Ukraine marks 30th anniversary of Chernobyl disaster

People in Ukraine have marked the 30th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster at the now-defunct Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

According to Press TV, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko will attend a memorial ceremony near the site of the plant on Tuesday. A church service will also be held in the capital, Kiev, for the families of the victims of the nuclear disaster.

Another memorial service is scheduled on Tuesday at the town of Slavutych, which was built to house the workers who lived near the nuclear plant.

On April 26, 1986, an explosion ripped through reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The plant burned for 10 days.

The explosion led to a huge radioactive leak, which permanently affected areas in places across three quarters of Europe. Levels of radioactivity still remain high in some areas.

Pripyat, the town inhabited by Chernobyl workers, had been evacuated 36 hours after the accident and a 19-mile exclusion zone was set up around the plant a few days later.

Thirty workers and firemen were killed in the immediate aftermath of the explosion and rescue operations. Most of them died of severe radiation-related illnesses.

After thirty years, the total number of the people who died of radiation poisoning and the long-term health effects of the accident remain a matter of dispute. A report published by the United Nations in 2005, estimated that “up to 4,000” people could eventually be killed from radiation in Ukraine and neighboring Russia.

Some former residents of Pripyat returned to the site of the explosion on the eve of the anniversary.

ME