Chernobyl remembered 18 years on

ACROSS the former Soviet Union, people lit candles, laid flowers and demonstrated yesterday to mark the 18th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which spread radiation over much of northern Europe.

In all, seven million people in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are estimated to suffer physical or psychological effects of radiation related to the April 26, 1986, catastrophe, when reactor No 4 exploded.

An area half the size of Italy was contaminated, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to be resettled and ruining some of Europe’s most fertile agricultural land.