Forty years after Chernobyl: what has the world learned?

The fallout from the accident was enormous and should still give us pause for thought today, warns medical professor Duarte Barral in Público:

“At a time when we still need to look for alternatives to fossil fuels, it’s important to remember the lessons of the past. If we take long-term indirect consequences into account, the number of deaths, according to WHO estimates, lies at 4,000. … Then there was the evacuation zone that still extends across some 2,500 square kilometres today. … The accident had such a profound impact that it may even have contributed to the collapse of the USSR five years later by exposing the weaknesses of the Soviet regime and its political culture of information control and secrecy.”