On April 26th, 1986 there was an explosion at a nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, on the border between Ukraine and Belarus.
Many tons of radioactive materials were thrown into the air.
Some of these were carried around the world, but 70 per cent of the radioactive substances blew north over the population of Belarus.

A quarter of the country's best farmlands and forests have been poisoned for hundreds of years by caesium 137 and strontium 90.

Where there is plutonium the land will be uninhabitable for ever.

Hundreds of towns and villages were evacuated, and the entire country has been declared a zone of international ecological disaster.

In southern Belarus thyroid cancer in children has increased by more than 100 times, due to the large amounts of radioactive iodine they have ingested, and there have been rises in many other types of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory problems, ailments of the digestive system and birth defects.

Time has not been a healer for the people of Belarus and the greatest fear is for the children of future generations.