Chernobyl photographer Igor Kostin dies at 78

In this April 4, 2011 photo taken at his home in Kiev, Ukraine, photographer Igor Kostin shows a photograph taken in the first days after the explosion of the 4th reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

KIEV, Ukraine - Igor Kostin, a Ukrainian photographer who took one of the first pictures of the ravaged Chernobyl nuclear plant after it exploded in 1986, has died. He was 78.

His wife, Alla Kostin, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that her husband died the day before in an automobile accident on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Within hours of the Chornobyl explosion on April 26, 1986, Kostin and two other photographers flew over the nuclear power plant in a helicopter. The high radiation ruined all of his pictures except for one, and that shot of the destroyed reactor remains one of the defining images of the disaster.

In the following months and years, Kostin repeatedly returned to the contaminated zone to document the cleanup efforts.