Chernobyl, Nearly 30 Years Since Catastrophe

CHORNOBYL, UKRAINE - SEPTEMBER 29: A worker walks on the construction site of the New Safe Confinement, a movable structure 108 meters tall, 150 meters long and 257 meters wide, near the remains of reactor number four at the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant on September 29, 2015 near Chornobyl, Ukraine. The New Safe Confienement is being built by a French-led consortium called Novarka and once completed will cover the reactor remains and its fragile sarcophagus in order to prevent further contamination. On April 26, 1986, technicians at Chernobyl conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four, which contained over 200 tons of uranium, to explode, flipping the 1,200 ton lid of the reactor into the air and sending plumes of highly radioactive particles and debris into the atmosphere in a deadly cloud that reached as far as western Europe. 32 people, many of them firemen sent to extinguish the blaze, died within days of the accident, and estimates vary from 4,000 to 200,000 deaths since then that can be attributed to illnesses resulting from Chernobyl's radioactive contamination. Today large portions of the inner and outer Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, that together cover 2,600 square kilometers, remain contaminated. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)