CNN 2011-04-15

To our Facebook fans in Kansas, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania and to everyone who's watching us around the world, welcome to CNN Student News. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, I'm Carl Azuz.

First up, Japan's prime minister wants some answers from the company that runs the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Specifically, the prime minister wants to know when the crisis at the plant is going to be over. He's looking for a timetable from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and he says one should be coming soon. He's also promised to get this crisis under control "at all costs."

In the meantime, the Japanese government has classified the situation at the Fukushima plant as a level 7. That means it is among the most serious nuclear accidents ever. That rating is based on how much radiation has been released from the plant, and it means officials expect long-term efforts to deal with all the issues caused by this accident. Thousands of people have had to leave the region around the plant. The prime minister promised to help them find jobs, housing and education.

What's happening in Japan has some people remembering another nuclear accident that took place nearly 25 years ago. It was a meltdown at Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet 1 Union. Diana Magnay looks at the long-lasting effects of the worst nuclear accident in history.

We're driving through the exclusion 2 zone en route to Chernobyl. It doesn't feel like a place where the world's worst-ever nuclear accident happened almost 25 years ago. The sun lends a wintry charm to the derelict homes we passed. In all, nearly 350,000 people were forced to abandon their homes as a radioactive cloud blew over Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

This village is called Zalissya in Ukrainian, which literally 3 means "behind the forest." But as you can see now, it has been completely consumed by the forest. And when the villages were evacuated 4 about ten days after the accident took place, they thought that they'd be able to come back here, that this village would be inhabitable again. But as you can see, that wasn't to be the case.

So, this is the memorial. How many people died immediately after the accident?

Answer, about 30 people in one month died overall. Highly radiated.

Yuri Tatarchuk, who's our certified 5 guide from Ukraine's ministry 6 of emergencies, says the final death toll 7 from the nuclear fallout is impossible to calculate, but that it's less than people feared. Estimates from the International Atomic Energy Agency put the number at 4,000. But the World Health Organization points to 4,000 incidents of thyroid cancer among children from the affected 8 areas.

So now, it's 8.7, 9 microsieverts.

Radiation's not down to normal, but Tatarchuk says it's not a health risk if you're just here for the day.

We're staying here just minutes, but it's not so sure if such levels of radiation inhabiting here is not allowed.

We're not the only visitors. A Russian tour group picked their way through frozen tower blocks in nearby Pripyat. The town was evacuated the day after reactor 9 number four exploded, before the Soviet Union admitted it had a serious problem in one of its nuclear plants. This year, the government will remove restrictions 10 to the exclusion zone, turning these Soviet ghost towns into a tourist destination, a chance for people to see for themselves the relics 11 of a nuclear catastrophe 12 frozen in time.