Even after three years in New York I still keep up with the Boston Globe via their website, and today they have a short article that really caught my eye marking the 25th anniversary of the explosion that created the worst nuclear disaster in history – April 26, 1986.
But what really struck me was the images: 34 images that show the ghost town of Pripyat in the shadow of the nuclear plant, as well as outlying areas. An area twice the size of New York state was contaminated, with a 19 mile exclusion zone set. From the article:
On April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility in what is now Ukraine exploded. The largest civil nuclear disaster in history led to mass evacuations, and long-term health, agricultural, and economic distress. The nearby city of Pripyat has been abandoned, and a 19-mile radius “exclusion zone” established where radiation contamination makes continued habitation dangerous.
In the light of the tragedy in Japan, it brings everything that happened in Chernobyl into more stark relief. For years we had limited access to the information, and in many ways I feel I got the closest look at the area through the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. computer games, which were developed by a Russian team and are all set in Chernobyl and Pripyat.
Source: Boston.com
