On April 18 that year, local council elections were held for the new atomgrad in Slavutych, the Pripyat administration was formally dissolved, and the city bureaucratically ceased to exist. After working for almost a full year inside the Exclusion Zone with barely a day off, Protsenko was now transferred to a new job in Kiev. In recognition of everything she had endured in the long months since the accident, she was finally permitted to apply for membership in the Communist Party. At the end of the year, Protsenko checked in to a hospital in Kiev and stayed there for more than a month,
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