N U C L E A R

  Many nongovernmental organizations across Central and Eastern Europe used the tenth anniversary of the disaster to raise awareness and educate citizens about the dangers of nuclear power. For Mother Earth, an international NGO working to completely phase-out all nuclear power plants and to promote energy-efficiency and renewable energy alternatives worldwide, in partnership with the Union of Salvation of Chernobyls, a Ukrainian NGO, decided to "walk the walk" rather than just "talk the talk." In what was a truly international affair, activists from Belarus, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, the UK, Ukraine and the United States trekked from Kiev to the now infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

  "This walk is to remind people of Chernobyl and to put it [the accident] into a wider context. Nuclear power stations are unsafe; we see Chernobyl as another step in our plan for a nuclear-free world," says Pol D'Huyvetter from For Mother Earth.

  The walkers left Kiev on 17 April after 5 days of meetings, conferences and presentations. (Ironically, the first part of the walk was from the city center to the train station, where walkers boarded a train for Korostin.) But after a short ride to avoid the complexities of the urban jungle, participants began the 10-day, 150-kilometer trek from Kiev to the thirty kilometer zone that surrounds the Chernobyl site north of Ukraine's capital city. The route took walkers, garbed in white radiation suits and dust masks, through inhabited areas that are still contaminated by low-level radiation. Carrying signs with the crossed names of evacuated districts in the Ukraine, the 50 participants were often joined by local citizens eager to escort the walkers through their villages and to tell their stories of the disaster.

  At 1:23 in the morning on 26 April 1996, exactly ten years to the minute when Chernobyl's nuclear power plant erupted into the silent blackness of the night, walkers gathered by torchlight at the thirty kilometer zone and staged a die-in. Participants then shared why they had come to the walk, expressing frustration with living in the shadow of Chernobyl and sorrow for its victims. The participants blocked the road to the plant with a large banner calling for the shut- down of all nuclear power plants and continued the vigil until 6 a.m.

  The Chernobyl accident paid no heed to international borders, spilling radioactive particles all over Central and Eastern Europe (and the rest of the world). It should come as no surprise that a number of NGOs in the region staged events on or near Chernobyl's tenth anniversary. In Hungary, the Energy Club used the occasion as a vehicle to raise public awareness about the dangers of nuclear power in their own country, an important issue as the government considers building two additional reactors at the Paks nuclear power plant to meet the country's future energy needs. (See Bulletin Winter 1996)

  The Energy Club launched a campaign to put free, anti-nuclear postcards in pubs and restaurants around the capital and to hand out passports to a nuclear free zone which they established in the center square. And on 26 April, a photo exhibit opened in Budapest that documents the deadly consequences of the accidentÑand the people who have been directly affected. The Energy Club then took the photo exhibit on the road to show people in towns and villages across Hungary the consequences of nuclear power gone wrong. Various groups put on peaceful anti-nuclear actions and street theater in Budapest's main squares to spread the message further. "The press is going to follow these events closely because of the tenth anniversary; they will be very sensitive," says Ada Amon of the Energy Club. "This is a kind of outreach to the people about the problems of nuclear power." Amon added that the anniversary will be a good test to see if Hungarians actually care about this issue.

  Similar events took place in other CEE countries. For the Earth Bulgaria held an action in Swistow, a town close to Belene where Bulgarian officials are trying to push through an energy strategy that would complete the construction of a nuclear power plant begun there in the early eighties; since then, construction was halted three times (in 1986, 1990 and 1995) due to public protests. As part of the regionwide Chernobyl +10 Campaign, For the Earth Bulgaria held a symbolic action in Sofia, hanging a huge banner from a bridge over the biggest highway in the city.

  The Czech Republic's Hnuti Duha also organized a mobile photo exhibition of the effects of the Chernobyl accident and alternative energy solutions. The exhibition toured the country from the beginning of April until the anniversary on April 26. With the help of Hnuti Duha and other NGOs in the region's nuclear-powered countries, the Chernobyl +10 Campaign published "a fingerbook guide to stopping the Western nuclear industry's expansion in Eastern Europe." This tiny guidebook provides the latest information, from a decidedly anti-nuclear perspective, on nuclear power plants in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet union. Other activities and actions were also held in Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Romania.