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Ukraine marks the 33rd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the largest in the history of nuclear energy.
The consequences are still impossible to assess – but we know that a huge radioactive cloud has gradually reached almost every corner of the planet.
The first responders worked on the station with the minimum of protective clothing. Thirty of them died as a result of radiation poisoning in a few days. In total, more than half a million people participated in the cleanup efforts.
Oleksiy Breus was among them. At first, he was the operator of the control panel of the 4th block. In service on the day of the disaster, he then joined the forces of the first responders.
"Chernobyl is a big lesson," he told Euronews. We learned a lot about technology, but also to overcome the results and know how to use them, how to use them. Tourism is one of the options to use Chernobyl. Tourism here is not entertainment. Even when tourists come here for entertainment, they come back in a totally different atmosphere. Visiting the exclusion zone gives the feeling that you are now connected to this Biblical scale event. "
Today, 30 kilometers around the Chernobyl nuclear power station remain an exclusion zone. In Prypyat, today a ghost town that previously served the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the deserted buildings are slowly decaying after the evacuation, trees grow on its boulevards.
Our correspondent Natalia Liubchenkova has returned 3 times over the years. Check out his pictures in this gallery.
Breus says that Chernobyl is a museum, even if it does not have the official status. The Chernobyl Tour Operators Association has even more ambitious plans. In the last two years he has been striving to obtain UNESCO World Heritage status for the exclusion zone.
About 70,000 tourists visited it last year, most of them being foreigners. The fact that they can stand next to the 4th reactor safely is a real feat, the former radiation intelligence officer Serhiy Myrniy told the association.
"The radiation is now several thousand times lower than it was 33 years ago when I arrived here after the disaster.On the last step, the newly installed shield over the 4th reactor allowed to reduce by three times the radiation, already very weak. " . "
Slide below to see how was the 4th reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant before and after the installation of the new shield in 2016. Until then, it was covered with an older housing installed soon after the catastrophe. He served for almost 30 years and had to be changed for a long time.
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