The BBC's Jessica Parker visits Pripyat, which was abandoned in 1986 after an explosion at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

On April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded during a botched safety test, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe and sparking global panic. Around 30 people died in the immediate blast,

Can we ever really understand Chernobyl? These five shows and videogames give a pretty good glimpse of what the disaster entailed.

In the early hours of 26 April 1986, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded after a planned safety test went catastrophically wrong. The Chernobyl disaster was the result of a chain of critical errors — and its fallout was unprecedented.

Forty years after the Chernobyl disaster, the effects of the world’s worst nuclear accident are still being felt.

Photographer Pierpaolo Mittica has been documenting the passage of time at the disaster site as clean-up crews, tourists, and war, come and go in a landscape still teeming with radiation. "We are just at the beginning of the story of Chernobyl.

Efrem Lukatsky, a Kyiv-based photographer for The Associated Press, was living in the city on April 26, 1986, when the explosion and fire struck the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, about a two-hour drive away.