Glimpses of a nuclear world

A specialist walks on the head of a nuclear reactor that was shut down at the end of 2004, during decommissioning work at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Station about 130 km  northeast of Vilnius.

Viktor Shevaldin, head of the Ignalina nuclear plant that is due to be shut down at the end of 2009 under Lithuania's European Union entry terms, said several uncertainties remained about the planning and eventual construction of a new plant.

Part of the Sizewell B power station is seen above the beach in Suffolk, eastern Britain.

A nearly 200 ton nuclear reactor safety vessel is erected at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam, about 80 km from the southern Indian city of Chennai.

The reactor is a 500 MW prototype fast breeder and it will begin commercial production of nuclear power by 2011.

A visitor walks in an underground nuclear shelter built in the early 1950s in the centre of Budapest.

The shelter, which was never used, was built between 1949 and 1953 near the parliament building in order to provide protection for Hungary's communist leadership in case of a nuclear attack.

A Russian technician works in the control room at the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, 1,200 kilometres south of Tehran.

Iran said on February 25, 2009 it had carried out successful tests at its Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant in a step towards its launch.

The church spire of the northern Bavarian village of Hergolshausen stands next to the cooling towers of the Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power station.

These satellite images, taken August 5, 2007 (top) and October 24, 2007 (bottom), show a suspected nuclear facility in Syria.

New satellite pictures show Syria has razed the site of what might have been a secret nuclear reactor under construction apparently bombed by Israel last month, an atomic research institute says.

Syria has denied illicitly hiding a nuclear site from the U N nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and said the only facility in the area in question was a desertification research centre.

A truck carrying a Castor nuclear waste container drives past a stop sign at the gate to Germany's interim nuclear waste storage facility in the northern German village of Gorleben.

A cooling tower is demolished at a North Korean nuclear plant.

North Korea toppled the cooling tower at its plutonium-producing reactor in a symbolic move to show its commitment to a disarmament deal that came a day after it submitted an inventory of its nuclear programme.

Containers are pictured in the receiving area of the new National Radioactive Waste Depository in Bataapati, 200 km south of Budapest.

A man wears a gas mask during a live action role-playing game based on the computer game Stalker, near the village of Sengileyevskoe in Russia's southern Stavropol region.

The scenario of the game is set in the radioactive exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor after a second fictional disaster where the player has to fight for survival by fending off mutant creatures and dangerous anomalies.

Some 70 gaming enthusiasts took part in the role play.