On April 26, 1986, the nuclear reactor explosion in Chernobyl produced devastating health and environmental effects for Europe. Twenty-five years later, the contamination continues to affect the surrounding area.
To commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy, and as part of Earth Month 2011 at Ohio University, the Honors Tutorial College Journalism program and the Environmental Communication Faculty Initiative sponsored a screening of the 2006 documentary The Battle of Chernobyl by Thomas Johnson.
Through interviews with surviving plant workers, Chernobyl residents and political leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev, the film explored the long-term effects of the catastrophe and explained the cleanup efforts in the months following the disaster in present-day Ukraine.
Before the film, selected students read passages from the oral history book Voices of Chernobyl by Russian journalist Svetlana Alexievich.
Journalism professor and event organizer Bernhard Debatin said the documentary brings new significance in light of the recent Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
“Quite obviously with Fukushima just having occurred, this has been charged with even more relevance. I was shocked that something on that scale would happen so shortly after (Chernobyl),” Debatin said.
Kristen Helmsdoerfer was one of the Honors Tutorial College students chosen to read the passages. She said that the experience helped her to become more informed.
“With the recent Fukushima disaster, it’s especially important for students to be aware,” said Helmsdoerfer, who is a freshman Honors Tutorial College student studying English. “Nuclear energy is something that’s going to be very important to us going forward and we should be aware of the dangers of it.”
Pat Merida is the chair of the Nuclear Issues Committee of Ohio Sierra Club. She said that one of the strengths of the documentary was that it emphasized the personal aspect of the tragedy.
“This helped bring out the human side of it, the individual rather than the statistic,” said Merida, who said that the Sierra Club is opposed to nuclear energy for both environmental and economic reasons.
Debatin said that his goal was to raise awareness.
“It’s pretty much a generation ago now. The students I deal with are usually unaware of or not very well informed of it,” Debatin said. “Things tend to get forgotten, and I think Chernobyl is a very important point in history from a lot of perspectives.”
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