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 its own moral legitimacy, and as an argument for needing foreign aid. Belarus, on the other hand, was politically weak when it gained independence, and looked to Moscow for guidance; in many ways it has returned to the old Soviet policy of secrecy and denial. Following the accident, questions arose about the future of the plant and its eventual fate. All work on the unfinished reactors 5 and 6 was halted three years later. However, the trouble at the Chernobyl plant did not end with the disaster in reactor 4. The damaged reactor was sealed off and of concrete was