Chernobyl, known for the worst nuclear disaster in history, marks its 38th anniversary with empty structures and thriving vegetation now covering the land once inhabited by humans. The footage shows the area with the devastating effects of the nuclear accident that occurred on April 26, 1986. A group of soldiers visited the site of the approximately 30-kilometer exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The soldiers' tour shows the ghost town of Pripyat, which was once home to thousands of people who worked at the nuclear power plant. Soldiers were not allowed to enter the most contaminated areas of the site. The accident occurred after a sudden power surge during a test of the reactor systems at the fourth unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, which is located about 110 kilometers from Kiev. The plant was also only three kilometers from the town of Pripyat, which was built to house workers at the plant in the 1970s. The explosion at the fourth reactor blew off the roof of the plant and exposed the core, resulting in the spread of radioactive material into the surrounding territory, which which prompted the Soviet Union to create an exclusion zone with a radius of 30 kilometers. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, more than 30 firefighters were killed and millions more were affected. About 8.4 million people in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine suffered the most exposure to radiation, according to official figures, while an area of ​​about 155.000 square kilometers in the three countries was contaminated. The boundaries of the exclusion zone have since changed after the breakup of the Soviet Union, with the State Emergency Services of Ukraine administering the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, while the Polesie State Radioecological Reserve in neighboring Belarus also serves to seal off areas in the accident-affected country. . /AA