Effects of the Chernobyl disaster children of liquidators conceived after the accident, when compared to their siblings that were conceived before. However, this effect has diminished sharply over time. Soviet authorities started evacuating people from the area around Chernobyl only on the second day after the disaster (after about 36 hours). By May 1986, about a month later, all those living within a radius of the plant (about 116,000 people) had been relocated. This area is often referred to as the zone of alienation. However, significant radiation affected the environment over a much wider scale than this 30 km radius encloses. According to reports from
Voices from Chernobyl and personal tragedy of the Chernobyl accident, and explores the experiences of individuals and how the disaster affected their lives. "Chernobyl Prayer" was first published in Russian in 1997 as "Чернобыльская молитва" and a revised, updated edition came out in 2013. The American translation was awarded the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for general non-fiction. Voices from Chernobyl Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future (UK title) / Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (US title) is a book by Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich. Alexievich was a journalist living in Minsk, the capital of Belarus,