Chernobyl is still horrifyingly relevant - the lessons have not been learned | Natalia Antonova

Watching the Chernobyl TV drama made me realise that the lies and political expediency that led to the tragedy still occurI was two years old and living in Kyiv when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster happened. In spite of my grandfather's fairly high military rank, we weren't the first to know. When we did find out, I was, like many other children, shipped off to St Petersburg with my mother. My father, who was an engineer and had visited Chernobyl during his student years, later recalled how empty and ghostly Kyiv became.I don't remember my grandfather speaking about Chernobyl, but I can imagine what it must have felt like for him. He was a combat veteran of the century's most terrifying war and had hoped that his family would live out their lives in peace -- and then this absolute horror happened. It was a tragedy compounded further by official cruelty and incompetence, by secrecy and the state's inability to tell the full dark tale of what happened to a vulnerable populace. Continue reading...