On the 26th of April, 1986, Block IV of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded and began a process of death, suffering and disease for hundreds of thousands of people. As medical students and doctors, it is our responsibility to research the health effects of this accident, inform the public about the dangers to their health and prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again. This website was designed in order to give you an overview over the current status of research on the Chernobyl disaster, explain why certain representatives of the nuclear industry, including the IAEA, are interested in misinforming the public and euphemizing the catastrophe into "just another power plant accident" and offer concrete possibilities for getting involved. It seeks to provide valuable and reliable background information to interested medical students, the media and the public and contribute to promoting the truth about the catastrophe of Chernobyl. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact alexro80@web.de. But first, it has to be understood that 20 years after the horrible catastrophe of Chernobyl, the magnitude of the health effects caused by the nuclear meltdown and the ensuing radiation are still not completely understood. Three things are certain however:

Nuclear Power is not safe The Chernobyl Disaster showed the world the ugly face of nuclear power - the one the nuclear industry is trying to hide and the one opponents have been warning about for many years before the meltdown. Chernobyl should have been the turning point of the world's nuclear policy, yet it appears it was only the first major nuclear accident. Since then, several others have occured in Great Britain, Germany, the US and Japan. None were of the magnitude of Chernobyl, yet according to scientists, the next accident is only a question of time.	Block IV of the Chernobyl Power Plant after the explosion
Families remembering the victims of Chernobyl	The health effects of Chernobyl continue to kill and maim The health effects of Chernobyl were not only limited to the immediate radiation of the local population, which was forcibly evacuated from the region within a matter of days or the poulation of up to 1.000.000 so called liquidators, young men ordered to clean up the nuclear rubble and risk their lives for the creation of a sarcophagus. The environmental destruction, the damage to the ecosystem, the effects of low-level radiation and the social and psychoogical impact of Chernobyl are not to be underestimated. Even today, low level radiation, ingested by the general population in form of food and milk, is causing malformation, mutations and cancer daths, as well as countless non-cancer diseases in the affected populations. Due to genomic instabilities caused by radiation, the full effects of the accident will only develop within the next six generations, showing that Chernobyl is more than just a temporary accident. It continues to kill - every year.
The case on Chernobyl is not yet closed The "official" numbers of the IAEA do not reflect the real situation. The International Atomic Energy Agency, responsible for "the worldwide promotion of the peaceful use of nuclear technology" (IAEA Charter) and composed mainly of scientists from nuclear energy states has no inherent interest in addressing the true casualties and health effects of the Chernobyl disaster. Instead, it propagates the myth of a benign and managable nuclear accident. According to IAEA numbers, only 50 people died as a result of Chernobyl, while the total number of deaths may rise to 4.000. Plausible and scientific evidence from all effected regions, compiled by national cancer registries and supported by western scientists show numbers that greatly exceed these obviously downplayed statistics - more than 500,000 invalids, more than 50,000 deaths amongst the liquidators, thousands of childhoohd deaths and malformations all over Europe, countless cases of thyroid cancers, all not counting the psychologic and social impact of the catastrophe and the subsequent resettlement and stigmatization ... And the risk of another accident like Chernobyl is still out there...	Fish, killed by radiation, showing immense levels of radioactivity

Most of the pictures on these pages are photos taken by Igor Kostin, the photo journalist who took many of the most  famous photos of Chernobyl

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