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
Chernobyl disaster medical and other welfare. Ukraine also maintains the destroyed reactor, for which it employs a very large workforce in order to keep individual exposure times low. Many of these workers have since registered disabilities and enrolled for welfare. In Ukraine, the Chernobyl disaster was an icon of the nationalist movement, symbolic of all that was wrong with the Soviet Union, and welfare became a key platform for winning independence. Ukraine has since developed a massive and burdensome welfare system that has become increasingly corrupt and ineffective. It has presented its greatly increased welfare demands since 1991 as a demonstration of