Survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster have opened up about the symptoms they continue to suffer almost 40 years after the explosion.
It was 28 April, 1986 when the flawed Number 4 reactor at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, releasing at least five percent of its radioactive reactor core into the environment.
Dozens of people died within a few weeks of the explosion, and approximately 350,000 people were evacuated from the area surrounding the plant.
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation found approximately 5000 cases of thyroid cancers resulting from the accident, and many people who lived near the plant at the time still feel the effects of the blast.
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Mykhaylo Khrushchenko was 34 and working as the director of the food processing manufacturer that served the plant when the reactor exploded. He has since gone on to become the head of the Union in Chernobyl for disabled people, and in 2021 he was awarded the state order 'For Service' by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Speaking to The Mirror on International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day, Khrushchenko recalled being told to 'wait for instructions' immediately after the blast.
A few weeks later, he and his colleagues drove their children to Pryluky, in the northern part of Ukraine.
"At that time, I didn't know that my car had the same contamination," Khrushchenko said.
"I spent 20 days in the exclusion zone, where something terrible was happening. I did not know this because I did not have a dosimeter. We were given an old dosimeter and I checked my car and, of course, I was scared... the dosimeter crackled when I got close to my car."
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Khrushchenko explained that one of his daughters has 'more illnesses than [he does]', while her own son has health issues of his own.
"His teeth are falling out, his knees are swollen. The boy is 23 years old. What is this? This is the result," Khrushchenko said.
"My daughter's health issues happened, most likely, after I took her by car to Pryluky. In a car that was then radioactively contaminated."
Now 71 years old, Khrushchenko has described having 'two full bedside tables in [his] locker, filled with medicines'.
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"I treat one thing for a few days, and then take a break for a few days and treat the other," he said.
Khrushchenko is far from the only one to suffer, with Yevgen Yakovlev also being impacted by the disaster.
Yakovlev worked as the chief researcher of the Environmental Research Department of the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine when the reactor exploded, and went to Chernobyl afterwards to analyse what had happened.
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Despite being physically fit before the explosion, Yakovlev told The Mirror: "I had to take leave of absence. I tried to walk, but I had no strength. I could only eat, for example, a few teaspoons of honey or buckwheat.
"I also lost a dozen teeth. But I survived. For those who are still alive from the first days of the accident at the Chernobyl plant, life was divided into life before Chernobyl and life after Chernobyl."
Though residents were advised against returning to Chernobyl, Khrushchenko has gone back a number of times over the years.
"I was born and raised there, and my parents are buried in Chernobyl," he said.
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Remembering the nuclear accident each year, Khrushchenko added: "Every year is a disaster for me. It is not the start of spring, but a disaster. Chernobyl is my homeland, my father's house is still there. I don't know what happened to it during the [Russia-Ukraine] war."
Topics: Chernobyl, Ukraine, Health