Environmental Lecture

Forty years after the Chernobyl catastrophe, its consequences continue to produce long-term regional and global impacts on health, society, the economy, psychology and the environment. 

Concerns about the safety of nuclear energy — including its development, procurement, regulation and acceptability — continue to influence scientific and political discourse. Scholars believe certain isotopes formed by the reactor’s explosion and meltdown will continue to affect the Chernobyl environment for another two centuries, while the surrounding “Exclusion Zone” may remain unsafe for human habitation for up to 20,000 years.

The lecture will also explore environmental impact on the land caused by the current Russo-Ukraine war and the unforeseen but hopeful recovery and restoration of wildlife and habitat now thriving in one of the most radioactive regions on Earth — an area where people once worked, lived and died. 

Haritan is a Pittsburgh-based, award-winning commercial photographer whose trips to Ukraine in 2016 and 2018 provided extensive research on the world’s worst nuclear accident. Since then, he has delivered more than 70 presentations across the United States. His compelling presentation, "Chernobyl – Causes, Cover-Up and Consequences" traces the disaster’s timeline through his personal photographs and video documenting the haunting remains of the 1986 disaster site, a psychiatric institution and an abandoned orphanage. 

His journeys also inspired his 2023 Amazon best-selling book, Chernobyl: Aftermath of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, a 287-page photographic chronicle and memoir featuring interviews with survivors, refugees and the "babas" who still live within the Exclusion Zone. 

Haritan earned a Master of Music in folk arts from Duquesne University in 1980 and has produced photo documentaries exploring folk music and dance cultures as well as the history, architecture and geography of Native Americans, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Ukraine. During his 45-year career, he has taught photography at the secondary, college and adult-education levels, including the past 15 years at Chautauqua Institution in New York. 

In 2013, Haritan earned an Associate of Science degree in homeland security. He also serves as a photographer for the Pennsylvania Urban Search & Rescue Strike Team 1 and the Counterterrorism Task Force – Region 13. 

As one of the last professional photographers to document the region before the current war with Russia, Haritan offers a rare and powerful perspective. In this 40th anniversary year of the Chernobyl disaster, his photographs, research and presentations bring audiences face to face with both the historic catastrophe and the haunting post-apocalyptic landscape that remains decades later.