The Chernobyl disaster

The Chernobyl disaster

The Chernobyl disaster (locally, Chornobyl Catastrophe) was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (officiallyUkrainian SSR), which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central Moscow's authorities. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe. It is considered the worst nuclear powerplant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being theFukushima I nuclear accidents).^[1] The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles, crippling the Soviet economy.^[2]

The disaster began during a systems test on Saturday, 26 April 1986 at reactor number four of the Chernobyl plant, which is near the city ofPrypiat and within a close proximity to the administrative border with Belarus and Dnieperriver. There was a sudden power output surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a more extreme spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of explosions. These events exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor to air, causing it to ignite.^[3] The resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive smoke fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area, including Pripyat. The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union andEurope. From 1986 to 2000, 350,400 people were evacuated and resettled from the most severely contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, andUkraine.^[4][5] According to official post-Soviet data,^[6][7] about 60% of the fallout landed inBelarus.

The accident raised concerns about the safety of the Soviet nuclear power industry, as well as nuclear power in general, slowing its expansion for a number of years and forcing the Soviet government to become less secretive about its procedures.^{[8][notes 1]}