Inside Chernobyl, 30 years after the worst nuclear disaster in history
Here's a view of what the Chernobyl power plant looks like today. What's left of the reactor building that was destroyed in the explosion can be seen on the right; a new confinement structure, on the left, is currently being constructed and will cover the damage when it's complete.
A monument stands at the entrance to the power plant, commemorating the workers who lost their lives in the disaster. Chernobyl is haunted "by both a hushed desolation and clangorous activity, the sense of a ruined past and a difficult future," according to a description from The Associated Press.
Inside the plant, nuclear waste that has been extracted from its fourth unit — which was ruined in the explosion — is kept stored today.
Workers at Chernobyl routinely carry out checks on barrels of this waste to measure their radiation levels.
Here, a laboratory worker performs radiation level checks on samples from the fourth unit.
Construction workers are building a structure to cover the damage.
According to The Associated Press, it will look like "a 30-story Quonset hut."
When it's finished, the curved confinement will be moved gently over rails to cover the sarcophagus and dilapidated reactor building.
Once the new structure is in place, robot-controlled machines will take apart the ruined reactor and sarcophagus of the fourth unit before collecting the remaining nuclear waste, to be stored nearby. The Associated Press reports that the work is due to start in 2017.
An archive photo of the fourth unit at Chernobyl from 1986 shows the scale of the damage caused by the explosion and fire.
The neighbouring town of Pripyat was also badly affected by the explosion. Following the accident, it was swiftly evacuated and has remained a ghost town ever since.
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