Chernobyl Chernobyl Chernobyl () is a city in the restricted Chernobyl Exclusion Zone situated in the Ivankiv Raion of northern Kiev Oblast, near Ukraine's border with Belarus. Chernobyl is about northeast of Kiev, and approximately southwest of the Belarusian city of Gomel and 16 km [10 mi] from Ukraine’s border with Belarus. The city was the administrative center of Chernobyl Raion (district) from 1923 until it was disestablished in 1988. Before its evacuation, the city had about 14,000 residents. The city was evacuated on 27 April 1986, 30 hours after the Chernobyl disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which was
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