The Chernobyl nuclear disaster 33 years on - in pictures

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  Pripyat is still a draw for visitors, not least for its Soviet-era architecture which has been frozen in time. All photos: Declan McVeigh / The National

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  Like thousands of other Soviet towns, Pripyat had memorials to the dead of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War. This one is close to an abandoned nursery in the 30km 'dead zone' around Chernobyl.

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  This enormous Duga-1 OTH radar array – AKA the 'Russian woodpecker' for the interference it caused on shortwave radio – dominates the skyline of this remote part of northern Ukraine near Chernobyl.

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  Pripyat was once home to nearly 50,000 people; the city has been left to rot as Ukraine’s government still forbids people from living there.

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  An abandoned funfair in Pripyat.

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  Before the disaster more than 15,400 children lived in the city of Pripyat alone.

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  One of Pripyat’s 27 restaurants and cafes, left to the elements since 1986.

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  The UN says more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer were reported among children from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus up to 2005, 'most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident'.

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  Classrooms were abandoned as the Soviet authorities ordered people to leave the Chernobyl area. Residents were told they would be leaving for three days, but officials later decided the area would remain empty.

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  This nursery was one of 15 which educated almost 5,000 young children across the area.

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  The sarcophagus over reactor number four at Chernobyl was designed and built in 1986 to keep in 740,000m3 of radioactive debris and contaminated soil. In November 2016 the sarcophagus itself was covered in the €1.5 billion ($1.49bn) Chernobyl New Safe Confinement project.

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  A gas mask once worn by one of thousands of Soviet 'liquidators' - a mix of civilian and military workers sent to Chernobyl after the reactor explosion. More than half a million people took part in the clean-up.

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  The 30km exclusion zone around the site of the blast is dotted with reminders that it was once home to thousands of people. This nursery was abandoned on April 27, 1986.

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  Abandoned buildings in Pripyat remain officially out of bounds, but some people – a mix of former residents, villagers, adventurers and mere loners – have returned to live inside the 30km 'dead zone'.

What grabs you about Chernobyl at first is its dead silence.

The 30-kilometre exclusion zone around Chernobyl reactor 4 – which exploded in the early hours of April 26, 1986 – is almost devoid of people. For miles around there is unbroken, silent forest full of wildlife which is thriving now that people have largely gone.

Pripyat, once a city of 50,000 people, lies abandoned. Its '80s, Soviet aesthetic remains unchanged and is as much of a draw for visitors as is the chilling story of how Europe narrowly avoided a nuclear catastrophe.

When the Chernobyl reactor exploded, it pumped radioactivity into the atmosphere for 10 days. The area’s inhabitants were bussed out and told they would be back in three days – the vast majority never returned.

Most of the people who go to Chernobyl now are visitors drawn by the region’s sepulchral atmosphere. The “sarcophagus” which covered the reactor blast site has itself been covered up by a more modern structure.

But the abandoned schools and homes look like something from a war zone, except that this was a conflict where the enemy could be neither seen nor heard.

Chernobyl's dead silence is not confined to this 30km zone of Ukraine. Across the border in Belarus is another restricted area, one which remains almost totally unexplored.

The disaster retains a morbid fascination for many people. A new HBO miniseries coming out this month dramatises the conflict among the Soviet authorities trying to deal with the crisis, while a new game called Chernobylite allows players to explore a digital version of the exclusion zone.

But such a place can never be normalised. If Chernobyl offers us one thing, it is a glimpse into what the world could look like once humanity has gone.