A scathing indictment on the risks of nuclear power

May 3, 2006
Issue 

Chernobyl Heart
Directed by Maryann De Leo
HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films

REVIEW BY ANNOLIES TRUMAN

If you're short of reasons to oppose nuclear power, Chernobyl Heart will give you a list a mile long based on its sobering portrayal of the human suffering caused by the world's worst nuclear accident.

A testing error caused the infamous explosion at the Ukrainian nuclear power station on April 26, 1986. During the ensuing fire, 190 tonnes of toxic materials were expelled into the atmosphere. Seventy per cent of the radioactive material was blown into neighbouring Belarus, contaminating 99% of the country.

The film, which won an Oscar in 2004, exposes the continuing effects of radiation on the children of Belarus.

I could not withhold my tears while watching this film. It was so easy to identify with children trapped in dysfunctional bodies, parents' pain and helplessness, and adolescents with no future but cancer.

Film-maker Maryann De Leo depicts the work of the Chernobyl Children's Project International (CCPI), which developed out of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The film opens with an October 2002 delegation of CCPI representatives in radiation suits entering the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant while the Geiger counter rises alarmingly.

When the group reaches sight of the deserted plant, Adi Roche, executive director of CCPI and commentator for much of the film, points to the hastily constructed, now-crumbling sarcophagus built over the failed reactor. She expresses alarm that the concrete shell designed to contain the remaining radiation is in real danger of collapsing and informs us that to date only 3% of the radiation has been released.

According to her, that 3% has already affected 9 million lives. With a new shelter not due to be completed until 2009, "the next Chernobyl may be Chernobyl itself", we are told.

The film then takes us to a variety of institutions in Belarus where we are exposed to a litany of horrifying physical ailments caused by the radiation. The first is a hospital ward where a group of young people have just been operated on for thyroid cancer. According to their surgeon, thyroid cancer in children has increased 10,000% in the Gomel region of Belarus since the disaster.

A paediatrician working in the area for 16 years claims the hereditary defects are getting worse, and affecting more children. A nurse reiterates this claim, fighting off tears and revealing the personal cost of daily confronting such human devastation.

At one point we visit a maternity ward where mothers are giving birth. One cries with relief as her baby is placed on her chest, seemingly normal and healthy. The doctor tells us that only 15-20% of babies born in the hospital are healthy. And as the film so chillingly reveals, even children born apparently healthy can carry damaged DNA. Cancers and heart problems can show themselves later.

Heart disease in Belarus has quadrupled since the accident, caused by the accumulation of radioactive caesium in the cardiac muscle. There is a high incidence of multiple defects of the heart; a condition coined "Chernobyl heart", from which the film gets its title.

While a scathing indictment on the risks of nuclear power, the film avoids overt political judgements. It does contain a number of unspoken assumptions, however. One is that problems can be fixed by compassionate people giving money and time to charity. It ignores the activist background of the main protagonist, Adi Roche, who, as an anti-nuclear campaigner, developed peace education programs and has made a documentary herself about the effects of Chernobyl on Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine.

Another is that medical know-how from the West (in this case Ireland and the US) can intervene and rescue children from their desperately bleak fates. The reality is that these medical missions reach only a small proportion of the affected children. The film refrains from mentioning that the deterioration of Belarus' health system was caused by the restoration of capitalism in the former USSR.

Also missing from the film was any mention of the exemplary work done by Cuban health workers, who have cared for about 19,000 Chernobyl survivors. Cuba began the program in 1990 and kept it going through the difficult "special period" (the island's economic difficulties in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse). The program is part of its international solidarity efforts, which involve sending tens of thousands of Cuban doctors to work in poor Third World countries.

Made three years ago, the film was screened again in Perth for the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. More than 100 people attended, swamping the chosen venue. Judging from the size of the crowd and their response to the film, the current nuclear push by the Australian uranium-mining lobby is not going to go unchallenged.

From Green Left Weekly, May 3, 2006.
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