Editor's Note: Doug Boyd is with the Office of News and Information, East Carolina University Division of Health Sciences. He and photographer Cliff Hollis accompanied Sprau's group on the trip.

Cliff Hollis/ECU Division of Health Sciences (ENLARGE)

ECU STUDENTS, faculty and staff visited the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Thursday. They are, from left, Chris Fletcher, Rick Kilroy, Eric Ferrell, Doug Boyd, Kenneth Dingle, Daniel Sprau, Leonard Robinson, Michael Apple, Larry Toburen and Chris Henry.

KIEV, Ukraine — A group from East Carolina University traveled Thursday to the site of the world's worst nuclear meltdown and the deserted towns nearby and came away with increased respect for the power of the atom.

The six students, three faculty and two staff members visited the shuttered Chernobyl nuclear power plant, about 80 miles from here, taking radiation readings as close as 250 yards from the destroyed Unit 4 reactor and the deteriorating sarcophagus that encloses it.

The group also walked through the silent "ghost town" of Pripyat, the city built in 1970 approximately a half-mile from the reactor as the new, modern home of those who worked there. Leaves blow down empty streets, radioactive moss grows on the sidewalks and an amusement park that once hosted laughs and smiles sits rusting and still.

"I was stunned," said Daniel Sprau, the ECU associate professor of environmental health who organized and led the trip. "What struck me was Pripyat, the quietness of it, the sheer volume of lives that were destroyed."

The ECU team visited the site the day after the official 20th anniversary was observed.

While this anniversary has turned the world's eyes to Chernobyl, long-term attention is needed.

"The 20th anniversary shouldn't be like a campaign," said Julia Marusych of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Information Department. "I wish the world community won't forget about Chernobyl on the 27th of April."

Sprau said he isn't likely to forget.

"It was almost emotional for me," he said. "I'm a very religious person, but in your professional life you don't usually feel that way. I think God sometimes puts obstacles in front of folks, and you don't know why things happen. But the way people respond — if they have God-given talents, they know how to handle it and how to prevent it in the future."

For the first day or so after the explosion, plant officials said only that a problem had occurred at the reactor, and no one should be concerned. But with radiation levels off the meter and firefighters and plant employees dying of acute radiation poisoning, officials ordered the evacuation of Pripyat's 50,000 people April 28. They were told the evacuation was temporary, and many left with just the clothes they had and a bit of food and money. They never returned.

The United Nations reported last year that 56 people — 47 workers who died of acute radiation exposure and nine children who died of thyroid cancer — died as a direct result of the explosion, and another 3,940 people could die prematurely of cancer caused by radiation exposure. Greenpeace, on the other hand, released a report this month estimating 93,000 people have died or will die from Chernobyl.

The scale of the disaster and its aftermath struck students.

"It definitely gives me a new perspective on nuclear power," said Chris Fletcher, who will graduate this summer with a master's degree in environmental health. Before, he said, he was curious about nuclear power but hadn't lived near a reactor or thought about it much. "It needs to be handled very carefully. I can understand how people are afraid of it."

Graduate student Chris Henry agreed. "I definitely have more respect for the hazards of nuclear power," he said. He used a dosimeter to measure radiation at various locations.

Near Pripyat he took readings as high as 20 millirems per hour. Standing next to that radiation source for an hour would roughly equal the radiation dose from one chest X-ray. The dosimeter measures millirems, a measure of a radiation dose and how it would affect a person.

Inside the reactor building, measurements as high as 3,400 rads per hour have been taken, Marusych said. A rad is a basic radiation measurement for any material; the maximum survivable acute dose is 1,000 rads, Sprau said.

The trip has held valuable lessons for the students, Sprau said.

"If you can do something in the environment that directly affects people's health, I think that's important," he said. "I hope our students got out of this that what we do at the local level is important."

Henry agreed. "You never imagine that an accident could happen and it would affect the lives of so many people. All of a sudden they had to start over from scratch," he said.

The sarcophagus over the Unit 4 reactor was hastily built without much engineering, Marusych said. Today, radiation is leaking out. An international team has designed a new structure that will enclose the sarcophagus and provide a sealed, controlled environment for at least 100 years. It must still be built.

How Chernobyl's nuclear meltdown happened
On April 25, 1986, the Unit 4 reactor at the Chernobyl station was scheduled to be shut down for routine maintenance. Officials decided the shutdown would be a good time to conduct a test to see if inertia would keep the turbines spinning long enough, in case of a power failure, to operate pumps that circulate water to cool the reactor until diesel generators kicked in. A similar test had been successfully carried out before on another reactor.

Inside a nuclear reactor, enriched uranium is broken down in a process called fission that creates massive amounts of heat. The heat boils water into steam, which powers turbines to generate electricity.

In shutting down the reactor for the test, operators reduced power too quickly. They then increased power, but not to the normal amount for this experiment.

There are varying stories about what happened next, but a series of missteps, made worse by the disabling of several safety mechanisms for the test, caused the reactor to surge out of control.

A steam explosion inside the reactor blew off the 2,400-ton reactor lid; it landed on its side on top of the reactor. The explosion also blew off the roof of the reactor building, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere. Air rushed in, igniting graphite in the reactor. The fire burned nearly four hours as helicopters dumped sand and lead and firefighters struggled to contain it.

Officials initially said there were no problems. But as radiation spread and firefighters and plant workers began dying, the truth came out.