Chernobyl airs every Monday on HBO and every Tuesday on Sky Atlantic in the UK. Episode two will air next week and the first episode is available to watch now via NOW TV in case you missed it. The series dramatises the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant disaster in Soviet-ruled Ukraine. On April 26, 1986, reactor four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Powerplant exploded, almost bringing Europe and the Soviet Union to the brink of extinction. The Soviet official death toll was 31 but the figure is thought to be in the thousands if not millions as a result of radioactive poisoning.
When will Chernobyl be safe to live in?
Experts believe the areas around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant will remain uninhabitable for at least 20,000 years.
The figure 20,000 years apply to the area around the power plant itself.
Areas around the exclusion zone are thought to be uninhabitable for least 3,000 years according to some experts.
However, the levels of radioactivity in each area vary so it’s very difficult to know when Chernobyl will be safe to live in.
HOW MANY DIED IN CHERNOBYL?
The area remains unsafe because of the radioactive elements from the reactor scattered across a vast area and continues to leak radiation to this day.
Comparisons have been drawn to the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack of August 1945 – however, Hiroshima is safe to live in now.
The is because the radiation effects of an atomic bomb explosion disperse into the air very quickly and instead the damage is done by one huge explosion.
All 50,000 people living in the nearby town of Pripyat was evacuated 36 hours after the incident.
For many, the evacuation was too late as they were exposed to the long term health effects of radioactivity almost immediately.
An exclusion zone of over 1,000 square miles was set up around Chernobyl.
People continue to live in the exclusion zone which stretched as far as neighbouring satellite state Belarus.
According to Newsweek, the people living in the exclusion zone in Belarus get access to free health care and electricity.
WHERE WAS CHERNOBYL FILMED?
Can you visit Chernobyl?
The town of Pripyat has become a tourist hotspot but nobody has lived there since 1986.
Journalists and tourists have taken published photographs online of the abandoned town including images of abandoned flats, an amusement park, classrooms and hospitals.
At the moment, thriving populations of deer, wolves, beavers, boar and other animals live in the woodlands of Chernobyl and they are expected to have high levels of radiation.
The area of Chernobyl was opened to tourists in February 2011 but trips were suspended in June later that year.
WHO IS IN THE CAST OF CHERNOBYL?
Chernobyl did not re-open again until 2013, alongside the nearby town of Pripyat.
To enter the exclusion zone, you have to go on a supervised tour and are tested for radiation throughout.
The exclusion zone still remains in place around the nuclear reactor, which is covered by a newly installed sarcophagus to contain the radiation.
Chernobyl airs Tuesdays on Sky Atlantic