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On April 26, 1986, at 1:24 a.m, the world's worst ever man-made
disaster took place. Reactor 4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station,
three kilometres from Pripyat in the then Soviet Republic of
Ukraine, was beset by a series of explosions that rose deep from
its radioactive depths and blasted itself high into the atmosphere,
eventually seeping its way into the far corners of the globe. Today
the impact of Chernobyl, 21 years later, has become a half-global
legend and half-forgotten horror story. The reality is still with
many of the 50,000 people who on that fateful night in Pripyat were
given less than an hour to gather together their possessions and
escape to relative safety 70km away. They were considered the lucky
ones, fortunate not to have been vaporised on the spot or to die an
excruciating death soon after in the hospitals in Kiev and Moscow
that some of the workers and firemen sent to fight the blaze did.
Most of the inhabitants had no choice but to gradually return to
the contaminated areas that they still call home, and for the past
20 years have continued to live under the shadow of the reactor.
Pripyat, in the centre of the 30km wide Red Zone, is still largely
a ghost town, where the paint peels in houses and schools, and the
dirt settles on childrens' toys that will never be reclaimed.
Meanwhile emergency orders still apply to 355 farms in Wales, 11 in
Scotland and nine in England. "Chernobyl - The Hidden Legacy" shows
the region over a period of three years by Pierpaolo Mittica, who
returned several times to document the people and the contaminated
landscape they still inhabit. Our world today demands nuclear
energy as the answer to its energy crisis, and the legacy of
Chernobyl remains shrouded. Time is running out, as the sarcophagus
built to contain the reactor and its radioactive contents begins to
crumble away. No one has the answers and no one is asking the
questions - but can the world afford another Chernobyl?
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