It’s been 30 years since the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine.
But the memories are still fresh for at least one woman.
In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, one of the four nuclear reactors at Chernobyl exploded, sending a dangerous radioactive cloud into the sky.
The wind took much of the danger to Belarus, which – like Ukraine – was then part of the Soviet Union.
The state-run newspaper Pravda first reported the accident in a tiny article on page three. But the rest of the world began learning of the disaster when elevated radiation levels were recorded in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland.
Svitlana Sholobaylo was a school girl at the time of the accident. I spoke to her at the Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum in Kiev.
The explosion and radiation killed more than 30 people within weeks of the accident, and cases of thyroid cancer skyrocketed in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.
The total number of deaths caused by the accident vary wildly depending on who you ask.
In the days after the disaster, U.S. officials were quick to point out that U.S. nuclear power plants were designed much better, and were much safer.
The Nuclear Energy Institute says nuclear power provided almost 11-percent of the world’s energy by 2012.
The museum in Kiev houses an extensive collection of artifacts, media, scale models, and even a clock from the Chernobyl plant frozen at 1:23 a.m., the moment of the deadly explosion.
