Adi Roche: Chernobyl series will detail 'one of the greatest cover-ups in history'
The CEO of Chernobyl Children International (CCI) Adi Roche says that a new series on the nuclear disaster which premieres this evening will give viewers the true story of "one of the greatest cover-ups in history."
“Chernobyl” dramatises the 1986 nuclear accident which released radioactive material across Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
It brings to life the efforts of brave men and women who made incredible sacrifices to save Europe from unimaginable disaster.
Ms Roche says the series sees Chernobyl as never articulated or envisioned before.
The Tipperary native said the Soviets were "Chernobyl deniers from Day One.
"Incredibly up to the present day their original claim, that just 31 people died as a result of the accident, has never been corrected although experts put the actual death toll at a minimum of 4,000 and as high as 93,000.”
The Irish screen debut comes just one week after the cast and crew of the series attended a special event at the United Nations in New York, co-hosted by CCI and the Belarusian, Irish and Ukrainian Missions to the UN.
During the event, Ms Roche called for international recognition and a Nobel Prize nomination for the 750,000 first-responders to Chernobyl, known as ‘Liquidators.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually to men and women, to international organisations, who have made the world a safer place to live – and nobody in the world worked harder and paid a higher price to try to make our world a safer place in which to live....than the Liquidators who fought to contain the Chernobyl meltdown.
Meanwhile, research has shown that the effects of the 1986 disaster have, and will continue to, cross generations in what has been termed as ‘Chernobyl Lineage’.
These ‘Grandchildren of Chernobyl’ are the third generation of children who have been affected by the nuclear accident of 1986.
Since 1986, CCI has delivered over €105 million worth of aid delivered to impoverished communities and children across the Chernobyl affected regions of Belarus and Ukraine.
