Twenty-five years on, the town of Prypiat, the city of 50,000 built by the Soviets, remains a ghost city ever since its residents fled as one of the reactors at the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. Thanks to the then Soviet Union's 'blanket of silence' on the scale of nuclear disaster much of what happened on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine) is still unknown.
How many perished on the spot and how many became victims of radiation-triggered cancers, the figures vastly differ. Ukraine says up to one million died following the disaster, though a 2006 UN report puts that figure at 9,000. The truth is still to come out, however. As of today the dysfunctional nuclear plant is buried under layers of concrete, but authorities in Kiev insist that higher-than-normal radiation still persists in the surroundings. The 'sarcophagus' of the Chernobyl plant is 'dilapidated and leaks radiation', Ukrainian President Viktor Vanukovych told his guest Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as the two appeared at the site to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the history's worst nuclear disaster.
"It's impossible to be here without trepidation," said the Russian leader, who knew that an hour before his visit the area was hosed down to disperse any radiation dust. Radiation lives almost eternally; its half-life is some thirty thousand years, a challenge the nuclear industry has yet to contend with. But it's the call from the Fukushima Prefecture that brings the Chernobyl disaster commemorations to their perfect finish.
On April 26, in Diet, a group of members announced it was studying ways 'to build a new Japan without nuclear power'. The group is led by Hiroyaki Arai, a New Renaissance Party member from the Fukushima which is in a tight grip of radiation released by the Diichi nuclear power plant damaged by last March's earthquake.
But what a tragic irony as the Japanese nuclear disaster tends to bring under sharper focus the question of nuclear power safety the sustainability of conventional energy has acquired new urgency specially in the wake of uncertainty now seething most of the Arab world. It's indeed a breather to the nuclear power industry which had come under incisive public scrutiny following the Japanese debacle.
Instead of standing aside, as warranted by the Japanese nuclear disaster, the civil nuclear power industry is cutting new deals. But there is hardly a serious debate as to how to strengthen safety regimes at the plants, a number of which are older than the stricken Fukushima plant. Not only have some plants outlived their life, there are some others that have been found to be short on safety standards.
Many nuclear power plants are located in seismic zones or built on seafronts which have historically been subject to devastating tsunamis. Without really under-estimating the much-touted fears that nuclear plants can be the target of terrorists one would like to suggest that safety standards against the elements of Nature are perhaps quite inadequate.
Japan had not apparently catered to the disastrous quake-tsunami threat of the ferocity that hit it last March, and thereby a question how safe are our nuclear plants against the forces of Nature. In this backdrop, the Russian Federation president's proposal he sent to international leaders a "new global nuclear safety convention to ensure disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl are not repeated" is indeed welcomed. But then it is the position of a nuclear state, which wants to build more reactors.
It should in no way minimise the importance of thinking and planning to outlaw nuclear power generation over some time. What Japan has come to be after its recent nuclear disaster and what happened to the city of Prypiat are lessons that should not be forgotten.