Radiation warnings and fears of infant deformity are as relevant as ever but children like Maria are being born ever year in the shadow of Chernobyl reactor, 13 years after the world's worst-ever civilian nuclear disaster.
Her parents are just an ordinary northern Ukrainian couple, Mikhail and Lidiya Vedernikov, who like local official Nikolai Dmitruk cannot really understand the fuss that is being made about their child's arrival.
"Amazing! Child Born in Chernobyl," trumpeted the local press in recent days. "I don't understand it," said Dmitruk who works for the local disaster protection authority. "Plenty of children have been born here since 1986."
After the reactor disaster in April 1986 state authorities moved out more than 100,000 people from in and around Chernobyl. But many were unhappy with their hastily thrown-together accommodation elsewhere or simply failed to find a place to live.
Roughly 700 people are living with official sanction in the "sona," an area of 30 kilometers around the nuclear power station.
The number of illegal but tolerated settlers is much higher. Most of them are elderly people who have returned to their old shacks and homes out of a feeling of nostalgia.
Around 20 percent of all those who return are aged under 50 years, Chernobyl locals say.
Many find themselves working as so-called "liquidators," charged with disposing of material damaged in the nuclear catastrophe. Around 100,000 tons of metal alone was contaminated in the disaster. Until last year less than one per cent of it had been got rid of properly by the Chernobyl local authority.
Locals in the "sona" tend to gather at the clothes market in the small town of Polesskoye, 20km from the reactor.
Once a week, traders come here to offer padded jackets and any odd items that have found their way to the Ukraine in charity consignments of used clothing from Germany.
Sergei, aged in his early 20s, is one of the customers who enjoys rummaging through the wares. He did intend to leave the death zone.
"But I wouldn't find a job or a place to live anywhere else," the young man admitted.
People around Chernobyl are thankful for small mercies. They live in hope of finding a piece of land that is less polluted after surveys showed that the level of contamination around the wrecked reactor varies considerably.
It sounds absurd, but according to reactor staff, there are spots inside the ruined reactor complex where radioactivity levels are so low that a person could happily sit down and have breakfast. More than 6,000 people work in the complex which includes a neighboring reactor block currently being maintained for the day when Chernobyl is given permission to go back on stream. Most of the staff are from outside the region.
Thanks to western financial aid which flowed into the region after the Chernobyl disaster the "sona" is one of the most prosperous of regions in a generally impoverished country.
Many workers and their families have come to terms with employment conditions in the death zone. In a bid to allay fears, newspapers often quote studies attributed to the International Atomic Energy Authority in Vienna claiming that high levels of radiation have little or no genetic side-effects.
Kiev-based biology professor Vyatcheslav Konovalov prefers to talk about a "ticking genetic time bomb" and warns against people going to live in the "sona." Since the catastrophe, the 62-year-old genetic engineer has been collecting plants and animals from the contaminated zone.
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