Chernobyl's nuclear plant still stands frozen in time 40 years later, preserving the scars of disaster while shaping the future of nuclear safety.

Since Russia began occupying the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, there have been several near-miss nuclear safety situations.

Efrem Lukatsky, a Kyiv-based photographer for The Associated Press, was living in the city on April 26, 1986, when the explosion and fire struck the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, about a two-hour ...

Once classified files from East Germany reveal the extent of Soviet actions to hide the true extent of catastrophe.

On April 26, 1986, the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near Pripyat in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), exploded, resulting in the worst nuclear disaster in history. The incident ...

A single person pressing the wrong button set off the nuclear catastrophe which shocked the globe and contaminated thousands of homes with radioactive material. In the early morning of April 26, 1986, ...

Olena Maruzhenko remembers her mother sobbing when Soviet police told them to evacuate their home in the village of Korogod in northern Ukraine. Just 12km away, a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear ...

(April 26), a safety test at the Chernobyl Power Plant in Ukraine set off two explosions, triggering the world’s biggest ...

Photographer Pierpaolo Mittica has been documenting the passage of time at the disaster site as clean-up crews, tourists, and war, come and go in a landscape still teeming with radiation. "We are just ...

A man lay flowers at a memorial dedicated to firefighters and workers who died after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, in Slavutych on 25 April 2026.

In the initial aftermath of the nuclear power plant explosion, authorities told the bride's mother "not to panic" and that "all planned events in the city of Pripyat should go ahead" Getty A couple ...