In light of the 2016 anniversaries of Chernobyl (30 years) and Fukushima (5 years) a special virtual issue of the Society's Journal (The Journal of Radiological Protection) has been published and is free to read until the end of March.  It contains a selection of papers published in JRP on this subject; they have not been selected because they are judged to be necessarily the best scientifically, but they have been chosen by the Editorial Board to provide a broad range of the issues addressed by papers published in the Journal. We hope that readers will find the papers of interest, particularly from the perspective of the present day.  The issue is available here.