Elena's information and photography are thoroughly accurate. The town of Pripyat (her "Ghost Town") is only the largest and most famous of the dozens of towns and villages that were evacuated following the disaster. I worked for a tad over two and a half years in Ukraine. One of the communities I worked with was Slavutych, a town that was built on the edge of the Exclusion Zone to house ChNPP workers evacuated from Pripyat. The emotional scars of the explosion and its aftermath are still very visible. About 1200 residents of Slavutych still work at the plant, even after its final closure (security, engineering, etc). There is an international radiology institute in Slavutych, and a number of leading US institutes and universities are assisting in studies - everything from what's going on inside the sarcophogas - which is scary; as late as 1991 a neutron spike on the monitors showed the potential for a self-sustaining reaction starting - to "radioecology" in the exclusion zone. Fascinating but uniquely dangerous work.
Elena is a gutsy lady (or insane, IMO) to visit the highly radioactive restricted area around the plant and in Pripyat. Although she seems to understand the danger, I'm wondering how much whole-body radiation exposure she's accumulated. If any of you ever get to Kyiv, the Chernobyl Museum provides even more information and stark photography of the event and its aftermath. Worth a visit.
Anyway, my comments tried to show that there is still a lot of attention being paid to the disaster and its effects in Ukraine and internationally. It may be off the skyline in the US, but it is an ever-present ghost at the feast in Ukraine.
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