The world next week remembers 25 years since the worst nuclear accident in history at Chernobyl, haunted by fears that the Japan earthquake has shown again the risk of atomic power sparking apocalypse.
Chernobyl has become a byword for environmental catastrophe, with the explosion at 1:23 am on April 26, 1986 realising the worst nightmare of what can happen when a nuclear power plant goes wrong.
Workers were testing the Unit 4 reactor at Chernobyl when design flaws allowed an uncontrollable power surge, sparking explosions that completely destroyed the reactor and released five percent of its radioactive material into the atmosphere.
The radioactive matter settled in the nearby area and also blew over neighbouring regions in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and even Western Europe, leaving a legacy of contamination that remains to this day.
The disaster became notorious for the reluctance of the then Soviet leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev to admit the disaster, only releasing news of the catastrophe three days after it had happened.