Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Chernobyl Exclusion Zone The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation (, ) is an officially designated exclusion zone around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster. It is also commonly known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the 30 Kilometre Zone, or simply The Zone (, ). Established by the Soviet Armed Forces soon after the 1986 disaster, it initially existed as an area of radius from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant designated for evacuation and placed under military control. Its borders have since been altered to cover a larger area of Ukraine. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone borders a
Effects of the Chernobyl disaster were involved in the cleanup of the 30 km evacuation zone around the reactor, but many of them entered the zone two years after the disaster. Estimates of the number of "liquidators" vary; the World Health Organization, for example, puts the figure at about 600,000; Russia lists as liquidators some people who did not work in contaminated areas. In the first year after the disaster, the number of cleanup workers in the zone was estimated to be 2,000. These workers received an estimated average dose of 165 millisieverts (16.5 REM). A sevenfold increase in DNA mutations has been identified in