After Chernobyl : pictures by Michael Forster Rothbart

"If you lived near Chernobyl, would you stay?

To the world, Chernobyl seems a place of danger, but for locals, Chernobyl is simply a fact of life.

On April 26, 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant changed history, sending radiation and political shockwaves across Europe. Radioactive fallout contaminated 56,700 square miles of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, a region larger than New York state."