The executive director of the Chernobyl Children's Project International (CCPI) has warned the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 would not be fully felt for another five decades.
Ms Adi Roche said congenital birth defects in the region have increased by 250 per cent since the disaster, and one in 4 children in Belarus will develop thyroid abnormalities including cancer.
The charity, which works with children in Belarus, today signed up to the UN development programme for the region.
Speaking on the 19th Anniversary of the disaster in Dublin today, Ms Roche said fires at the nuclear plant could have triggered a nuclear explosion of 50 to 80 times the force of Hiroshima.
Tens of thousands of firefighters died as a result of their efforts to stop an atomic explosion at Chernobyl which would have made Europe uninhabitable. Ms Roche said the 25,000 "liquidators" who died and the 70,000 who are permanently disabled as a result of making the reactor safe had given their lives to save the continent.
Nineteen school children from Scoil Cholmcille, Santry, each with a candle and a photograph of a worker - today commemorated the sacrifice of the men who died as a result of exposure to radioactivity.
Ambassadors from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia attended the event which paid homage to those who suffered and still suffer as a result of the disaster.
She said that while people had a "searing image" of the firefighters in 9/11, nobody had a similar understanding of the heroism of the liquidators. The men at the plant could often work for only a few seconds at a time due to high radiation levels and had little in the way of protective clothing.
The Belorussian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Dr Alyaksei Mazhukhou, said that 1.5 million people, including 420,000 children, were still living in affected areas.
Additional reporting PA
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