Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko lays flowers at a memorial monument of Chernobyl victims, as the world marks 20 years since the worst civil nuclear disaster in the history of mankind.
Ukraine commemorated Wednesday the twentieth anniversary since Chernobyl's explosion, the world's worst nuclear disaster.
The blast was marked by tolling bells and a minute's silence at 0123 local time when the alarm was set off. The April 26, 1986, explosion at Chernobyl's reactor No 4 spewed radiation across much of northern Europe over a 10-day period.
President Viktor Yushchenko visited the site and met some of the people who worked at the plant and those who risked their lives in the accident.
The accident happened at one of four reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 110km north of the capital, Kiev.
It is still unclear how Bulgaria was affected by the fallout as right after the Chernobyl explosion Bulgarian authorities followed Soviet orders and refused to admit anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
Official UN figures predicted up to 9,000 Chernobyl-related cancer deaths. But a Greenpeace report released last week estimated a figure of 93,000. Greenpeace said other illnesses could bring the toll up to 200,000.
The blast was marked by tolling bells and a minute's silence at 0123 local time when the alarm was set off. The April 26, 1986, explosion at Chernobyl's reactor No 4 spewed radiation across much of northern Europe over a 10-day period.
President Viktor Yushchenko visited the site and met some of the people who worked at the plant and those who risked their lives in the accident.
The accident happened at one of four reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 110km north of the capital, Kiev.
It is still unclear how Bulgaria was affected by the fallout as right after the Chernobyl explosion Bulgarian authorities followed Soviet orders and refused to admit anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
Official UN figures predicted up to 9,000 Chernobyl-related cancer deaths. But a Greenpeace report released last week estimated a figure of 93,000. Greenpeace said other illnesses could bring the toll up to 200,000.