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Past Event
Seminar

Power, People, and Peaceful Atom: Chornobyl and Its Lessons, 38 Years Later. A conversation with Adam Higginbotham, the author of Midnight in Chernobyl

RSVP Required Open to the Public

April 26, 2024, marks 38 years since the accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in then-Soviet Ukraine. Still bearing the tragic distinctions of the worst nuclear accident in history, Chornobyl exposed thousands of people to ionized radiation, creating lingering humanitarian effects as well as severe social and political dislocations. By exposing the dysfunction and duplicity of the Soviet regime in Moscow, Chornobyl also contributed to the collapse of the Soviet empire. Some three decades later, the Chornobyl Power Plant and the exclusion zone around it, was occupied and vandalized by Russian military forces, dispatched by another ruler in Moscow to wage war against Ukraine. To interrogate relations between political power and human dimensions of nuclear security, we delighted to host a conversation with Adam Higginbotham, the author of an award-winning book Midnight in Chernobyl.

Date: Time: - Location: Online
An image of the remains of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

About

On April 26 at 10am Eastern Time, MTA Senior Research Associate, Mariana Budjeryn, will moderate a conversation with author Adam Higginbotham. 

This is a public webinar and all are welcome. You can RSVP at the attached link or by clicking here.

April 26, 2024, marks 38 years since the accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in then-Soviet Ukraine. Still bearing the tragic distinctions of the worst nuclear accident in history, Chornobyl exposed thousands of people to ionized radiation, creating lingering humanitarian effects as well as severe social and political dislocations. By exposing the dysfunction and duplicity of the Soviet regime in Moscow, Chornobyl also contributed to the collapse of the Soviet empire. Some three decades later, the Chornobyl Power Plant and the exclusion zone around it, was occupied and vandalized by Russian military forces, dispatched by another ruler in Moscow to wage war against Ukraine. To interrogate relations between political power and human dimensions of nuclear security, we delighted to host a conversation with Adam Higginbotham, the author of an award-winning book Midnight in Chernobyl.

No recording, redistribution, or use in media is allowed without permission.

Speakers

Adam Higginbotham is the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2019, translated into 22 languages. Higginbotham is a former US correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine and editor-in-chief of The Face. His contributions appeared in The New Yorker, Wired, Smithsonian, and The New York Times Magazine. His latest book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space will be published by Avid Reader Press on May 14, 2024.

 

Mariana Budjeryn is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, Project on Managing the Atom. She is author of Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine.