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 survival rates of barn swallows are much lower in the Exclusion Zone; 28% of barn swallows inhabiting Chernobyl return each year, while at a control area at Kanev, 250 km to the southeast, the return rate is around 40%. A later study by Møller "et al." (2007) furthermore claimed an elevated frequency of eleven categories of subtle physical abnormalities in barn swallows, such as bent tail feathers, deformed air sacs, deformed beaks, and isolated albinistic feathers. Smith et al. (2007) have disputed Møller's findings and instead proposed that a lack of human influence in the Exclusion Zone locally reduced the