Thirty years after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant: historical causes, lessons and legal effects

Abstract

The article offers historical, political and legal analysis of the causes that led to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) 30 years ago in April 1986. The authors consider a range of health, legal, social and political effects of the accident at the Chernobyl NPP, study the post-accident formation of the environmental rights movement and development of citizens’ rights to environmental information enshrined in the 1990s in laws of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, which suffered most from the accident at the Chernobyl NPP. The authors make a number of proposals for development of national and international law that will strengthen the guarantees of environmental human rights and processes of rehabilitation of ecological systems in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia affected by the accident at the Chernobyl NPP. The concept of development of the legal status of environmental refugees and ecological disaster zones is proposed as a separate lesson of the disaster.