Word: chernobyls
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Soon after the Chernobyl meltdown, Soviet officials ordered the permanent evacuation of villages within 30 km (19 miles) of the power plant, but heavy nuclear fallout covered a much broader area. In some parts of Narodichi, a Ukrainian agricultural district whose boundaries lie some 60 km (37 miles) from the reactor, levels of radioactivity are still nine times as high as the acceptable limits, according to the local Communist Party chief. Vladimir Lysovsky, a doctor at Narodichi District Central Hospital, contends that in the past 18 months, there has been a dramatic rise in cases of thyroid disease, anemia...
Just hours after the Chernobyl accident, a pilot friend asked Igor Kostin if he wanted to fly over the nuclear plant. "I agreed, of course," recalls Kostin, 53. "I wanted to prove that I was a man." He also proved he was a good journalist by becoming the first photographer on the scene. "There was still smoke coming out of the reactor," he says, "but I managed to get a few shots off. You could actually feel the silence. It was like a cemetery...
Since then, Kostin has returned to the reactor site six times and has traveled extensively through the contaminated regions. His mission: to document the world's worst nuclear-plant catastrophe. "People have the right to know," says Kostin, who devotes a third of his time to covering Chernobyl's aftermath. "The technology of atomic energy is not perfect. This could happen anywhere." Kostin lives in Kiev, 100 km (62 miles) from Chernobyl, and was a successful construction engineer before turning photographer at age 36. His trips to Chernobyl and its environs have deeply disturbed him. The children he saw haunt...
...about five times the acceptable level of radiation, Kostin is constantly tired and sometimes has trouble walking. He has been hospitalized three times for radiation poisoning. His 16-year-old son Nikolai fears for his father's health and has pleaded with him not to go back to Chernobyl, but Kostin feels compelled. "This is the only record of what happened there," he says. "I have to carry...
ENVIRONMENT: The grim legacy of Chernobyl...