Chernobyl, located in Ukraine, is host to a nuclear power station consisting of four separate reactors used to produce electricity for that part of the country. It was during the evening hours on the 25th of April, 1986, when the reactor crew working Chernobyl #4 was preparing for a test scheduled to be run the next day. The object of the test was to see how long the turbines would keep spinning and producing power if the electrical power supply went off-line. This test, albeit dangerous, had been run before. However, as part of the preparation they disabled some critical control systems...including the automatic shutdown safety mechanisms. At 1:23 in the morning, 26 April 1986, an explosion blew Reactor #4 nuclear containment vessel's 2,000 ton cap which allowed radioactive material to be disbursed into the air. Thus began a series of tragic events that continue to this day in terms of land no longer inhabitable, crops no longer fit for human consumption, and human lives that continue to be lost to either the direct effects of nuclear radiation or absorbed particles.

Russia was slow to release any information about the accident. Slowly, with the passage of time, Russia realized it could no longer totally contain or control the news surrounding this event, and with time photos also began to appear showing efforts implemented to contain the damage as well as of the damage itself. The story of Chernobyl emerged piecemeal, with a few facts here and a few there leaked out for public consumption.

It appears that official statistics, including those from Russia and the UN, claim that less than 100 people died as a result of this accident. What apparently is not being reported are the deaths, pain, and suffering of those who've since contracted various cancers, birth defects, and other maladies associated with exposure to either direct nuclear radiation or the absorption of atomic particles from the Chernobyl event. There are numbers out there that claim as high as 400,000 people's lives have been influenced health-wise in some form from the Chernobyl accident.

In March of 2007 I received a link from an Aleutian Island's contributor to a web site dealing with the Chernobyl incident in a well laid out sequential manner. The presentation consisted of photos and videos accompanied with commentary by a young Ukrainian lady, Elena Filatova, who lives in Kiev.

A paved road runs through several small villages en route from Kiev to Chernobyl, which is located about 130km (78 miles) in a northerly direction from Kiev. During the timeframe from 1969-1989 the population of Kiev was at approximately three million people, with an annual birthrate between 28,000 and 33,000. Chernobyl had a population of approximately 10,000 by 1986. The power plant itself is located about 12 miles north of Chernobyl.  A couple of miles further on is the town of Pripyat, a community built in the 1970's for Chernobyl power station employees. In 1986 the population of Pripyat was approximately 45,000 and growing. Today it is a Ghost Town.

I visited Filatova's web site and was compelled to spend another hour viewing the photos, watching the videos, and reading about what had happened. I passed the link along to others so that they could, if they wished, visit the site as well. Within a few days I began receiving email stating the link had "dried up," was no longer valid. A little research revealed that the link was to but one of several mirror sites making this material available, and that there was also a "main" web site owned and maintained by Elena Filatova which linked to other web sites containing her numerous presentations, including Ghost Town and Land of the Wolves. According to explanations on her site, she'd experienced problems keeping her material up and running for others to see.

Being a "fair and balanced" sort of person, I began to copy down each Ghost Town and Land of the Wolves web page along with their photos, and worked on building a site consisting of her material that would be compatible with both Mozilla (Netscape, Firefox, etc.) and IE browsers. Finally, with Filatova's OK, I posted a mirror site containing only her presentations of Ghost Town and Land of the Wolves on our server, in English, so that folks who were interested could visit the site and see the presentations for themselves.

As one can imagine, and with some just cause even amongst logically thinking people, there is an anti-nuclear power plant group of people that cherish the content of these presentations. The anti-nuke folks hold the Ghost Town and Land of the Wolves presentations up as an example as to why no more nuclear power plants should be built.

My intent in making these presentations available is not as part of an anti-nuclear power plant agenda, but to merely show what can happen when ignorance and carelessness on the part of some unskilled and poorly trained engineers, technicians, and/or operators becomes the norm. It's not the gun that kills people, it's people using guns that either accidentally or intentionally kill people. Likewise, it's not that atoms are running around of their own volition killing people, its the improper use and control of those atoms by humans that end up doing the harm. Controlled, nuclear power plants can be a source of clean, inexpensive, and abundant power. In my mind these presentations are about people who create the circumstances under which these kinds of accidents can occur. It's about the need to put qualified people in responsible positions. It's about education. It's about a number of different issues. It's about not cutting back on personnel training. It's about learning how to implement safe sources of power, more of which is demanded each day by more and more people.

It's also about those people who would use nuclear resources to impose damage on others with whom they don't agree politically, philosophically, theologically, or ideologically rather than engaging in constructive dialog to make their issues and concerns known to their fellow man, thus resulting in peaceful solutions to their problems. In their unthinking zeal to impose damage on others using nuclear resources, they simply are exhibiting excessive ignorance as to the aftermath of such an event. Regardless of where it would happen, the radioactive fallout from such an event could well drift to their lands, imposing unthinkable health risks to their very own people as well. In a worst-case scenario, a retaliatory attack against a country hosting or sponsoring such an event would definitely render their lands uninhabitable for a very, very long period of time to come.

As time permits, please visit the following link for some additional in-depth insights regarding the Chernobyl event from a UN perspective. Click HERE to visit the Ghost Town "Pripyat" web site.

I leave you to view Elena Filatova's presentations; her photos, videos, music and comments to draw your own conclusions. Click on the "Presentation" link below when you are ready.