KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Efrem Lukatsky, a Kiev-based photographer for The Associated Press, recalls the confusion and anxiety of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion, the world's worst nuclear accident.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion was only about 100 kilometers (65 miles) from my home in Kiev, but I didn't learn about it until the next morning from neighbor Natalia Finkel, a policeman's wife.
The Tass news agency called it an "unlucky accident" and said there was nothing to worry about.
Nobody canceled a May Day parade in Kiev that saw thousands of people walking in columns along the streets, with songs, flowers and Soviet leaders' portraits, covered with invisible clouds of fatal radiation.
The only reliable source of information was the Voice of America, but the KGB was jamming the signal.
If the signal got through, we heard doctors advising us to take a daily drop of iodine to protect our thyroids from radiation.
A friend, an Institute of Nuclear Physics engineer named Viktor Ivashchenko, called me a few days after the blast and urged more me to flee Kiev and never come back.
Soviet authorities finally unveiled what had really happened, and let in a few photographers to cover the destroyed reactor and the desperate cleanup efforts.
