Paul Fusco’s Chernobyl pictures
Comments: 6
Do not miss Paul Fusco’s shocking photographs of Chernobyl 20 years after the world’s worst nuclear accident. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to link directly to the slideshow on magnuminmotion.com so you have to just go to the site, find the link, and click to open the slideshow in a new window.
Updated: There’s a copy of the slideshow on Slate.
Be warned: if your faith in humanity’s ability to manage destructive technology is at all shaky or fragile, you won’t be feeling any better after seeing Fusco’s astonishing, heartbreaking pictures.
Note to Magnum webmasters: it would be great to be able to link directly to photographers’ work, but maybe I’m just missing something obvious.
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Posted to Other Places • 2006.04.26 (Wed) • 14:24
Comments
Posted by Daniel 2006.04.26, 19:52
Paul’s work is utterly amazing and yeah your right, Magnum should include some option to link directly to their work.
I also have just returned from Chernobyl and to say the place is unique is the understatement of the year.
My images of inside Pripyat show how the city hasnt really changed in 20 years.
Posted by sean 2006.04.26, 22:45
With the renewed talks of using nuclear energy, potentials like this simply have to be taken into account. It’s nice to see Chernobyl getting a little press again to remind us all (well, not nice - you know what I mean). It’s just too bad the only time we get reminded of events like this, and the huge effect ripples, are on big anniversary dates.
20 years?! Time is a flying….
Oh, and you can direct link to the section (though it’s not obvious from the front page or the link provided there):
http://www.magnuminmotion.com/essay_chernobyl/
Posted by TT 2006.05.01, 12:53
The photo essay is truly disturbing to say the least. I tried to view the photos a second time, and I just broke down, it was too hard to look at. It took twenty years, but it is slowly starting to come out how destructive Chernobyl really was. We will probably not even know the full extent of the reprocussions in our lifetime. And they still don’t have the situation under control there. Just breaks my heart.
Posted by AS 2006.05.16, 15:04
I was raised on LIFE magazine and have not seen black and white still photographs like this for many years. It is a shock to see these. If there was ever a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, it is Paul Fusco.
Posted by Dave 2006.06.13, 04:33
Truly sad and heart wrenching. However, don’t lump all nuclear power in the Chernobyl category though. There are 2 overriding differences in this accident and what we have in the US.
1) The Russian plant had a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity (Alpha T). That means as temperature rises, the cooling medium becomes more dense, which thermalizes (slows down) more neutrons which then causes power to rise which causes temperature to rise, and so on. The power/temperature change can be, and was here, exponential in milliseconds. Our reactors have a negative Alpha T. As the temperature rises, the water becomes less dense, therefore fewer neutrons are thermalized, and the reactor will actually shut itself down with no operator action. This is why 3 Mile Island wasn’t a Chernobyl. The fuel meat will be damaged with severe overtemperature excursions, but the containment will not be breached like in Russia.
2) Stupidity. The scientists/engineers overrode safety interlocks for some testing. Hello, the interlocks were there for a reason.
The part that really gets me and there has been almost no press coverage of this, is that the containment dome that was built over the site is slowly collapsing. By all reports I’ve seen, the disaster and contamination spread from that will be WAY WORSE than the original event.
The Russians don’t want our or anyone else’s help either and I know it’s been offered.
Posted by panda 2006.10.20, 19:30
Chernobyl, one of the most polluted places. Here http://pripyat.com/en/photo_gallery/ - more than 6000 photos from
this territory. More than 20 years passed, but knowbody knows exactly what is going on there. Also there are
articles, ivestigations, news
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