Nuclear Power Shouldn’t Be a Solution for Our Energy Crisis

Nuclear Power Should Not Be the Solution to Our Energy Crisis

In “Voices of Chernobyl: Survivors' Stories”, Melissa Block shares with us what happened in that horrifying morning of April 26, 1986 in tiny Belarus. The biggest atrocity in nuclear history.

Twenty-five years ago this month, a routine maintenance test at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine veered wildly out of control. At 1:23 in the morning on April 26, 1986, there was a disastrous chain reaction in the core of reactor No.4. A power surge ruptured the uranium fuel rods, while a steam explosion created a huge fireball that blew the roof off the reactor. The resulting radioactive plume blanketed the nearby city of Pripyat. The cloud moved on to the north and west, contaminating land in neighboring Belarus, and then moved across Eastern Europe and over Scandinavia. From the Soviets: utter silence. There was no word from the Kremlin that the worst nuclear accident in history was under way. Then monitoring stations in Scandinavia began reporting abnormally high levels of radioactivity. Finally, nearly three days after the explosion, the Soviet news agency TASS issued a brief statement acknowledging that an accident had occurred. (Melissa Block)

Today, the cities around Chernobyl are ghost towns. There is nothing else but dust and belongings. There was no time to gather anything, the danger was imminent. The name Chernobyl brings back dark memories to those that lived close to the nuclear plant and to those who didn’t. This accident was one of the biggest human mistakes. Looking at pictures of what Chernobyl looks like today, we only see an abandoned place. It is impossible to see the radiation, but the absent of the human being make us think if one day, by a little human mistake the earth could all look like Chernobyl.

Today, another nuclear catastrophe similar to Chernobyl made the world think about the safety of nuclear power. On March 11, 2011, Japan was rocked by a 9.0...