BELARUS, April 26th 1986. Chernobyl Reactor No. 4 in Ukraine explodes. Radiation 300 times greater than the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is released. Parts of Ukraine, western Russia and 25 per cent of prime Belarusian farmland are seriously contaminated. Some nine million people are affected. Of the men involved in the clean up, 13,000 are said to have died and a further 70,000 disabled. More than 400,000 people have been evacuated and 1,800 villages abandoned. Agricultural lands the size of England and Wales remain unusable. A rare and aggressive form of childhood thyroid cancer shows an alarming increase. The number of babies with congenital birth defects has virtually doubled. The main sources of contamination now are internal through food and water.
Two of the four reactors at Chernobyl are still functioning ten years later.