The unlikely afterlife of Chernobyl suggests that our nuclear nightmares might be somewhat exaggerated

On 26th April 1986, engineers at the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station, a Soviet facility that is now in the Ukraine, tested a new cooling system designed to reduce the risk of a meltdown. In a bitter irony, this test actually caused a meltdown. The resulting explosion destroyed Chernobyl’s reactor 4. In the absence of the containment facilities that were standard at Western facilities, large quantities of radioactive gases began escaping into the atmosphere. The number of casulties that resulted from this accident are still disputed. However, it is universally agreed that it was the worst nuclear disaster in history.

One could be forgiven for assuming that – apart from the clean up, the grieving and the recriminations – that would be the end of the story of Chernobyl. In the popular imagination, the surrounding area was reduced to a wasteland fit only as a setting for zombie movies.

In fact, it was to continue generating power into the new millennium. As already mentioned it was reactor 4 that blew up in 1986. Even after the meltdown, reactors 1-3 remained capable of producing electricity and Ukraine still needed power. So for years afterwards people would come to work in the same plant that had irradiated much of Europe. The plant was given a less communist name, workers could no longer live in the immediate vicinity and work was required to contain reactor 4. But this not withstanding it remained a working power plant.

In 1991, Chernobyl’s dire safety record continued when a fire shut down reactor 2. Reactor 1 continued operating until 1996. The final reactor was eventually shut down in 2000. The process of decommissioning it continues to the present day – including the construction of a massive steel sarcophagus to encase the concrete sarcophagus which encases reactor 4.

I bring this fact up to illustrate that the impact of Chernobyl is perhaps not as apocalyptic as is supposed. As the environmentalist Mark Lynas notes: