical events are so catastrophic they resist comprehension. And yet they compel us to try to understand them, again and again.
Chernobyl is one of them.
On April 26, 1986, at 1:23am, Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded, releasing a cloud of radioactive material that drifted across Europe and contaminated land inhabited by around five million people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Although it is impossible to calculate the total number of deaths attributable to the explosion and its after-effects, 31 people were killed immediately or died due to Acute Radiation Syndrome in the following months, while deaths in the years since could be as high as 10,000. Around 116,000 people were evacuated from the 30-kilometre exclusion zone in the two weeks following the accident.
As the radioactive dust settled on forests and rivers, poisoning water and food supplies, flora and fauna, it also embedded itself, indelibly, in the cultural imagination.
Forty years on, we are still working out what happened – and what it means.
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