I was born in 1979 and grew up in the last decade of the cold war, for much of that decade I was unaware of the world out the UK. That all changed in 1986 when I seemingly became aware of the world beyond the shores of my country and two tragic events marked out this year for me, the Challenger disaster and the reactor explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power station in Ukraine. Nuclear power both terrifies and fascinates me. Radiation poisoning is the stuff of nightmares and probably ranks as my number one fear. Yet despite its dangers we persist with it and often build reactors close to populated areas with a cavalier attitude to safety, assuming that as a wealthy western country we are safe from risks such as natural disasters, freak accidents, human error and neglect. The consequences of which could poison our environment for hundreds of thousands of years. Curiously though in this landscape nature seems to thrive. I've heard stories of how some species thrive in the Chernobyl exclusion zone free from the intervention of humans and in the UK heavy industry and power stations often sits alongside nature reserves where rare species can safely live and multiply. As Governments and technologies come and go so does industry, when it collapses and the sites decommissioned nature starts to reclaim these places. It humbles us and reminds that we are just a passing through the environment and when we are but dust and a distant memory it will still be there thriving, evolving and taking back what we once took from it.