Chernobyl 27 năm sau

Scores of abandoned gas masks cover the floor of what may have been a shop in Pripyat, a once-thriving town of 50,000 people near the Ukrainian border with Belarus

Time has stood still at this fairground ride that once echoed to children's laughter: Now rusted and blackened, it serves as a bleak memorial to long-gone families

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from the exclusion zone, leaving behind homes into which they had invested time, money and love

Most people are barred from living in the zone, named the Alienation Zone, which covers an area of more than 1,000sq miles around the abandoned plant, to protect them from the effects of any lingering radiation.  A few residents refused to leave, and a handful of older residents have moved back to be close to family graves, but the area is mostly uninhabited and has now reverted to forests.
Tourists may obtain day passes, and workers who are rebuilding the damaged sarcophagus are allowed in for limited hours only each month.  Scientists the area will not be safe to live in for another 20,000 years.
Earlier this month, photographer Hélène Veilleux was allowed in, and spent four days photographing the irradiated ruins of the towns where hundreds of thousands of families once lived, worked and died.
These astonishing photographs document what she saw on her journey from Chernobyl to Pripyat.

 VIDEO  Footage of the catastrophic Russian nuclear disaster. WARNING: Graphic images

 

Russian military on red alert at Chernobyl and victims speak out

The public swimming baths would once have resonated to shrieks from excited children - the now-drained pool has not been swum in for decades

The Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986, was the worst nuclear accident in history, killing 64 and leaving many thousands more with long-term effects including cancer and deformities

Brightly painted tanks, their guns crossed, stand unused in the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation, 27 years after a test at the nuclear reactor went so disastrously wrong

Large public buildings are now simply falling apart: ceiling tiles have dropped off and smashed, wall claddings have slid down

The schoolchildren who were evacuated in the aftermath of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor are now adults

This photograph shows how vast strip lights dangle precariously, still attached by wires to the ceilings they were nailed to more than quarter of a century ago

While people have been forced out of the exclusion zone, nature - including deer - has regained control, with much of it reverting to forest

What looks like a school common room or hospital waiting room is a shell of its former self- chairs still in rows are covered with dust and fallen plasterwork

The fabric of both public and private buildings is slowly rotting as the vast, 1000sq mile zone of alienation is gradually reclaimed by nature

Trees sprout between paving slabs as nature gradually regains the upper hand over the exclusion zone - experts estimate it will not be habitable for another 20,000 years

The explosion and subsequent fire at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere

The disaster began at Chernobyl reactor number four, when a power surge occurred during a systems test, causing a series of steam explosions and a fire which sent a plume of radioactive material into the air

A gas mask would have provided little protection to the people of Chernobyl and Pripyat, many of whom suffered cancers and deformities as a result of the radiation released in the accident

Very few people enter the Chernobyl exclusion zone - a handful of people refused to leave, and some elderly people moved back to be near graves, but the zone is largely desolate