Chernobyl: 26 years on

PARIS. April 26. KAZINFORM Twenty-six years after the world's worst nuclear accident and Chernobyl survivors and victims' families have held a midnight memorial pause.

Dozens of people died in the three months after the catastrophe but the subsequent health fallout of those who lived in the path of the leaked radiation is unknown, the euronews reports.

Today Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich is to inaugurate the construction of a new 1.2 billion euro sarcophagus to hold the remains of the reactor which exploded.

It was a combination of flawed design and operator error which caused the blast and produced a radioactive cloud.

Chernobyl's reactors were shut down and eventually decommissioned . Reactor four was initially encased in an unstable concrete shell. The more permanent casing should be completed by 2015.

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