Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

The 25th Anniversary of Chernobyl Incident

Amid global concern about the safety of nuclear energy, Russian and Ukrainian leaders marked 25th years of world's worst nuclear disaster on April 26, on a historic visit to Chernobyl. Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, making the first ever visit by a Russian president to Chernobyl Atomic power Station, and Ukrain President, Viktor Yanukovych paid tribute to the victims of the April 1986 catastrophe. While hailing the sacrifices of the Soviet clean-up workers, both called for greater security at atomic power stations. "We are marking a tragic date. Twenty five years have passed and we have understood that nuclear accidents have colossal consequences for the population," said Yanukovych. "Today is another chance to think how we should run nuclear power plants and that their safety depends on us," he added.

Celebration of the anniversary of Chernobyl disaster comes after Tsunami-caused damages at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which sparked serious global concern over the disastrous risks of nuclear power.  However, such nuclear incidents will inherent pressurize countries exploiting nuclear energy for military as well as civil purposes to reassess thoroughly the projects to avoid possible nuclear incidents. Watching videos and reading news released on virtual world will certainly creates problem for countries establishing such power plants, but can such incidents cause stoppage of nuclear projects.

There are two main reasons for swell of nuclear plants around the world is lack of energy supply to run the engine of economic development machine. As the population is tremendously increasing, particularly in developing countries, and providing goods and services for such a quantity of human beings entails huge consumption of energy. The increasing demand of energy in the world has made countries to seek for a more stable and certain energy resources to keep save their economic growth and development, and the shortage of supply accelerated the process.

On the other hand, the spiraling price rise of fossil fuels—cool, gas and oil—and their damaging effects on environment is another source of anxiety, and has made the nuclear energy interesting.
Thus, however, incidents of Chernobyl and Fukushima have dealt effects on the process, but it looks quite unlikely to bring current large nuclear project into stoppage. What countries will do, hereafter, perhaps, would be enhancing the investment in order to ensure the safety of power plants.