Thirty years after a botched test at a nuclear plant in Chernobyl sent clouds of smouldering nuclear material across swathes of Europe, the so-called exclusion zone remains contaminated by radiation and is deemed uninhabitable. But that doesn't mean nobody calls it home.

'I only want to live in Chernobyl'



When reactor number four exploded on April 26, 1986, more than 100,000 people were rushed from the area, with signs of life before the disaster frozen in time.

Among the evacuees was Yevgeny Markevich, whose family moved to Chernobyl in 1945 when he was eight.

But he missed his beloved home, and shortly after the world's worst nuclear disaster, he began working up excuses to return.

"Once I came here pretending I was a sailor, another time I said I was a police officer overseeing oil deliveries," he told AFP news agency.

During one of his incursions into the exclusion zone, Mr Markevich met the head of the radiation monitoring station and asked him for a job. He was hired on the spot.

Today, the 78-year-old former teacher is among 158 people still living in the 30-kilometre exclusion zone.

"I only want to live in Chernobyl," Mr Markevich said, boasting that he had never been ill despite years of eating vegetables grown in contaminated soil.

"I can't explain why people want to live here. Are they following their hearts? Are they nostalgic? Who knows."

The region remains far from safe, with radiation readings within 10 kilometres of the plant reaching 1,700 nanosieverts per hour — 10 to 35 times the normal background levels observed in the United States.

"There is an element of risk," Mr Markevic conceded.

A humble life in an extraordinary place

Ivan Shamyanok, 90, lives in the Belarus village of Tulgovich, on the edge of the exclusion zone.

He and his wife turned down the offer to relocate and he said they never felt any ill effects from the radiation.

"So far, so good. The doctors came yesterday, put me on the bed and checked and measured me. They said 'everything's fine with you'," he told Reuters.

Mr Shamyanok says life did not change much after the meltdown. He and his family continued to eat vegetables and fruit grown in their own backyard and kept cows, pigs and chickens for the meat, milk and eggs.

He lives a quiet life. He gets up at 6:00am when the national anthem is played on the radio, lights his cast iron stove to heat his breakfast and feeds his pigs and his dog.

He drinks a small glass of vodka before meals "to help the appetite".

"My sister lived here with her husband. They decided to leave and soon enough they were in the ground," he says.

"They died from anxiety. I'm not anxious. I sing a little, take a turn in the yard, take things slowly like this and I live."

'What are old people like us afraid of?'

The official short-term death toll from the accident was 31 but many more people died of radiation-related illnesses such as cancer. The total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.

Another inhabitant of the exclusion zone, Valentina Kukharenko, 77, regrets that members of her family have to show their identity papers to visit her and are limited to three-day visits to prevent radiation exposure.

I hope children's laughter resounds again here, even if it takes years. Valentina Kukharenko

"They say radiation levels are high. Maybe radiation affects outsiders, people who have never come here. But what are old people like us afraid of?" she told AFP.

Ms Kukharenko says she feels like a "stranger" outside the exclusion zone and rarely ventures outside the area.

"I'm not a nationalist but I love my native land," she said.

"I hope children's laughter resounds again here, even if it takes years."





Exclusion zone home to 'samosely'

Maria Urupa, who is in her early 80s, also calls the exclusion zone home but is less enthusiastic about her living environment.

Like most of the "samosely", or self-returners as inhabitants of the exclusion zone are known, she lives in a dilapidated wooden house in spartan conditions.

She survives off vegetables she grows in her garden as well as the food supplies brought by visitors.

Other residents venture outside the exclusion zone to the town of Ivankiv, where the nearest market is located.

Ms Urupa told AFP she considered hiding in her basement with her husband to avoid the initial evacuation in 1986, but their plan was not to be.

"It was sad. There was crying and screaming," she said.

After spending two months in a displaced persons camp, she opted to return to the area "in a group of six people, walking through the forest like guerrilla fighters".

A testbed for nature's rebound



Humans are not the sole inhabitants of Chernobyl, which has provided a unique chance to see how wildlife recovers from a disaster.

"When the people left, nature returned," Denys Vyshnevskiy, a biologist in the exclusion zone, told AFP during a visit, while nearby a herd of wild horses nosed around for food.

He says while today's animals in the exclusion area have shorter lifespans and produce fewer offspring, their numbers and varieties are growing at rates unseen since long before the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse.

"Radiation is always here and it has its negative impact," he said.

"But it is not as significant as the absence of human intervention."

With the quick death of the local Red Forest — 10 square kilometres of pines that wilted from the radiation that permeated the ground — various birds, rodents and insects were lost.

Over time, the forest was cut down and a new, healthy one sprung up in its place, and curious things began to emerge.

On the one hand, species dependent on human crops and waste products vanished: white storks, sparrows and pigeons fell silent and no longer filled the skies.

Yet on the other, indigenous species that flourished in the lush flora long before the catastrophe, reappeared.

These include elks, wolves, bears, lynxes, white-tailed eagles and many others.

For Mr Vyshnevskiy, the rebound is an "environmental renaissance".

"These animals are probably the only positive outcome of the terrible catastrophe we had," he said.

Other scientists, though, are more cautious.

Tim Mousseau, a professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, heads a team that has been conducting long-term research into biodiversity at Chernobyl — a mission that they are also carrying out in the zone around Fukushima in Japan.

He told AFP the range of species, the number of animals and their survivability in Chernobyl was less than what would be expected in a non-contaminated area — especially in "hotspots" where radiation is high.

Butterflies and birds in particular seem to have been affected most, apparently because of susceptibility on a key chromosome.

"When you put a fence around an area, it's clear that some animals will have an opportunity to expand, but because they are visible, it doesn't mean that they have increased as much as they should have, or that you have the biodiversity that you would normally have," he said.



AFP/Reuters