A mandatory read about how people's lives were affected by the accident - "Chernobyl Prayer" - Svetlana Alexievich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alexievich)
She won the Nobel prize for her writing.
The accident happened in Ukraine but a fact that is not usually written is that Belarus had a QUARTER of it's land mass polluted (and Belarus is a large country).Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster