Adi Roche on 40 years since Chornobyl disaster and how Cork was first to welcome the children

Forty years after Chornobyl, Adi Roche explains how the nuclear disaster still impacts lives, with Chornobyl Children International efforts ongoing

Adi Roche holds a Geiger counter in the exclusion zone, close to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2003. Picture by Julien Behal

At  1.23am on April 26, 1986, a chain reaction at the Chornobyl* Power Plant in northern Ukraine caused an explosion that led to the world’s first level-seven meltdown and the most catastrophic nuclear event in history. Over the following hours and days, it released radiation estimated to be 400 times greater than that of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.

The fallout, literally and metaphorically, continues to impact today.