While for many people the Chernobyl disaster might be just a distant memory for many it is something they must live with every day. Meet Annya, a teenager living with cancer since the age of four. Read about Yuri the liquidator and only surviving...

In the Chernobyl workers' town of Pripiyat, the alarm sounded shortly after the explosion. Pjotr Khmel was at home when he received a phone call from his commanding officer at the fire station. Things were hectic and rushed. The firemen did not...

The men and women who were sent in to the closed zone of Chernobyl to deal with the aftermath of the disaster are called 'the liquidators'. The stories of these estimated 600,000 workers could provide the scripts to many a Hollywood movie. The...

In the Ukraine, 18,000km2 of agricultural land was contaminated, but the forests were hardest hit. Forty percent of the woods are contaminated, totalling 35,000km2. Many of the inhabitants of the area cotinue to eat fruits and vegetables from...

Just ahead of the holiday season, the hospital's corridors and consulting rooms are full. Surgeon Igor Komisarenko, head of the Institute for Endocrinology, has been operating all morning. Most of his patients are women with thyroid cancer. "Four...

"Nuclear terrorism is still often treated as science fiction - I wish it were. But unfortunately we live in a world of excess hazardous materials and abundant technological know-how, in which some terrorists clearly state their intention to...

All commercial nuclear reactors of the present generation are based on designs originally developed for military plutonium production or for the propulsion of nuclear submarines or other navy vessels. Although there are different ways of...

Every uranium-fuelled nuclear reactor creates plutonium during routine operation. Every 12-18 months the reactor is shut down, and one quarter of the fuel is discharged, and fresh fuel loaded. The so-called spent fuel consists of plutonium...