The most terrible technological accident that human history knows: Chernobyl. Once it was an unknown place in the rich land of the Ukraine, now a single chilling word that still casts a dark shadow of death and contamination. Twenty years after the disaster that struck Europe, the tragedy continues. Many people live in villages close to the former nuclear plant in conditions at the edge of human survival. The damage is still very much evident. In the area between the Ukraine and Belarus called THE ZONE, there is the burdensome heritage of disaster and a landscape of silence. The Chernobyl accident generated unknown numbers of victims and it is impossible to know how many people died from the consequences. The issue of long-term effects of the Chernobyl disaster on civilians is controversial. Over 300,000 people were resettled because of the accident; but millions lived
and continue to live in the contaminated area. On the other hand, most of those affected received relatively low doses of radiation. There is little evidence of increased mortality, cancers or birth defects among them, and,
when such evidence is present, existence of a causal link to radioactive contamination is uncertain.
