Tuesday 26 April 2011

Alain Bashung: Le Dimanche à Tchernobyl


Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

It is worth remembering the sacrifice of those who gave their lives and their health bringing one of Europe's biggest disasters under control and also preventing an almost unimaginable worse disaster.

It is estimated by some that the disaster had a total death toll of just under one million lives, but had the liquidators not prevented a further nuclear explosion at the plant, much of Ukraine and Belarus would have been destroyed and Europe rendered a radioactive exclusion zone like the one in place in Ukraine and Belarus surrounding the plant.

The nuclear cloud came across western Europe, and stopped at the French border, before resuming its progress in the UK. The fact that France heavily depends on nuclear power might have had something to do with the French government's position.

The track is from Alain Bashung's 2002 album L'Imprudence, an album viewed by most critics as his darkest work, and also among his finest.

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