About 116,000 people were evacuated from the zone at the time of the accident, but about 1,200 of them refused to stay away.
As the true extent of the fallout came to light, however, a 1000-square-mile area around the Power Plant was declared an "exclusion zone," meaning it is considered too dangerous to inhabit. In the weeks that followed, around 1,200 people — almost all of them women — illegally returned to their homes in Chernobyl.
A few inhabitants chose to return to their homes in the exclusion zone, but children are not allowed to live in this area. The evacuated population lives mainly in newly constructed towns such as Slavutich in areas with very little or no contamination.
The plant operators' town of Pripyat was evacuated on 27 April (45,000 residents). By 14 May, some 116,000 people that had been living within a 30-kilometre radius had been evacuated and later relocated. About 1000 of these returned unofficially to live within the contaminated zone.
Before the disaster, Chernobyl was home to about 14,000 people. Although humans are not supposed to live there, some survivors remain in nearby villages. There are no children because they are more susceptible to the effects of radiation, and would most likely suffer long-term effects.
Valery Khodemchuk was killed instantly when the Chernobyl reactor exploded. His body was never recovered.
Shrouded in secrecy, the incident was a watershed moment in both the Cold War and the history of nuclear power. More than 30 years on, scientists estimate the zone around the former plant will not be habitable for up to 20,000 years.
30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, some 100 women fiercely cling to their ancestral homeland inside the radioactive “Exclusion Zone.” While most of their neighbors have long since fled and their husbands have gradually died off, this stubborn sisterhood is hanging on — even, oddly, thriving — while trying to ...
The Soviet government also cut down and buried about a square mile of pine forest near the plant to reduce radioactive contamination at and near the site. Chernobyl's three other reactors were subsequently restarted but all eventually shut down for good, with the last reactor closing in December 2000.
Chernobyl is about 90 kilometres (60 mi) north of Kyiv, and 160 kilometres (100 mi) southwest of the Belarusian city of Gomel. Before its evacuation, the city had about 14,000 residents (considerably less than neighboring Pripyat).
Researchers know the dirt in the Chernobyl exclusion zone can contain radionuclides including cesium-137, strontium-90, several isotopes of plutonium and uranium, and americium-241. Even at very low levels, they're all toxic, carcinogenic or both if inhaled.
For 36 hours after the explosion, people were given no reliable information about it and left virtually on their own.
It is thought that the reactor site will not become habitable again for at least 20,000 years, according to a 2016 report.
The stalkers infiltrate these highly-regulated Zones to steal and sell the objects on the black market. The story was later adapted into Andrei Tarkovsky's film, Stalker. Published 15 years before the Chernobyl disaster, the Strugatskys' book proved prophetic.
Many villages have eight or 12 babushkas, or babas – the Russian and Ukrainian words for “grandmother” – still living in them. One self-settler depicted in the documentary, Hanna Zavorotnya, explained how she snuck through the bushes back to her village in the summer of 1986.
Chernobyl reactor 4 is no longer burning. The reactor was originally covered after the disaster, but it resulted in a leak of nuclear waste and needed to be replaced.
Chernobyl is widely acknowledged to be the worst nuclear accident in history, but a few scientists have argued that the accident at Fukushima was even more destructive. Both events were far worse than the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The heroic men were named as mechanical engineer Alexei Ananenko, senior engineer Valeri Bespalov and shift supervisor Boris Baranov. Ananeko said to Soviet media in 1986, "Everyone at the Chernobyl NPS (nuclear power station) was watching this operation."
What is this? A liquidator, clad in a gas mask and protective clothing, pushes a baby in a carriage who was found during the cleanup of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The infant had been left in an abandoned house in the village of Tatsenki. The worker found the child when he was measuring radiation levels.
The decommissioned Ignalina power plant doubles for Chernobyl in this series. The firefighters' clothing and shoes discarded in the basement of the Pripyat Hospital are still there, exactly where they were abandoned more than 30 years ago. They are still dangerously radioactive.
Contrary to how it might seem, the haunting dolls scattered throughout the Chernobyl exclusion zone weren't left there by residents. Most were likely arranged by "disaster tourists," who have taken to placing the dolls on windowsills and the beds of an abandoned kindergarten for dramatic effect.
Fukushima is the most radioactive place on Earth. A tsunami led to reactors melting at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Even though it's been nine years, it doesn't mean the disaster is behind us.
Following the disaster, officials evacuated the entire town of Pripyat, located just a couple of miles from the power plant. Today, an area with a roughly 19-mile radius surrounding the plant is essentially uninhabited by humans—but it hosts hundreds of dogs.
Viktor Bryukhanov, the man blamed for the Chernobyl disaster, has died at age 85. Bryukhanov was in charge of the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine when the devastating accident occurred in 1986. Afterward, he was held responsible and was imprisoned.