Pandas Go Rawr: 2013

Ok, so when I'm really bored I do research. On the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. So here is what I came up with:

Pripyat - 3 km away from the explosion
- killed 30 operators and firemen within 3 months and several further deaths later
Kiev - 130 km south (border of) Belarus - 20 km north
Over 7 million people were affected
Over 63,000 square miles of land have been affected

The town of Pripyat, population 49,360, was evacuated soon after the accident; people had to leave their homes, never to return.

200 tons of radioactive material still sit within the reactor

Some 150,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine are contaminated and stretch northward of the plant as fa as 500 kilometers

There were over 100 radioactive elements released into the atmosphere when Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded

There are 187 small communities in the exclusion zone that remain virtually abandoned to this day; children are not allowed to live in this area

The evacuated population lives mainly in newly constructed towns such as Slavutych in areas with very little or no contamination

UPDATE: Slavutych IS contaminated; it is 47 km from Pripyat, 50 km from Chernobyl

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