Twenty years have passed since the accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It is known as, till date, the most horrible tragedy in the history of nuclear power. The recent terrible picture of the surrounding areas after two decades demonstrates how severe the incident was. Radioactive pollution affected huge areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus. The accident discharged 500 times the amount of radioactive material and the disaster is ten times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 330,000 people. In fact, what happened is beyond our comprehension. The tragedy occurred in 1986, while a special test was being conducted in the No. 4 reactor. The explosion destroyed most of the building housing the reactor. Safety regulations were neglected during the test and the reactor had structural faults. Both

in human terms and economically, the worth of the Chernobyl catastrophe was devastating.

A U.N. report in autumn last year said about 60 fatalities were confirmed as a result of the accident and an estimated 3,940 people will die in the coming years. But Ukraine and other affected countries condemned the report as underestimating the true toll. The nuclear plant accident in Chernobyl is, however, not the only one in history. On March 28, 1979 in America a nuclear power plant located at "Three Mile Island" suffered a core meltdown and on October 10, 1957 the graphite core of a British nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumbria, caught fire, releasing substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area (known as Windscale fire). In Argentina, there was a nuclear accident on September 23, 1983. Today, Japan is producing more than 30% of its electric power from nuclear power plants and it has become the third largest nuclear power nation in terms of civilian power plants.

The accidents that occurred in the past in the superpower (old and new) states teach us that the

nuclear plant is not safe at all. Even terrorists are trying to possess nuclear arsenal for subversive purposes.

People depend on fossil fuel (petroleum oils) by and large for energy. Recently, the oil price has soared up to $75 per barrel in the global oil market. Amid stubbornly high oil and gas prices and

growing environmental concerns (global warming), the developed countries (such as USA, UK, Japan, Germany, Australia) and developing countries (such as China, India) are looking for alternative sources of energy.

Following the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, nuclear power generation declined abruptly. However, there has been growing interest recently in nuclear energy due to the soaring oil and gas prices, oil crisis, high oil demand of the energy-hungry countries (China, India, etc.) and negligible emission of greenhouse gas. Many countries are active in developing nuclear power. The Japanese government is now in the final stage of drawing up its "New National Energy Strategy", which will call for, among other things, promotion of nuclear energy, as well as reduction in the nation's oil dependency rate to 40% or less by 2030.

But the contemporary technology for producing energy is, nonetheless, debatable because of the problem of nuclear waste disposal, grave radioactive contamination from accident and last, but not the least, the possibilities of nuclear proliferation for arse-

nals (some countries such as India, Pakistan, Israel already having it and some countries trying to possess it such as North Korea and Iran).

With such growing concerns over nuclear power, the assertion made by Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is remarkable. He said that the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later.

The Chernobyl catastrophe reminds us that we should not forget the horrible lessons taught to the world in 1986. We should do everything to make all nuclear facilities safe and secure. We should also start seriously working on the production of the alternative sources of energy. The fact that world leaders now increasingly talk about this imperative suggests that the lesson of Chernobyl is finally being understood.

M. Emdadul Hoque

Saitama University, Japan