26th April 2007 is Chernobyl Day

Early in the morning of 26th April 1986 two explosions destroyed reactor No. 4 at the Soviet nuclear power station at Chernobyl in Ukraine. This started the chain of events that led to the world's worst nuclear power accident, and left victims like the children seen above in an oncology unit in the area.

The Chernobyl accident was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel and without proper regard for safety. The resulting steam explosion and fire released at least five percent of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere and downwind. The 2005 report prepared by the Chernobyl Forum, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organization (WHO), attributed 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers, and nine children with thyroid cancer), and estimated that as many as 9,000 people among the approximately 6.6 million most highly exposed, may die from some form of cancer. Specifically, the report cited 4000 thyroid cancer cases among children diagnosed by 2002. The agricultural effects will continue to last for many years after the health effects cease.

Chernobyl City and its surrounding suburbs are now home to nuclear scientists, maintenance officials for the Chernobyl Power Plant, Liquidation Officials, doctors, physicists, and most of all, radiation physicists. Although Pripyat, a neighboring city to Chernobyl, remains unmaintained, Chernobyl has been renovated and is now home to more than 2,000 people, including visitors to the Zone of Alienation who stay at a local lodge in the Chernobyl suburbs. Before the accident, the city was inhabited by about 14,000 residents.

In the years since the disaster, the exclusion zone abandoned by humans has become a haven for wildlife, with nature reserves declared (Belarus) or proposed (Ukraine) for the area. Many species of wild animals and birds, which were never seen in the area prior to the disaster, are now plentiful, due to the absence of humans in the area.

Prior to the 20th century Chernobyl was inhabited by Ruthenian and Polish peasants, and a large Jewish community. In World War I the village was occupied by Germans, and during the civil wars of 1917-20 it was occupied first by the Polish Army and then by the Red (i.e. Bolshevik) Cavalry. In 1921 Chernobyl became a part of the newly-formed Ukrainian SSR. During the period 1929-33 Chernobyl suffered greatly from mass killings during Stalin's collectivization campaign, and in famine that followed. The Polish community of Chernobyl was deported to Kazakhstan in 1936, many dying of starvation along the way. The Jewish community was exterminated during the German occupation of 1941-44. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chernobyl became part of Ukraine, an independent nation.