What were you doing 20 years ago today?

20 years ago today, 26th April198, the world worst nuclear disaster happened at Chernobyl.

1986

2006
The power station, which rendered the town uninhabitable for centuries, looms on the horizon, two-and-half kilometres away.

The fair ground is one of the more contaminated parts of the Pripyat. It had been due to open on 1 May 1986, five days after the disaster, and was never used.

1986

2006

Pripyat, once home to nearly 50,000 inhabitants, has been abandoned for twenty years since the world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station. Today the only human forms are in the shape of shadows drawn by graffiti artists on the walls of the empty buildings.

The disaster released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Much of the fallout was deposited close to Chernobyl, in parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. More than 350,000 people resettled away from these areas, but about 5.5 million remain.

After the accident traces of radioactive deposits were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere.

But wind direction and uneven rainfall left some areas more contaminated than their immediate neighbours.

Scandinavia was badly affected and there are still areas of the UK where farms face post-Chernobyl controls.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/europe/2006/chernobyl/default.stm#