A photographic look at the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster

TODAY marks the 25th anniversary of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant in northern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. In the early morning of April 26th 1986, an explosion at the plant released a radioactive cloud that spread over large swathes of Europe and western Russia. It has been difficult to gauge the human impact of the accident. Millions of people were exposed to radiation, and 350,000 were permanently evacuated from their homes. In 2006 the Chernobyl Forum, comprising a number of UN agencies, estimated that 9,300 people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine would die from cancer as a result of exposure to radiation, but others have said that number is far too low (see our related post on Eastern approaches).

1 Graffiti on a wall in the ghost city of Pripyat near the fourth nuclear reactor (background) at the former Chernobyl nuclear-power plant. A project to build a new sarcophagus over the damaged reactor lacks funds. The concrete sarcophagus capping the reactor has developed cracks over the past 25 years and is not considered failsafe. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

2 A warning sign reading "Stop! Prohibited zone" is seen on the barbed-wire fence surrounding the plant. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

3 Soviet television showed this picture of the Chernobyl plant on April 30th 1986. A half-destroyed building is seen in the background, but the television commentary said there had been "no destruction, nor gigantic fires, nor thousands of casualties". (AFP)

4 This picture, taken on June 2nd 1986, shows the control panel of the first power unit of the plant. The two technicians were working at the fourth reactor when it exploded. (AFP)

5 Control panels of the destroyed fourth power block at the Chernobyl plant. (Genia Savilov/AFP)

6 A doll and gas masks are pictured on a bed in a former kindergarten in Pripyat. All 45,000 residents of the Ukrainian city, which lay adjacent to the plant, were evacuated in the three days after the explosion. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

7 Beds in a kindergarden in the ghost city of Pripyat. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

8 Portraits of former Soviet leaders are strewn in Pripyat. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

9 A child wears a mask at a hospital for leukaemia sufferers in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. (Alexander Khudoteply/AFP)

10 A picture taken in April 2007 shows two Irish nurses holding five-year-old Nikita Lutiyuk in an orphanage for mentally ill children near the Belarusian village of Vesnova, 190km south-east of Minsk. (Viktor Drachev/AFP)

11 Vladislav Petrov, a young patient in the hematological department of radiology and nuclear medicine institute in Gomel, Belarus, plays with paper pigeons. (AFP)

12 A worker from the State Radiation Ecological Reserve tests radiation levels at a farm in Vorotets, Belarus, close to the 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Belarus was hit by much of the nuclear fallout from the disaster; as much as one-fifth of the country's agricultural land was contaminated. (Viktor Drachev/AFP)

13 Employees of the State Reserve wear facemasks as they plant trees on contaminated land near the abandoned village of Bogushi, inside the 30km exclusion zone around Chernobyl. The trees will form a natural windbreak to stop radioactive particles from blowing away. (Viktor Drachev/AFP)

14 Some 330 people, most of them elderly, live illegally in villages around the Chernobyl plant, where the radiation level is still dangerously high. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

15 In this picture from 2006, residents of the Ilyintsy village, a closed zone around the plant, sit in one of the houses. (Photo credit: Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

16 Officials from Ukraine's emergencies ministry distribute sacks of flour to residents of the Ilyintsy village, many of whom live in poverty. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

17 A television monitor at Chernobyl's catastrophe museum in Kiev plays a documentary film about "liquidators", the 600,000 soldiers, firemen and civilians who were deployed over four years to clean up after the nuclear meltdown. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

18 Surviving "liquidators" attend a commemoration ceremony in Kiev on December 14th 2010, which is observed as "Chernobyl Liquidators Memory Day". (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

19 Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, shakes hands with Vyacheslav Grizunov, one of the veterans of the Chernobyl clean-up operation, during an awards ceremony at the Kremlin on April 25th 2011. The main lesson of the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima in Japan, Mr Medvedev said, is that authorities must tell the truth. (Dmitry Kostyukov/Pool/AFP)

20 During a memorial ceremony on April 25th 2011 a boy points to his grandmother's portrait at the Chernobyl victims' monument in Slavutich, 50km away from the accident site, where many of the power station's personnel used to live. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

21 A man visits a newly opened alley commemorating the villages and cities destroyed after the nuclear catastrophe. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

22 This picture, taken from a helicopter a few days after the explosion, shows the destroyed fourth power block of Chernobyl's nuclear-power plant. (Vladimir Repik/AFP)