Perhaps the date doesn't ring a bell to you, as it didn't to me. History was not exactly my favorite subject in school. But maybe the word Chernobyl brings back memories to you. I don't remember seeing many pictures about this nuclear accident. Recently, I found Elena Filatova's website, www.elenafilatova.com. Her pictures tell a story of a forgotten place, with a silence that is deafening.

On her motorcycle, she rides through the 'dead zone,' the area where Belarus, Russia and Ukraine intersect, north of Kiev. She uses a Geiger counter to measure the amount of radiation on her travels. She is safe as long as she stays on the asphalt roads, as it is organic matter that absorbs radiation. She chooses to ride through this area, with her camera, for the sake of sharing what she observes with the world. She was a child living in Kiev in 1986, and her father, a nuclear physicist, sent his family away from the area once the radiation levels began to rise significantly. Now, she shares her motorcycle rides through her photographs, bringing this topic to the forefront of my mind.

Radiation is the problem that resulted from the accident at Chernobyl. It takes hundreds of years for the radiation that enveloped the region to decay. Typical radiation naturally present in the center of European cities is around 20-50 micro-roentgen per hour.

In the first days after Chernobyl disaster, some places around the reactor were emitting 3,000-30,000 roentgens per hour. The Chernobyl explosion released 30 to 40 times as much radioactivity as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs combined in 1945. The disaster happened because of poor design of the reactor (information known in 1979) and bad decisions made during a test. You can read more about the details of what happened on Elena's website, or the 1988 UNSCEAR Report.

Even though this was the worst nuclear accident in history, The Chernobyl Report, written from 2003-2005, states that 28 people died from the radiation. However, it is not clear from this report if the 28 people included any of the hundreds of emergency workers asked to respond to the disaster, or the brave helicopter pilots who flew over the reactor in order to contain the fire that burned for 10 days, exposing themselves to high doses of radiation. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) website states that 50 emergency workers died from radiation. I find it interesting that there is a lack of agreement about the human toll from this event. Varying estimates also exist on how many people will die from the radiation exposure in the future. Some conservative estimates place the death toll during the lifetime of those exposed to be 4,000-9,000 people. As it will probably take from 300 to 900 years for the contaminated region to be safe for habitation, who will explain to our children and grandchildren what really happened? We are fortunate that Elena, sharing her photographs of the region, records this event for eternity.

Even though there are varying accounts of the human toll from Chernobyl, Elena's photographs irrefutably show us the way the region appears 20 years after that fateful day. We must not forget what happened. The silence present in these pictures brings to my mind an intense anguish and desolation.

The region known as the 'dead zone' is mostly abandoned now. The remaining reactors at the Chernobyl plant were shut down in December, 2000. Since the Chernobyl accident over 330,000 people have been relocated away from the area. Elena's photographs show entire towns abandoned. Some areas are probably safe for habitation, but perhaps due to lingering fear of radiation, the sparse population of this region is aging and declining. Nature has started to erase mankind's mark on this part of the world. Wild animals have begun to inhabit the region, although many plants and animals were adversely affected by the radiation.

Elena's photograph of a family of wild boars.

Growing up, I believed that history was just a series of names and dates- dull and boring. However, I was so captivated by Elena's photographs, I couldn't help but find out more about what happened at Chernobyl. Perhaps my view of history is changing. The details of the effect of this disaster may not be clear or even fully apparent at this time, but the photographs from Elena's motorcycle rides will ensure that I will never forget the tragedy at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986.

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