International

Desolate hospitals, abandoned homes and scattered, broken possessions are all that is left of the once-thriving Soviet town of Pripyat.

The town of 50,000 residents was once hailed as being a vision of the future, with progressive town-planning and modern architecture.

But nearly 30 years ago, all that came to a sudden and violent end.

The town of Pripyat, in Ukraine, sprang up just three kilometres from the country’s first nuclear power plant to house scientists and workers serving the plant, and security troops.

But on April 26 1986, one of the reactors deep inside the Chernobyl power plant went into meltdown, sparking the world’s worst nuclear disaster.