Adi Roche a real hero of Chernobyl children

Like a post-apocalyptic horror movie, a decaying and rusting amusement park ferris wheel is all that remains of the Soviet Union’s dream of non-military nuclear power expansion.

It is also testament to the nightmare that began 30 years ago when the Chernobyl power plant exploded, killing dozens initially and affecting the lives of millions ever since.

The ferris wheel once stood in the main square of the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine. Named after the nearby Pripyat River, the city was founded just 16 years before, on February 4, 1970. It was the ninth nuclear city in the Soviet Union and was built to serve the Chernobyl power plant 3km away.

It had 50,000 inhabitants — more than the current population of Waterford — and most of them worked at Chernobyl just over the border in Belarus.

The population now is zero and, except for the work of one extraordinary Irishwoman, international interest in the thousands of children affected by the disaster would have also remained zero.

Adi Roche was not about to let that happen. For the past three decades, she has kept the name Chernobyl in the public consciousness and to this day remains stubbornly resolute in her determination to continue to help those affected.

Her achievement has been remarkable, to say the least. She founded the charity Chernobyl Children International (CCI) and, between then and now, the charity has raised more than €100 million to help those most affected by the world’s worst nuclear accident, which took place on April 26, 1986.

Over the years, interest in Chernobyl has waned but Ms Roche’s commitment to the children never has. As well as raising money, her charity has also helped almost 25,000 children affected by the explosion to benefit from holidays in Ireland over the past 30 years.

As she recently reminded us, “the lives of seven million people were affected by the accident, which released 200 times more radioactivity than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs”.

Last week she brought a delegation from her native Cork to Pripyat to see for themselves what a ghost town really looks like. It included the lord mayor of Cork, Chris O’Leary, and the chief executive of Cork City Council, Ann Doherty.

Chernobyl’s last reactor was shut down in 2000, but it is still leaking radiation. Mr O’Leary knows more than most how dangerous the reactor still is. He was among the civil defence team that detected radioactive fallout from Chernobyl in Ireland in 1986.

Apart from her very personal work for the children of Chernobyl, Adi Roche has been influential at political level. She was instrumental in persuading the Irish government to contribute €8m towards the construction of a €1.5bn steel and concrete shelter designed to prevent the damaged reactor leaking radioactivity and make it safe for the next 100 years.

But it is her humanitarianism that remains her finest quality. In an age of superlatives when anyone who does a good deed is seen as a hero, Adi Roche is truly deserving of the accolade.