Last week, Ukraine’s minister of ecology, Ostap Semerak, announced that his country is talking to a multinational energy company about constructing a giant solar park inside the contaminated uninhabited Exclusion Zone around the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Of all man-made environmental catastrophes in human history, Chernobyl is considered to have caused the most lasting impact.
Since my first visit in 1993, I have been documenting the aftermath of the accident in dramatic photographs – the failed reactor, the contamination to the land, and the countless victims in the fallout regions, leading to my book and iPad app ‘The Long Shadow of Chernobyl’. Ignoring radiation levels, a few hundred elderly people have returned to their homes. At first Ukrainian officials discouraged them, but they soon turned a blind eye and are even providing them with regular medical check-ups.
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