Lecture - Nuclear Power: The Evolution of Attitudes 1986 - 2026 - Instytut Pileckiego

Lecture - Nuclear Power: The Evolution of Attitudes 1986 - 2026

Lecture - Nuclear Power: The Evolution of Attitudes 1986 - 2026

Featuring Olha Bozhan, Rebecca Harms, Anna Veronika Wendl, and Jakub Wiech

Date: Tuesday, June 16th, 2026

Location: Pariser Platz 4A, 10117, Berlin

Time: 18:30

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“On 26 April 1986, at 01:25, an explosion occurred at Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, with a capacity of 1 million kW. The explosion followed 30 seconds after the reactor was shut down during tests carried out as part of scheduled maintenance. The exact location and causes of the explosion have not yet been established Structures, ceilings, walls of the upper part of the reactor compartment and part of the machine hall have been destroyed. A fire broke out, which has now been brought under control by the fire service. It is presumed that, due to a rupture in the KMPT circuit, some contaminated water has been released onto the plant site. At 06:50, the radiation background across the plant site was up to 100 micro-roentgens per second, and in the city of Pripyat it was 2-4 micro-roentgens. There is no danger to the city's population…” (information of the Kyiv Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine from 26 April 1986, secret)

“The Task Force meeting shell be held daily at 10:00 am and last up to one hour. Ensure the daily collection of information on the situation and the progress of the accident response. Take meassures to manufacture structures and reinforced concrete blocks. Organise without delay the construction of the necessery number of burial pits for the disposal of water used to decontamination of equipment, buildings and structures. Continue the manufacture of backfilling devices for the reactor. Maintain a stock sufficient for at least three days… Open sand quarries outside the 30-km zone and construct access roads to them. Enlist the local population to carry out work in the quarries. Ensure the evacuation of the population , as well as livestock. Notify the population of the evacuation in good time. Ensure that the evacuees are provided with work. Organise the admission of evacuated children to schools. Pay particular attention to creating normal conditiones for 10th-grade students. Establish medical reports for all evacuees. Recruit the necessery number of medical staff from other regions of the republic. Conduct an audit of all artesian wells. If necessery, introduce water consumption quotas.“ (fragments of minutes No. 1 of the meeting of the Operational Group of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine from 3 May 1986, top secret)

“The field survey conducted by the Marzeev motor vessel on 29-30 April, as well as data from laboratory analyses of water samples taken from fixed points in the Kyiv Reservoir on the Dnipro near the water intake points indicate that the total beta activity amounted to 10-50 nanocuries per litre, which is 1000-5000 times higher than the levels of radioactivity typical for this body of water. The source of contamination of the reservoir is water from the Pripyat River, the specific beta activity of which reached 100-300 nanocuries per litre. Thus, high levels of radioactive contamination were established in the waters of the Kyiv Reservoir, which is the source of drinking water for the city of Kyiv. In order to reduce the radioactivity of the water in the Dnipro Reservoir, which is used for drinking water abstraction, measures are being taken to enhance water decontamination (coagulation, filtration).
Due to changes in weather conditions (change in wind direction), an increase in water radioactivity has been noted in Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Mykolaiv and Rivne regions. Laboratory tests of food products showed that on 2 and 3 May 1986, radioactive contamination was recorded in milk in the Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk and Rivne regions. Milk from the 'Sheludenko' and 'Dymersky' state farms and from the village of Demidovo in the Kyiv region, which was delivered to Dairy Plant No. 1 in Kyiv and the Kyiv-Sviatoshynsky plant, was sent for processing into long-life products.
Medical examinations are carried out at decontamination points. Radiometric monitoring, followed by decontamination of individuals, has been organised at the sanitary checkpoints of City Hospitals No. 14 (named after the October Revolution), No. 25, Children's Hospital No. 14, and the clinics of various institutes. As of 07:00 on 3 May 1986, 911 people had been hospitalised, including 142
children. 79 of them (including 13 children) showed pronounced symptoms of radiation sickness. Five patients are in a critical condition. Two have died. The gamma background level has fluctuated sharply over the past 24 hours depending on wind direction. An increase in the gamma background level was noted in the Vinnytsia, Odesa and Cherkasy regions“. (report of the Ministry of Health of the USSR, 3 May 1986, secret)

These records come from a collection of several thousand files on the Chernobyl accident, stored at Central State Archive of Public Associations and Ukrainian Studies in Kyiv. They were declassified and partially published after Ukraine regained its independence. A presentation by Olha Bażan—co-editor of this publication—will be the starting point for a discussion on how the tragedy affected environmental policy in Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. We will also explore how our views on nuclear energy have evolved since then, also in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

About the Speakers:

Olha Bazhan – Ukrainian archivist, Director of the Central State Archive of Public Associations and
Ukrainian Studies, Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine. She graduated from the History
Department of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (1989). She cooperates with public organizations
on incorporating their documentary heritage into the National Archival Fund. Moreover, she works
on transferring Ukrainian studies documents to Ukraine. She was involved in the process of inclusion
of documents related to the Chernobyl accident and the “Babyn Yar” heritage in the International
Register of the UNESCO “Memory of the World” program.

Rebecca Harms – is an Alternate Board Member of ACER (EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy
Regulators), member of the advisory board of the Center for Liberal Modernity and Co-Chair of the
European center for Press and Media Freedom, responsible for the project „Voices of Ukraine”. In
1976 she co-founded the Citizens Initiative against Nuclear Waste Reprocessing and Disposal in
Gorleben. 1994 – 2004 she was a member of Parliament of Lower Saxony and 2004 - 2019
member of the European Parliament (German Green Party). 2004 - 2019 she was also a member of
the Delegation of the European Parliament and Verkhovna Rada and the Association Committee.
Member of Euronest Parliamentary Assembly
Co-Chair of Euronest 2016- 2019.

PD Dr. Anna Veronika Wendland is a historian of science and technology & a specialist in Ukrainian
Studies. She studied in Cologne and Kyiv and received her PhD in Cologne. After working at Munich University and at the GWZO in Leipzig, she accepted a tenure as research associate at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg, Germany (HI), and as lecturer at Marburg University. Presently, she is one of the speakers of a large collaborative research project on transnational anti-feminism. For her habilitation thesis on "Nuclear Modernity. Atomic Cities,
Nuclear Work, and Nuclear Safety in Eastern and Western Europe 1966-2021 (Marburg U, 2021), she
worked as an industrial anthropologist at several NPP in Germany and Eastern Europe, including
Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she has been a frequent contact for the
media and politicians on nuclear safety issues in Ukraine. Her recent publications include reports on
Zaporizhzhia NPP under Russian occupation, a book on nuclear energy as part of an ecomodernist
agenda (2022) and a monograph on the history of Ukraine (2023).

Jakub Wiech is an analyst, journalist, and commentator. Longtime editor-in-chief of the Energetyka24 website, host of the “Elektryfikacja” podcast, and lecturer at the University of Warsaw. Recipient of the Platinum Megawatts, Good Journalist, Podcast of the Year, and Mariusz Walter Awards; nominated for the Woyciechowski, Grand Press, and MediaTory Awards. Recipient of the James S. Denton Transatlantic Fellowship. Author of the book “Energetyka po prostu” (Energy Made Simple).

The Event is moderated by Natalia Latecka and Patryk Szostak from the Pilecki-Institute in Berlin. The presentation will be in Ukrainian, with simultaneous interpretation into English. The discussion will be held in English.