Chernobyl anniversary 20 years

Twenty years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion, the region around the plant hosts a haunted sort of life. The city of Pripyat, where some 50,000 people including plant workers once lived, is deserted. It was evacuated shortly after the disaster -- its residents were told they'd be able to come back in a few days, but a generation later, the city is blocked off by gates and fences.Rusting bassinets in a crumbling nursery testify silently to the life-force that once flowed in the city. A stray dog prowls outside the barriers; inside them, all is silent. The village of Redkovka is supposed to be deserted -- it's within the zone where fallout from the blast descended so heavily that living there is unsafe. Yet there is life in some of its dilapidated houses; people like 48-year-old Nikolai Zubr and his 58-year sister Nina have come back, finding the living in the places to which they were relocated after the blast to be hard. Here, at least, they feel at home. In Rudo, there's more life. The town is outside the major contamination zone and people who work in area mines live there. But Chernobyl looms in their lives, too. The pupils in the local schools regularly get instruction in radiation safety, including how to don protective masks and equipment. As much as Chernobyl haunts life in the region, it also figures in hopes of the afterlife. Engravings of the plant figure on many of the tombstones of its employees -- a sign of pride in their work despite the plant's ignominious end.

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