30 years after Chernobyl, Australia still hasn't learned to leave uranium in the ground | Josephine Vallentine

When they visited Australia in 1997, Chernobyl victims were left in no doubt Indigenous communities wanted uranium left safely in the ground - but the government continues to sign deals to dig it up

I distinctly remember the day I heard the news of the accident at Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear reactor complex. I was looking out the window of my tiny office in the old parliament house when the news came via ABC radio. I froze, immediately realising some of the nightmarish implications. But I could only anticipate a fraction of the results of such an accident, and of course, information was sketchy.

Fast forward to 2012, when I met the man who tried to raise the alarm, biologist Professor Alexander Sergeivich. He had immediately seen radiation levels skyrocket on his tracking instruments at the Novozybkhov Pedological College, 180km east of Chernobyl on that fateful day.