On 26 April 1986 a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Soviet Ukraine exploded during a botched safety test, releasing enormous quantities of radioactive material into the atmosphere. The fallout forced the permanent evacuation of the nearby company town of Pripyat, purpose-built for plant workers, and the creation of a roughly 30-kilometre exclusion zone. The zone remains largely depopulated decades later.
It is the starkest case of an entire planned city abruptly and permanently abandoned, and it became a powerful catalyst for environmental and anti-nuclear politics, contributing to wider questioning of Soviet authority.
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