Along with the residents of the nearby city of Pripyat, which was built as a home for the plant's workers, the population was relocated to the newly built city of Slavutych, and most have never returned.
Buildings are decaying and crumbling as people are not allowed to live there. But that does not mean the land is completely empty. Despite the radioactivity, it used to be possible for tourists to visit the zone. As many as 100,000 people per year visited the abandoned area.
Today, just over 100 people remain. Once these remaining returnees pass away, no one else will be allowed to move into the exclusion zone due to the dangerous levels of radiation that still exist. Although the areas in the exclusion zone are still deemed inhabitable, many areas bordering the zone are safe to live in.
A radioactive catastrophe of this magnitude is too dangerous to be abandoned. To this day, more than 7,000 people live and work in and around the plant, and a much smaller number have returned to the surrounding villages, despite the risks.
Yes, Chernobyl remains a radioactive site but is considered safe for supervised, restricted tourism.
'For Centuries, If Not Millennia'
Experts have said it will be at least 3,000 years for the area to become safe, while others believe this is too optimistic. It is thought that the reactor site will not become habitable again for at least 20,000 years, according to a 2016 report.
It is safe to stay in the outer Exclusion Zone overnight. There is a small hotel in Chernobyl town where our trips spend the night.
1. Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant, Japan is one of the world's most radioactive places. Fukushima is still highly radioactive today.
How Long Will It Take For Ground Radiation To Break Down? On average, the response to when Chernobyl and, by extension, Pripyat, will be habitable again is about 20,000 years.
Within the Chernobyl disaster region, grizzly bears, wolves, lynx, buffalo, deer, elk, beavers, foxes, beavers, wild boar, raccoons, dogs, and over 200 species of birds have developed their own ecosystem. The uninhabited habitat is home to a variety of frogs, fish, worms, and germs, in addition to the larger species.
After three days of virtual news blackout, the Soviet authorities finally admitted last night what Scandinavia had already deduced from radioactive fallout - that the Chernobyl nuclear accident is a "disaster", that some people have been killed and many thousands more evacuated.
Chernobyl animals are mutants ...
Scientists have noted significant genetic changes in organisms affected by the disaster: According to a 2011 study in Biological Conservation, Chernobyl-caused genetic mutations in plants and animals increased by a factor of 20.
Yes, the area surrounding Chernobyl remains radioactive. Referred to as the "exclusion zone," this 20-mile radius around the plant has largely been evacuated and is closed to human habitation. Despite government prohibitions, some residents have returned their homes.
Slavutych (Ukrainian: Славу́тич) is a city and municipality in northern Ukraine, purpose-built for the evacuated personnel of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant after the 1986 disaster that occurred near the city of Pripyat.
Living among radiation-resistant fauna are thousands of feral dogs, many of whom are descendants of pets left behind in the speedy evacuation of the area so many years ago.
A lethal dose of radiation is in the vicinity of three to five sieverts in an hour. During a Chernobyl tour the levels of exposure can range from 130 to 2,610 microsieverts per hour – that's 0.00261 of one whole sievert (i.e. at least 1000 times less than the potentially lethal level).
Despite all the effort invested in the area to make Chernobyl safe, its clean-up still continues today as scientists from the State Radiation Ecological Reserve frequently test radiation levels to check whether people and wildlife can safely return to the area again.
The official death toll directly attributed to Chernobyl that is recognized by the international community is just 31 people with the UN saying it could be 50. However, hundreds of thousands of “liquidators” were sent in to put out the fire at the nuclear power plant and clean up the Chernobyl site afterwards.
The Fukushima event has been rated 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Even so, Japanese authorities estimate that radiation released at Fukushima is only 10 percent of the amount released from the Ukrainian plant.
The radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today is on a par with the extremely low levels of background radiation (natural radioactivity) present anywhere on Earth. It has no effect on human bodies.
Hisashi Ouchi came to be known as the 'world's most radioactive man' after suffering the accident. But the details of his harrowing and torturous time in the hospital have left the internet shocked.
The main danger in walking around Pripyat is not radiation but the decaying structures all around. No one has lived here or maintained the buildings since 1986. There is broken glass everywhere, and metal thieves have done a lot of plundering, even of manhole covers, so you need to watch your step at all times.
Pripyat, a town of 50,000, was evacuated three days after the explosion in reactor number 4 at Chernobyl. Only a few miles away from the plant, the town was so severely contaminated it became a ghost town in one of the so-called closed zones.
Only about three kilometers from the explosion, the entire city was forced to completely evacuate on April 27 in just three hours. It was possible only because this scenario was part of the building plans of the plant. Over three decades later, this ghost town is a freeze-frame of the Soviet Union in 1986.