New tours, painful reminders in Lithuania after hit Chernobyl show

FILE PHOTO: People look at the central control room during the guided tour to decommissioned Ignalina nuclear power station in Visaginas, Lithuania July 24, 2019. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

IGNALINA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, LITHUANIA (Reuters) - The success of a U.S. television series on the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster has made its filming locations in Lithuania an off-beat tourist attraction, but has also renewed the anger and helplessness felt by many of the Lithuanians forced to clean up the contamination.

The Soviet leadership sent an estimated 7,000 Lithuanians, all but 100 of them male, to Chernobyl in the months and years after the disaster. Many were forced against their will.