Revisiting Chernobyl After Twenty-eight Years

VOA's videographer Arash Arabasadi and correspondent Steve Herman (holding a radiation monitor) in front of the old sarcophagus covering Chernobyl Reactor No. 4. (Arash Arabasadi/VOA)

A cashier uses an abacus at one of the few commercial establishments inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. (Steve Herman/VOA)

A monument commemorating permanently evacuated towns and villages inside the exclusion zone. (Steve Herman/VOA)

A monument in front of a Chernobyl fire station to the 32 firefighters who died responding to the explosion at Reactor No. 4. (Steve Herman/VOA)

Remote control equipment used at Chernobyl after the reactor explosion. Much of it ceased to function because the high radioactivity levels made electronic circuits inoperable. (Steve Herman/VOA)

Ivan Semenuk, 78, has illegally returned to his home in the village of Paryshiv in the exclusion zone. (Steve Herman/VOA)

Driver Igor Bordnarch, a frequent visitor to the Chernobyl reactor site, checks radiation readings just 240 meters from the destroyed reactor. (Steve Herman/VOA)

Nature has mostly taken back most of the villages inside the exclusion zone. (Steve Herman/VOA)

An unusually high radiation reading of about 172 micro-sieverts per hour over some vegetation on the ground of the Pripyat amusement park. (Steve Herman/VOA)

A rusting ride for children in the highly radioactive abandoned amusement park in Pripyat. (Steve Herman/VOA)

The entrance to the restricted Chernobyl zone, in which no one, on the Ukrainian side, is allowed to live within 30 kilometers of the destroyed nuclear reactor. (Arash Arabasadi/VOA)

The Ferris wheel in the Pripyat amusement park, now an iconic symbol to a younger generation born after the Chernobyl disaster, thanks to its inclusion in the video game: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

To exit the exclusion zone all persons must have their radiation level checked by an automated device. Here VOA correspondent Steve Herman gets the all clear. (Steve Herman/VOA)