Forty years after the Chernobyl accident, the largely uninhabited exclusion zone around the nuclear power plant has become a haven for wildlife, as well as providing the world with a unique living laboratory for scientific study of the impact of radioactive elements. The zone also plays a large part in popular culture's enduring interest and fascination with the events of 1986.
 

A shelter was rapidly built over the ruins of Chernobyl reactor 4 in 1986, but it was never meant to be a long-term fix. So the giant New Safe Confinement arch, designed to last 100 years, was built to fully enclose the area and allow the safe removal of the original shelter and the remains of the destroyed unit. Even without the damage caused by the 2025 drone strike it was a process due to take many decades. So, forty years after the accident, what is the current situation and what does the future hold?
 

What we know now about the causes of the 1986 Chernobyl accident and the effect it had on people's health, plus the story of how the alarm was raised internationally at a nuclear power plant in Sweden. And how the lessons learned led to a global safety culture which has underpinned the widespread plans for new nuclear capacity.

China is leading the way in building new nuclear energy capacity but what are the plans for the future? François Morin, China Director at World Nuclear Association, sets out the scale of the country's ambitions.
 

How long should it take from signing a contract to first concrete, to completion, for a new nuclear power plant? And what needs to be done to ensure that funding is unlocked for new units? Those are just two of the topics covered by Assystem's Deputy CEO Stéphane Aubarbier.
 

What are the main priorities, the key events and the likely big developments in new nuclear capacity in 2026? Here’s an edited transcript of World Nuclear Association Director General Sama Bilbao y León's World Nuclear News podcast interview.
 

What were the most-read World Nuclear News stories, and what has World Nuclear Association Director General Sama Bilbao y León picked out as her key moments of 2025? Read a month-by-month summary, and listen to the full podcast episode.
 

What was achieved at COP30 - the 30th UN Climate Change Conference, held in Belém, Brazil - and what role did nuclear energy play? Here's an assessment from Jonathan Cobb, World Nuclear Association Senior Programme Lead, Climate.
 

World Nuclear Association Chairman Mohamed Al Hammadi, and Director General Sama Bilbao y León share their views on leadership in the global nuclear sector with Callum Thomas, Chair of the association's Workforce and Talent Development Working Group.