In the early hours of April 26, 1986, as the city of Chernobyl slept, Reactor 4 of its nuclear power plant exploded, causing arguably the worst nuclear disaster of all time.
About Disaster
Located roughly 16 km from the city of Chernobyl, and a little over 100 km away from Kyiv, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant began operations in 1978, with four reactors operational by 1983.
Reactors 5 and 6 were supposed to enter service in the late 1980s, and at the time of the disaster a total of 12 reactors were eventually planned — which would make Chernobyl the most powerful nuclear power plant in the world.
At the time of the explosion, the four nuclear reactors produced roughly 10% of Ukraine’s power supply.
On April 26, 1986 a group of technicians carried out a botched safety test that led to a series of explosions in Reactor 4 and a partial meltdown of its core.
As oblivious residents of Chernobyl and nearby town of Pripyat watched the nightsky light up with an effervescent fire, clouds of radioactive material spewed into the atmosphere — enough to impact not just neighbouring Belarus and Russia (a part of the Soviet Union at the time), but also northern and eastern Europe.
To put the scale of the tragedy into perspective — the Chernobyl disaster is said to have released 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan by the United States.
Soviet officials initially tried to cover up the disaster, but as a spike of radiation was recorded in Sweden on April 28, over 1,000 km away, the Kremlin finally admitted to what had happened.
