The fourth reactor at the plant exploded 20 years ago

Some highlight the continuing health problems and damage, while others see signs of optimism in the gradual receding of the radiation and the will of local people to overcome their hardships.

The Chernobyl catastrophe is a war which has lasted 20 years so far... Like any armed conflict, it resulted in numerous deaths, injuries and invalids. After that there was an evacuation, just like in war... The war has not ended. It is continuing. Unfortunately, it will continue. And it will last for decades to come.

The people need the truth, not just words, about Chernobyl... As a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe, 4,125 sq km of the historic Polissya region, where 136,000 had lived, were swallowed up in an atomic reservation. And that is an entire continent of Ukrainian spiritual life.

Chernobyl is a source of pain for Ukraine... The future of the planned second sarcophagus over the No 4 reactor remains unclear, and it is hard to estimate the number of victims of cancer and other diseases that resulted from the radiation. The effects of the so-called peaceful atom will affect people's lives for many years to come, and villages around the plant are still struggling.

The total number of victims of the accident will be about five million people - those who received a larger or smaller dose of radiation, and those who have suffered material losses one way or another, including people who have already died and those still alive.

Caesium and strontium are quietly hunting us 20 years after the accident. Chernobyl's first attack on our health came in the form of radioactive isotopes of iodine, and was instantaneous. Then the "heavy artillery" came onto the battlefield - caesium and strontium. Can we match them blow for blow? The new map of the radioactive pollution published two years ago shows that the zone of risk is growing smaller.

We lived through it, and shall live on. When the "peaceful" atom exploded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station 20 years ago, its first blow fell on the Khoyniki, Brahin and Naroulya districts of Belarus. It's difficult to think what the local people did not suffer - evacuation, the end of economic life, resettlement, then return to their homes... The people survived, stood up, rolled up their sleeves and set to rebuilding their "little homeland".

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