The bleak landscape of the Chernobyl exclusion zone Mykhaylo Palinchak It was 1.23am when disaster struck. A routine safety test led to a catastrophic explosion. Poor design and inadequate safety procedures saw radioactive material scattered around the globe. In just 48 hours, Chernobyl became the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster . Forty years later, I have come to Ukraine to learn about its legacy. My first guide is  Kateryna Shavanova , an academic who was studying radiation-consuming bacteria at Chernobyl when Russia invaded in 2022, but now works for the Ukrainian army’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear risk team. A patch on her uniform roughly translates to “It’s not time to drink iodine yet”, an optimistic reference to the emergency treatment for radiation poisoning.…