article_snippet.sent: 31 people died in the immediate aftermath .
article_snippet.sent: Thirty-one people died in the immediate aftermath, but the long term effects of the population living close by are still being investigated.
article_snippet.sent: The plume spread over wide areas of the then-Soviet Union and eastern Europe, leading to some 350,400 people having to be evacuated and resettled from the most contaminated areas in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.
article_snippet.sent: The fight to contain the contamination led to more than half a million emergency workers exposing more than half a million emergency workers exposing themselves to high doses of radiation to high doses of radiation, and cost 18 billion rubles.
article_snippet.sent: The deaths of 31 people - all reactor staff or emergency workers - were directly attributed to the disaster, while the Chernobyl Forum predicts the eventual death toll could reach 4,000 among those with a high level of radiation.