Meltdown victims remembered 30 years on

Flowers are laid during a service in Slavutych, Ukraine, on Tuesday in memory of firefighters and workers who died after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.[Photo/Agencies]

Memorial services were held in Ukraine on Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which permanently poisoned areas of eastern Europe.

Early on April 26, 1986, a botched test at the nuclear plant in then-Soviet Ukraine triggered a meltdown that spewed deadly clouds of atomic material into the atmosphere, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Relatives of those who died as a result of the world's worst nuclear accident attended a candlelit vigil in a Kiev church, built in their memory.

"We did not think that this accident would change all our lives, dividing them into 'before the war' and 'after the war' as we called it. It was a silent nuclear war for us," said Lyudmila Kamkina, a former worker at the plant.

Others gathered for a service in Slavutych, a town 50 kilometers from Chernobyl that was established to house many of those who had to leave their homes for ever.

More than half a million civilian and military personnel were drafted in from across the former Soviet Union as so-called liquidators to clean up and contain the nuclear fallout, according to the World Health Organization.

Thirty-one plant workers and firemen died in the immediate aftermath of the accident, most from acute radiation sickness.

Over the past three decades, thousands more have succumbed to radiation-related illnesses such as cancer, although the total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.

Nikolay Chernyavskiy, 65, who worked at Chernobyl and later volunteered as a liquidator, recalls climbing to the roof of his apartment block in the nearby town of Prypyat to get a look at the plant after the accident.

"My son said ‘Papa, Papa, I want to look, too'. He has to wear glasses now and I feel like it's my fault for letting him look," Chernyavskiy said.

The anniversary has attracted extra attention due to the imminent completion of a giant 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) steel-clad arch that will enclose the stricken reactor site and prevent further leaks for the next 100 years.