The ruined nuclear reactor at Chernobyl is seen across deserted buildings in the neighbouring town of Pripyat April 19, 2011. The world community, spurred by the nuclear crisis in Japan, on Tuesday pledged 550 million euros (483 million pounds) extra cash to help build a new containment shell at the site of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. [Photo/Agencies]

Week of commemorations

T he donors' conference launches a week of commemorations in Ukraine marking the Soviet-era explosion and fire.

A prevailing southeast wind carried a cloud of radioactivity over Belarus and Russia and into parts of northern Europe.

The official immediate death toll from Chernobyl was 31, but many more died of radiation-related sicknesses such as cancer, many of them in neighbouring Belarus.

Chernobyl has remained the benchmark for nuclear accidents. On April 12 Japan raised the severity rating at its Fukushima plant to seven, the same level as that of Chernobyl.

Chernobyl's total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate. Yanukovich said on Tuesday: "As a consequence of the accident, millions of people suffered, thousands of them died."

Prypyat, the town closest to the site, is now an eerie ghost town at the centre of a largely uninhabited exclusion zone within a radius of 30 km (19 miles).