Apr 16, 2016
Chernobyl workers and their families once lived here in the nearby city of Pripyat. The day after the reactor explosion, Soviet authorities
ordered all Pripyat residents to stop whatever they were doing and board evacuation buses. No one has lived in this ghost city for 30 years.
Ukraine is preparing to mark 30 years since the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident whose death toll remains a mystery and which continues to jeopardize the local population's health. More than 200 tonnes of uranium remain inside the reactor that exploded three decades ago at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, raising fears there could be more radioactive leaks if the ageing concrete structure covering the stricken reactor collapses.
At 1:23 am on April 26, 1986, reactor number four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, located about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Kiev, exploded during a safety test. For 10 terrifying days, the nuclear fuel kept burning, spewing clouds of poisonous radiation that contaminated up to three-quarters of Europe, with Ukraine and neighboring Belarus and Russia hit especially hard.
As the horror unfolded, the Soviet authorities said nothing publicly, in keeping with a tradition of preventing people from learning of tragedies that could tarnish the image of the Cold War-era superpower. They evacuated the 48,000 inhabitants of the town of Pripyat, located just three kilometers from the plant, only the following afternoon.