Adi Roche: Chernobyl is now a military target. We cannot let this continue

We must work for peace so that the people of Ukraine don’t suffer another nuclear disaster

In February 2022, the world watched in horror as Russian troops recklessly advanced through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, reawakening deeply buried radioactive elements and contaminating the air, land, and water. Picture: AP /Efrem Lukatsky

On Saturday, April 26, 1986, at 1:23am, the world changed forever when a new word, “Chernobyl”, entered into the history of language, the history of world disasters and the history of the world… with deadly and frightful force.

Described by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan as “the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of humanity”, the explosions sent clouds of radioactive gases and debris 7-9km into the atmosphere, which had an enormous health, environmental, economic and socio-economic fallout.