On 26 April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blew up. Forty-eight hours later the entire area was evacuated. Over the following months there were stories of mass graves and dire warnings of thousands of deaths from radiation exposure.
Horizon interviews radiation scientist Dr Mike Repacholi
Yet in a BBC Horizon report screened on Thursday, a number of scientists argue that 20 years after the accident there is no credible scientific evidence that any of these predictions are coming true.
The anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident in April saw the publication of a number of reports that examined the potential death toll resulting from exposure to radiation from Chernobyl.
Environmental group Greenpeace said the figure would be near 100,000. Another, Torch (The Other Report on Chernobyl), predicted an extra 30,000-60,000 cancer deaths across Europe.
But according to figures from the Chernobyl Forum, an international organisation of scientific bodies including a number of UN agencies, deaths directly attributable to radiation from Chernobyl currently stand at 56 - less than the weekly death toll on Britain's roads.
"When people hear of radiation they think of the atomic bomb and they think of thousands of deaths, and they think the Chernobyl reactor accident was equivalent to the atomic bombing in Japan which is absolutely untrue," says Dr Mike Repacholi, a radiation scientist working at the World Health Organization (WHO).
