Starting April 17 and continuing through May 15, Discovery Channel Online ( http://www.discovery.com) will examine the bitter legacy of the world's most horrific nuclear accident, the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Russia's Ukraine, just ten years ago this April.
Although few Americans are aware of it, the consequences of the Chernobyl accident are turning out to be much worse than the world was originally led to believe. Chernobyl put 300 times more radiation into the air than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In addition to the 31 deaths reported, 6,000 Ukrainian decontamination workers and up to 10,000 workers from other republics have also died. Over 1000 children have developed thyroid cancer, with 20,000 to 50,000 others expected to develop the disease.
DCOL's Chernobyl Files, authored by science writer and Navy nuclear engineer John Dudley Miller, will offer glimpses into the human legacy and scientific aftermath of the disaster. Viewers will hear the stories of children with thyroid cancer in a Ukrainian hospital, and meet the men and women who lived Chernobyl close up in Belarus and Ukraine, as they struggle now to make a new life in Cleveland, Ohio. DCOL will examine the expert cover-up of radiation-caused illnesses and deaths, and see ahead to the future of the radioactive wastelands of Belarus and Ukraine. DCOL viewers will also be able to correspond one-to-one with Chernobyl survivors, using DCOL's Bulletin Board.
Chernobyl will also be the topic on Discovery Channel Online's weekly live cyber talk show, Live! With Derek McGinty on Thursday, April 25 at 7:00 PM (ET), which corresponds to the precise hour of the accident in Ukraine in 1986.