In the villages around the Zone, many say theyвЂ™re resigned to living on contaminated ground. With so many once classified as victims of Chernobyl - the number of so-called вЂњliquidators,вЂќ workers who contained the accident, is around 500,000 - and the illnesses so long-term, those claiming Chernobyl benefits are often stigmatized as scroungers. Makarevich is part of a group campaigning for the government to pay support benefits to those poisoned by the accident, as it is obliged by law. Not alerted by the Soviet authorities, she inhaled fallout, suffering radioactive burns on her lungs. On the morning after the explosion, she was washing her windows. Makarevich was evacuated from Pripyat, the town closest to the reactor. вЂњWe have the impression that they would rather that we had just gone already,вЂќ said Nadezhda Makarevich. The police guard on their duty the entrance of Pripyat town four kilometers from the Chernobyl power station, March 6, 1989, three years after the nuclear disaster. The International Atomic Energy Association ( IAEA) has said radiation levels have fallen by a factor of several hundred and that most contaminated land has been made safe. The United Nations and the World Health Organization have found that other than the tens of thousands exposed immediately after the accident, there is no evidence to show ChernobylвЂ™s leaked radiation has had a major impact on public health. The reactor was sealed inside an 18-mile exclusion zone, deemed too contaminated for people to live and known now just as the Zone. The disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history, eventually affected 3 million people and forced the evacuation of over 300,000. The claims throw attention onto the fact that even 30 years on, the long-term health effects of Chernobyl remain intensely disputed. But as the workers spruced up the route to the worldвЂ™s worst nuclear disaster zone, some affected by the accident said with the passing of time their plights were increasingly being downplayed and accused UkraineвЂ™s government of trying to save money by cutting support to them.

Lurk shadow of chernobyl