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At 1:23<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a.m. on April 26, 1986, an explosion destroyed reactor No. 4<span style="color: Red;">*</span>at Chernobyl's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Vladimir Illyich Lenin Nuclear Power Station<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in the former Soviet Union. Thirty years later, 5 million people still live on heavily contaminated lands in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and hundreds of thousands of people are sick or<span style="color: Red;">*</span>suffering in different ways.
The true<span style="color: Red;">*</span>impact from<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Chernobyl<span style="color: Red;">*</span>may not<span style="color: Red;">*</span>be known for decades to come.
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USA TODAY's Kim Hjelmgaard takes us inside of Chernobyl Exclusion Zones for a closer look at the impact of the disaster decades later. Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY
The blast immediately<span style="color: Red;">*</span>killed one person. A second died in the hospital after succumbing<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to injuries. While<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the reactor burned for two weeks, discharging the largest-ever uncontrolled amount<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of radioactive material<span style="color: Red;">*</span>into the environment, the radiation that<span style="color: Red;">*</span>spewed from the plant reached<span style="color: Red;">*</span>42% of Europe's territory and<span style="color: Red;">*</span>prompted<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the deployment of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>an army of 800,000 emergency workers.
Some parts of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Chernobyl, an area the size of Rhode Island, will not be radiation-free, if ever, for at least 24,000 years.
A photograph of a painting of an idealized version of Chernobyl by an unknown artist.
(Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)
It took then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev 18 days to appear on television to admit the scale of the disaster and another three years to lift a ban on releasing<span style="color: Red;">*</span>public health<span style="color: Red;">*</span>data.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>To this day,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>cancer and death toll estimates are in a shockingly wide range: From 4,000 to as high as 1 million.
Meanwhile, the two countries affected the most<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— Belarus and Ukraine — are preoccupied with fighting<span style="color: Red;">*</span>other battles: sanctions, separatists,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>corruption, poverty,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>indifference.
USA TODAY traveled to this still-scarred area<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to share stories of those living in the shadow<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of the world's worst nuclear disaster.
[h=3]Read the full series.[/h]A cemetery of radioactive highly contaminated vehicles is seen near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Nov. 10, 2000. Some 1,350 Soviet military helicopters, buses, bulldozers, tankers, transporters, fire engines and ambulances were used while fighting against the April 26, 1986, nuclear accident at Chernobyl. All were irradiated during the clean-up operation.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Efrem Lukatsky, AP)
Valentin Maslyuk, 59, undergoes his dialysis treatment at home. He was one of the 600,000 'likwitators' who were sent to Chernobyl to clean up after the disaster. Soon after he had high blood pressure, a stroke, diabetes and disabling bone pains that make sleep impossible. Radiation specialists expected nearly 1 million people to develop cancer as a direct result of the accident. In Belarus, next door to Ukraine, almost 400,000 people were forced to leave their homes and become environmental refugees as a result of the contamination left by the explosion. Around 2,000 towns and villages have been abandoned and become a radioactive desert, overgrown with poisoned vegetation and fenced off by barbed wire. Twenty years after the disaster, 99% of the land in Belarus was contaminated; 25% of Belarusan farmland was a nuclear wasteland. Thyroid cancer has increased by 2,400%. Congenital birth defects have increased by 250% and there was a 1,000% increase in suicides in the contaminated areas.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Tom Stoddart, Getty Images)
Rosa Tsaryevna, 60, recovers from surgery to her thyroid at the oncology clinic on April 6, 2016, in Gomel, Belarus. While the link between radiation contamination from Chernobyl and many health conditions in the region remains controversial, scientists agree that a dramatic rise in thyroid cancer cases since 1986 is due largely to exposure toradioactive iodine inpeopleyounger than 18 at the time. Radioactive iodine was among the cocktail of radioactive isotopes the Chernobyl blast spewed into the atmosphere. However, the head of the Gomel clinic, Vladimir Tatchykhin, said thyroid cancer rates in the Gomel region are continuing to rise even though most of the afflicted under-18 generation has already undergone treatment. Gomel, the biggest city in southeastern Belarus, lies in a zone still contaminated with low levels of radioactive fallout and lies directly between two exclusion zones where authorities deem radiation levels too hazardous for people to return. Tatchykhin said he has also observed a steady increase in other types of cancer, including cancer to the tongue, larynx, breast, skin, prostate, colon and rectum. Rosa said she also underwent surgery for breast cancer several years ago.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Sean Gallup, Getty Images)
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