Το πυρηνικό ατύχημα του Τσερνόμπιλ έλαβε χώρα στις 26 Απριλίου του 1986, στον αντιδραστήρα Νο. 4 του Πυρηνικού Σταθμού Παραγωγής Ενέργειας του Τσερνόμπιλ της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης, ο οποίος σήμερα βρίσκεται σε εδάφη της Ουκρανίας. Το ατύχημα ήταν της τάξης του μέγιστου προβλεπόμενου ατυχήματος στην Διεθνή Κλίμακα Πυρηνικών Γεγονότων, διατάραξε σοβαρότατα τις οικονομικές και κοινωνικές συνθήκες που επικρατούσαν στις γύρω περιοχές και είχε σημαντικές επιπτώσεις στο περιβάλλον και στην υγεία.
Από το ατύχημα πέθαναν επιτόπου δυο από τους εργάτες του σταθμού. Μέσα σε τέσσερις μήνες, από τη ραδιενέργεια και από εγκαύματα λόγω της θερμότητας, πέθαναν 28 πυροσβέστες που έσπευσαν στο χώρο του ατυχήματος και διαπιστώθηκαν 19 επιπλέον θάνατοι ως το 2004.
Επιπλέον, υπολογίζεται ότι επηρεάστηκε η υγεία εκατοντάδων χιλιάδων ανθρώπων εξαιτίας της επιβάρυνσης του περιβάλλοντος με ραδιενέργεια. Οι ποσοστιαίες αυξήσεις των καρκίνων ήταν άνω του 15% στους πληθυσμούς που εκτέθηκαν, με χιλιάδες θανάτους από καρκίνο και λευχαιμία να συνδέονται με το ατύχημα.
Background
I was 15 years old when the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at Chernobyl in, what was then, the USSR. The accident happened in the early hours of 26 April 1986 but we did not hear about it in the UK until some days later, when Swedish scientists detected abnormally high levels of radiation in their atmosphere.
Due to the secrecy of the Soviet Union, it took some additional time before the enormity of the accident became apparent, by which time a cloud of radiation had already swept across the north-west coast of England, where I grew up, and poured its contaminated rain down upon us.
I still have a vivid memory of sitting in my Politics ‘O’ Level class and my teacher, Mr McLoughlin, talking to us about the reactor burning out of control and how it may sink into the earth. It struck me that this was a disaster beyond anything I had experienced in my life, at that point. And that memory, from a day in my final year of secondary school, has never left me.
I continued to think about Chernobyl over the years but my interest was seriously reignited after I met my husband. His family originally come from Ukraine and he still has close relatives in Kiev, which is only a two-hour drive from Chernobyl. We visited them shortly after we met and, as we sat down for Easter dinner, they told us how they had to flee Kiev for three years due to fears about radiation from the disaster. During that visit, we found out that it was possible to take an official tour of the exclusion zone and we pledged that we would do it on our next visit.
This year, on 26 January 2016, almost 30 years after the disaster, we fulfilled that pledge.
We arrived in Kiev two days prior to the tour, and were greeted with a temperature that was 20 degrees below freezing. That first day, there was an extremely heavy snowfall, which left more than six inches of fresh snow across the city and surrounding areas.
Journey to Chernobyl
On the day of the tour, we boarded the small minibus in central Kiev at 08.30am and set off. Kiev is well equipped to deal with harsh winter conditions and all the roads out of the city had been cleared by snow ploughs. For the first hour of the drive we saw numerous gritters and snow ploughs actively keeping the highways clear.
We stopped to fill the minibus with fuel and we advised to take a toilet break, as it was the last place we’d be stopping before the exclusion zone.
netakias 
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