Chernobyl, 20 Years & Still Getting Better

Photo Gallery: Chernobyl, 20 Years After the Disaster: "A plant reactor exploded during a failed cooling system test, igniting a massive fire that burned for ten days. The accident, which was blamed on design deficiencies and lax operating procedures, released radioactivity equivalent to 400 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.

More than 350,000 people were displaced in the weeks after the explosion, and scientists estimate up to 90,000 square miles (233,000 square kilometers) of land in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia (all part of the Soviet Union at the time) were contaminated with unhealthy levels of radioactive elements."
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Wild vines creep through the windows of a deserted house near the shuttered Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. After a Chernobyl reactor exploded 20 years ago, Soviet authorities created an “exclusion zone” with a radius of 19 miles (30 kilometers). More than 130,000 people in 76 towns and settlements were forced to leave their homes.

The exclusion zone still exists, and special permission is required to visit. But as many as 800 mostly elderly residents have illegally moved back to their villages there.

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