MOSCOW, April 26 (RIA Novosti) - Some 200,000 Russians still live in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster 20 years after the accident, a deputy head of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said Wednesday.
Speaking on the anniversary of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster, Nadezhda Gerasimova said the ministry would continue monitoring people's health and the state of food and soil in contaminated areas.
An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant's reactor No. 4 in Soviet Ukraine during the early hours of April 26, 1986, spewed radioactive clouds over the U.S.S.R. and Europe. Fourteen of Russia's regions were contaminated by fallout, with the provinces of Bryansk, Kaluga, Tula and Oryol among the worst affected.
Gerasimova said the government would continue to help people living in contaminated areas even after all the programs to support the workers involved in cleaning up after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had finished. There are currently 445 settlements in these areas, she said.
Gerasimova said many cancers may appear only in 20-30 years' time, and that therefore it would be possible to speak about the influence of radiation on mortality only then. But she said the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster would be felt for at least another fifty 50 years.
