Chornobyl remains at risk 40 years after the disaster
Four decades after Reactor 4 exploded at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster is once again shadowed by danger.
At 01:23am on 26 April 1986, an explosion tore through the reactor during a failed safety test, blasting apart the roof and sending a vast cloud of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
Radiation spread west and north across Europe for days, while neighbouring Belarus absorbed the heaviest share of the fallout.
Soviet authorities waited 36 hours…