Statement from Founder and Voluntary CEO of Chernobyl Children International, Adi Roche:

“Today, we wake up to news that the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has been attacked and the sarcophagus that is meant to protect humanity is scarred.

Recent whispers of potential peace-talks and ceasefire in Ukraine have been potentially scuppered by this ultra-provocative and unprecedented attack.  It undermines and is contrary to everything that we have been trying to achieve.

I appeal, on behalf of all humanity and as a first-step towards peace negotiations, that the deadly and toxic Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, with its thousands of tons and gallons of highly radioactive material, no longer be targeted, or used as an area of shelling, bombardment, and ground fighting under the Hague Convention.

My worst nightmare in this conflict is that the tragedy of the Chernobyl disaster could be re-released on the world.   I fear that this area, a sacred area, an area of utter vulnerability and danger, a special area of human tragedy, could once again, have deadly radioactive contamination released which would spread everywhere, like a great and uncontrollable monster.

This war has changed everything.  Never before in the history of the atomic age have nuclear stations been used as weapons of war.  They should remain globally ‘off limits’ because of their lethal potential to destroy the planet.  The weaponising nuclear facilities has resulted in a collision between warfare and nuclear power, which is a whole new threat with potentially devastating, unimaginable consequences for humankind for centuries to come.  This is nuclear terrorism.

We neglect Chernobyl at our peril.

This weaponising of nuclear power signifies to the world that the nature of modern warfare has changed forever, and brings with it a sense of foreboding for wars of the future.

We are playing Russian Roulette and our luck is about to run out.  We are staring down a barrel of a loaded gun.   Any potential explosion or meltdown at Chernobyl, or any other Nuclear Power Plant, by accident or design would cause irreversible damage to the environment and human life that will last for thousands of years.

Chernobyl has vast silos of nuclear waste and water, which are highly dangerous and volatile.  Along with hundreds of shallow ‘nuclear graves’, which are scattered throughout the Exclusion Zone, holding the contents of thousands of houses, machinery, buses and trucks, all of which have been buried there to keep the radiation underground.

In the name of humanity, in the name of the children, please stop this war and declare the Chernobyl and all Nuclear Power Plants as ‘No War Zones.’ “