A home-brew vodka has been produced within the exclusion zone 33 years after the deadly Chernobyl disaster.
The artisan 'Atomik' vodka - made with grain and water from the abandoned town - is the world's first consumer product made from growing crops on a farm around the damaged nuclear power plant.
Professor Jim Smith, of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, has worked with scientists and researchers to help the communities affected by the economic impact of the disaster.
The team, the brainchild of Chernobyl Spirit Company who started the vodka project, said: "Our idea then was [to use that rye grain] to make a spirit."
Asked if the spirit is safe to drink, Prof Smith explained to BBC : "This is no more radioactive than any other vodka.
"Any chemist will tell you, when you distill something, impurities stay in the waste product.
"So we took rye that was slightly contaminated and water from the Chernobyl aquifer and we distilled it."
A radio-analytical laboratory test at Southampton University showed the content was 'below their limit of detection', Prof Smith added.
He hopes the sale of the vodka could enable them to distribute most of the money to local communities and use the rest to reinvest in the business.
"The problem for most people who live there is they don't have the proper diet, good health services, jobs or investment," he said.
Dr Gennady Laptev, a scientist based at the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute in Kiev, said the rye grain and the spirit prove how the contaminated land could be used productively.
The project aims to produce something that 'will be totally clean from the radioactivity'.
The Atomik vodka - with only one bottle produced so far - is more of a grain spirit than a vodka with more fruity notes, according to Sam Armeye from Bar Swift in Soho, who tried Chernobyl's home brew.
Prof Smith and his team are aiming to produce 500 bottles this year and sell them to the tourists who visit the exclusion zone.
