Political fallout

Despite the scale of the Chornobyl disaster, both Ukraine and Belarus still rely heavily on nuclear energy, having no developed hydrocarbon resources. In the coming months, both plan to borrow billion of dollars from Russia to finance the construction of new reactors of Russian design.

The disaster and the government's handling of it highlighted the shortcomings of the Soviet system with its unaccountable bureaucrats and entrenched culture of secrecy. Journalists subsequently uncovered evidence that the children of Communist apparatchiks had been evacuated well before others and some staff died at the plant because they had not been given orders to leave.

Mikhail Gorbachev has since said he considered the disaster one of the main nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union which eventually collapsed in 1991. The nuclear disaster in Japan is unlikely to break the country's political system. But Tokyo should not underestimate the profound power of a nuclear meltdown – physical and political. (Kyivpost, March 18, 2011)

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