The Irish ambassador to the United Nations Geraldine Byrne Nason should lead calls for the Chernobyl nuclear plant to be declared a "no-war zone", Adi Roche, anti-nuclear campaigner and founder of Chernobyl Children International, has urged.
Speaking at an event in Dublin on Tuesday to mark the 36th anniversary of the nuclear disaster, Ms Roche said there was a serious danger that the plant could be the site of another catastrophe as the invasion of Ukraine continues.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster was an accidental explosion at the nuclear power plant in the early hours of April 26th, 1986, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It is considered one of the two worst nuclear accidents, the other being that at Fukushima, Japan in 2011.
Ms Roche said on Tuesday: “There may be an impression that 36 years later really Chernobyl should be relegated to history, that it no longer poses a threat. The reality is very, very different.
“Chernobyl is not something from the past. Chernobyl is, sadly, forever. The impact of that singular, shocking nuclear accident can never be undone. Its radioactive footprint is embedded in our world and it will affect millions of people over time.”
Not only would the impact of that disaster continue, in the environment surrounding the plant and in the genetic make-up of those worst affected and their descendants, but the plant itself had “re-entered” the international consciousness “for all the wrong reasons” since Russia’s invasion.
The "shocking assault" by Russia had resulted in "thousands of troops... careening through this fragile, delicate place that is just about holding the radioactivity under the top two or three centimetres of soil".
Whereas areas such as nuclear power plants had “previously been off limits” in wars, now “everything has become fair game”. The takeover of the Chernobyl plant by Russian forces amounted to them “making a nuclear threat without making a nuclear threat,” she said.
International community
Asked what the international community should do Ms Roche said: "We would call on the Irish Government and all our European neighbours and partners to lobby the United Nations and to seek for the UN to declare any further attack or takeover of Chernobyl, or any projected attack on any of the other 15 reactors in Ukraine, a heinous war crime for which there would be severe consequences.
"We have to negotiate no-war zones. Otherwise we are on a precipice. Listening to the rumblings of what is being said today, referencing a potential third world war... The sooner we get Ireland active though our wonderful UN ambassador, Geraldine Byrne Nason, to rally the UN take to heed of what we have been forewarned at Chernobyl."
Also speaking at the event, Chernobyl survivor Raisa Milnovitch Carolan (29) – who was adopted by an Irish family when she was a child – said she was "deeply worried for all the children" in the nuclear zone around the plant who were, she said, "seriously threatened by the re-release of radiation in the Chernobyl region".
