Photographer Goes Inside Chernobyl to Document the Post-Meltdown Nuclear Power Plant [Interview]
On April 26, 1986, an uncontrollable nuclear reaction began in the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what was then the Soviet-controlled Ukrainian SSR. The meltdown quickly became the worst nuclear power disaster in history—only the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan in 2011 would reach the same level of destruction and contamination. Today, the site sits within an exclusion zone of 19 miles in any direction.