These wooden homes are ideally suited to their fate, which is to disappear eventually into the forest, from which the logs originally came.
Most of the gardens are now overrun with birch trees that in the summer will completely hide the villages from view. Nature is thriving...
Evacuations began 36 hours after the explosion, but many villagers waited days for buses to safety. Today, driving along the zone's potholed roads, you glimpse abandoned villages through the trees.
The power station, which rendered the town uninhabitable for centuries, looms on the horizon, two-and-half kilometres away. Photos by Phil Coomes
The fair ground is one of the more contaminated parts of the town. It had been due to open on 1 May 1986, five days after the disaster, and was never used.
Nature has been reclaiming the abandoned town. Wild boars roam the streets at night. Birch trees have been shooting up at random, even inside some apartment blocks.
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