25 Years After Chernobyl – Are We Close To Disaster Again?

By Melissa Bell

This is not a pleasant video. This is not happiness. This is sorrow and damage and illness. This is the fallout from a nuclear explosion whose effects still linger 25 years later.

In April and May of 1986, for ten days, the worst nuclear plant accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl reactor. After the catastrophe, nearly 1,600 miles of the earth were sealed off in an exclusion zone. In 1997, Magnum photographer Paul Fusco started traveling to hospitals where children born within the radiation zone lived and died. For three years, he photographed their world. In the following piece, he reflects on the images. He acknowledges they are not pretty photographs, but argues that they need to be seen all the same. As one mother answered, when he asked if he could photograph her dying daughter, “I want everyone to see what they’ve done.”

Warning: The video contains graphic images.

(Via Slate)

(See the Post’s full Chernobyl coverage here.)

Do you think that Japan is in danger of seeing consequences like these from it’s recent nuclear disaster?

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

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