ДЯКУЄМО ВОЇНАМ, ЯКІ ЗАХИЩАЮТЬ КРАЇНУ!
29.04.2026
A book exhibition from the collection of foreign language documents, dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear power plant accident.
Breath in Chernobyl
40 years ago on the territory of Ukraine there was a first in the history of mankind manmade environmental disaster on a planetary scale. It has influenced and continues to influence the lives and health of millions of people. Since that time, the words “Pripyat” and “Chernobyl” are associated with the majority of the events that divided history into “before and after”, showed the possibility of limit, going up to which it is no longer possible to evaluate anything in the categories of good and evil. And the reason for all this is the human being, the fruits of our activity that almost led to our complete destruction.
That’s how we can describe the perception of the global scale of this tragedy. But there is another scale – an individual one. Looking back, it is important to understand how a specific person living in Pripyat has gone through it at the time of April 26, 1986. What happened to him? How did he equip after the emergency evacuation, how did he justify for himself what happened – not only to the Earth, but to him (her) personally? How did he explain to his child why it was forbidden to even take a favorite toy? And in the end, where are these people now, so many years later? The Chernobyl disaster has affected us all, but each one in a very special way.
In the “Breath in Chernobyl” project Sungtae Jung tried to answer these questions, to approach this issue, affecting the fate of specific people who have left their home and … came back after all. This is a story about life, death, and the ghostly line that unites them. This is a story stretching for a few decades: the story without a plot and dynamics, but that’s why it impresses us even stronger. The two series of photos – “Pripyat” (shots of abandoned chambers, corridors, rooms) and “Samosely” (portraits of elderly people who have returned to live out their days in their homes) – time seems to have stopped. But just so we understand that time does not spare anything or anyone.
“Breath in Chernobyl” very subtly conveys the experience for the people of Ukraine. This is a terrible, unbearable experience that should stay with us in order not to repeat the mistake.
Chernobyl. The ongoing story of the world’s deadliest nuclear disaster
At a little after 1:24 on the morning of April 26, 1986, an explosion shook Number Four Reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Hundreds of tons of fuel, concrete, steel, and other debris were blown into the night sky and carried down over the surrounding area. Even more deadly were the several tons of radiation that rose into the atmosphere, creating a nuclear wind that swept across the Soviet Union, covering the country in a blanket of deadly, invisible poison.
The Soviet government told people that the accident was a minor one, and that there was nothing to worry about. They sent in teams of unprotected workers to clean up the mess. While some of the areas close to the plant were evacuated, no one believed that there was any danger. People in surrounding areas were not even informed of the explosion.
But then people began to die. First it was the firefighters and the cleanup crews who had been inside the reactor. Then men, women, and children across the Soviet Union began to develop radiation-linked diseases. Since the Chernobyl explosion, cancer rates in the Soviet Union have risen 200 percent, respiratory disease rates 2,000 percent, and the number of babies born with birth defects has soared to record numbers.
In Chernobyl, Glenn Alan Cheney reveals what went wrong in Number Four Reactor. He outlines the events leading up to the explosion, and uncovers the truth hidden by the Soviet government. Through interviews with women and men directly involved with and influenced by the disaster, he shows how the Chernobyl disaster continues to affect millions of people, who now suffer not only from physical sickness, but from the knowledge that their government has let them be exposed to almost certain death.
Chernobyl. The lost 458 villages
Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation
Bibliography:
Sungtae, Jung. Breath in Chernobyl / J. Sungtae. - 63 с.
Chernobyl. The Ongoing Story of the World's Deadliest Nuclear Disaster. - New York; Toronto, 2006. - 128 с.
Hirokawa, Ryuichi. Chernobyl. The lost 458 villages / R. Hirokawa. - 30 с.
Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation: Twenty years of experience report of the UN Chernobyl forum expert group (EGE). August, 2005. - 246 с.
Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. A strategy for recovery. - 75 с.
Department of Foreign Language Documents
