Ukrainians Mark 20th Chernobyl Anniversary

Ukrainian students try on gas masks as part of a safety drill in a school in Rudniya, just outside the Chernobyl contamination zone, Monday, April 3, 2006. The world will mark the 20th anniversary this month of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which sent a radioactive cloud across Europe.(AP Photo/Oded Balilty) (Oded Balilty - AP)

Around 350,000 people were evacuated forever from their homes, leaving the whole city of Pripyat and dozens of villages to decay and rot away. Experts say some may not be habitable again for centuries.

Some 5 million people live in areas covered by the radioactive fallout, in Ukraine, neighboring Belarus and Russia.

Valentyna Abramovych, now 50, her husband and their infant son were forced to evacuate their home in the Chernobyl workers' city of Pripyat, leaving behind all their belongings. They were shuffled around, first to a nearby village then to a relative's house.

"Every day, I would watch television and expect to hear when we could come back," Valentyna Abramovych said. "When they said we could never come back, I burst into tears ... We feel like outcasts. No one needs us."

Ukraine hosted competing scientific conferences on Tuesday as this nation of 47 million and the international community tried to make sense of the catastrophe.

Some Ukrainians, however, sought out more private places to remember.

"The whole country grieves and the whole world joins us in this grief," Lena Makarova, 27, said as she visited the Chernobyl museum in Kiev.

___

Associated Press writers Natasha Lisova and Mara D. Bellaby contributed to this report.