40 Years After Chernobyl, Disinformation Campaign Still Distorts Nuclear Debate, Experts Warn

The Sarcophagus of the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor number 4 in Chernobyl, Ukraine, on Jan. 25, 2006. Daniel Berehulak/Getty ImagesThe Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Widely held beliefs include that hundreds of thousands—even millions—of people died from radiation-induced cancer; ecosystems were ravaged; and territories left uninhabitable for millennia.April 26 marked the 40th anniversary of the disaster. Several experts, as well as the French Association for Scientific Information, an organization backed by Nobel-laureate scientists, caution that public memory of the disaster has been shaped less by epidemiological evidence than by a long-running narrative effort sustained by ideological and economic interests.