Shortly after Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, both governments said that the Russian military had taken over the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. In a tweet, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs raised fears of possible ecological disaster.
On April 26, 1986, a nuclear reactor at the plant near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, exploded. The fire burned for 10 days, spewing a radioactive plume that stretched across Europe, as far as Ireland and Greece. The immediate area around the reactor was evacuated, and a 30-kilometre radius exclusion zone has remained in place for almost 36 years.
