40 years after Chernobyl we face a new nuclear risk — this time as a weapon of war

The explosion of reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is not only a story of the past. Right now, nuclear plants are weaponised in the Iran war. It happened in 2022 when Russian forces occupied the Chernobyl exclusion zone. A new way of weaponising nuclear power. What have we learned from the worst nuclear accident in history — and what have we failed to learn?

This conversation was presented by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and the Ukrainian Institute London.

Speakers

Serhii PlokhyMykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History; Director, Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University

Eglė RindzevičiūtėProfessor of Criminology and Sociology at Kingston University London

Jonathon TurnbullAssistant Professor of Human Geography at Durham University

Dr Sasha Dovzhyk (host)Writer, Curator and Head of INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange (Lviv, Ukraine). Editor of the London Ukrainian Review