Their mission was to clean up the worst nuclear accident in history.
Following the April 26, 1986, explosion and fire at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, soldiers, firefighters, engineers, miners and medics were summoned from across the USSR. They were known as “liquidators” – an ominous Soviet-era catch-all term for those assigned to eliminate a problem.
Over four years, 600,000 people joined the dangerous cleanup. Helicopters hovered above the exposed radioactive core, dropping sand and other materials to smother the fire. Workers washed radioactive dust from buildings and roads, buried poisoned machinery, cleared forests and even hunted animals to slow the spread of radiation. Many had little knowledge of the dangers they faced.
A group of the workers who live in Ukraine’s Poltava region returned ahead of the 40th anniversary of the accident for a one-day excursion to Chornobyl.
They spoke of duty carried out without hesitation, the loss they endured, and of a catastrophe that continues to haunt Ukraine.
On the ground in Chornobyl, 40 years on
A group of former cleanup workers who returned to Chornobyl ahead of the 40th anniversary of the 1986 nuclear disaster revisited a nearby site where they once worked to help contain the world’s worst nuclear accident.
The Associated Press
This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors. Volodymyr Yurchuk, Hanna Arhirova and Derek Gatopoulos in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.