Pripyat or Prypiat is a ghost town in northern Ukraine, near the Ukraine–Belarus border. Named after the nearby river Pripyat, the town was founded on February 4, 1970, as the ninth "atomgrad", a type of closed town in the Soviet Union, to serve the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was officially proclaimed a city in 1979 and had grown to a population of 49,360 by the time it was evacuated on the afternoon of 27 April 1986, the day after the Chernobyl disaster.
