The disaster started early in the morning of 26 April, 1986 with the explosion of reactor 4 at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, just four kilometres from Pripyat in the Ukrainian region of what was then the Soviet Union. Tons of radioactive dust were released into the air, spreading across both hemispheres of the planet. It is estimated that the worst-hit region, which spans 260,000 square kilometres of Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia, will not return to normal levels of radioactivity for roughly 20,000 years.
Since he first visited Chornobyl in 2002, the photographer Pierpaolo Mittica has been back to the site about 25 times. Years before the plant’s Control Room No 4 – “The room that exploded” – was cleaned up for tourists, he obtained special permission to go inside, wearing a protective suit. “You are inside history,” he says. “In that place, the disaster started. The feeling was powerful.”
