Chernobyl disaster area 'must be put to use again'

The uninhabited and contaminated region around the shuttered Chernobyl nuclear power plant must be put to use again, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said today on the eve of the 21st anniversary of the world’s worst-ever nuclear accident.

The April 26, 1986, explosion and fire at Chernobyl’s Reactor No.4 sent a radioactive cloud across Europe, contaminating large areas of land and prompting the Soviet government to permanently evacuate more than 300,000 people. A 20-mile zone around the plant remains closed to the public.