CANDLELIGHT CEREMONIES were held in Dublin, Limerick and Cork last night, the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
Organised by the Chernobyl Children’s Trust to remember those who perished in the disaster, large radiation symbols were created with candles by organisations and charities involved with Chernobyl.
Speaking before last night’s events, Simon Walsh, chairman of the trust, said: “It is important that we remember and mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, which has been declared by the United Nations as the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of humanity.”
The vigils were held simultaneously with others in cities across Europe. In Ireland, they were held on the respective O’Connell Streets in Dublin and Limerick and on Patrick Street in Cork.
As well as holding the candlelight vigils, statements from some of the surviving “liquidators” who were drafted in to clean up the aftermath of the disaster were read. Of the 600,000 “liquidators” used, 200,000 have died in the intervening 25 years while another 200,000 are invalids.
The meltdown at the Soviet nuclear power plant on April 26th, 1986 sent a radioactive cloud over much of Europe, with radiation detected as far away as the west of Ireland. However, the effects of the disaster were most felt in Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia.
Estimates on the death toll vary radically from under 100 to hundreds of thousands.
In the years since the disaster, thousands of children were taken away from the area to Ireland by the Chernobyl Children International group founded by Cork woman Adi Roche in 1991.