Photo Gallery A New Cover for the Disaster Reactor
The ghost town of Pripyat is seen with the ruins of the Chernobyl plant in the background (2007 photo). The homes in the foreground have been vacant for nearly 25 years.
April 1986: The reactor can be seen in this archival aerial photo. The first protective casing was put over the reactor within eight months of the explosion and fire.
Radiation measurements are taken in this archival photo from October 1986. In the years since then, cracks and holes have formed in the existing sarcophagus, which is no longer deemed to be secure.
Plans are now being finalized for a new protective casing. Twenty-five years after the nuclear catastrophe, Ukraine will receive a further half-billion euros for a larger sarcophagus.
Graffiti on a wall in the deserted city of Pripyat near the Chernobyl site: The new protective casing is expected to shield the ruins of the destroyed reactor through the rest of the century.
Radiation measurements are taken in the area surrounding the reactor in this May 1986 archive photo.
A suicide mission: So-called liquidators constructed the first protective casing at Chernobyl in 1986. Many of the people involved in the mission died of complications created by radiation contamination. This photo was taken in the summer of 1986.
An abandoned moonscape in Sviatsk in this archival photo from 1996. The village, in the Bryansk region, lay in ruins after it was destroyed by liquidators. The sign reads: "Attention, radioactive zone. Authorized passage only."
