![]() It is the world’s largest ghost town, left to nature and ruin. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is 19 miles in every direction around the plant. ![]() The Soviets abandoned the city of Pripyat and the area around it. Millions of acres around Chernobyl were affected and made uninhabitable for years to come. The radiation was carried across Europe, reaching as far as France, thousands of kilometers away. Many emergency workers became ill, and over the years, many more would follow.Ĭhernobyl released 400 times more radioactive material than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. The radiation levels in the Chernobyl area after the disaster were too high for humans. Many died horribly in this process, but they heroically contained the plant.ĭecades later, the long-lasting effects of the Chernobyl disaster are finally taking shape. Over the next weeks and months, workers risked their lives to contain the fire and radiation, eventually containing the reactor in a steel and concrete dome. The rest of the world had no idea what was happening, only because Sweden detected the elevated levels of radiation and pushed the Soviets to come clean.Īt this point, around 100,000 people were in the midst of being evacuated, and the USSR finally announced that there had been a nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. ![]() After a day of poor communication and failed cover-ups, officials began evacuating the city around it. Plant and emergency workers went to work on the reactor. While trying to continue with the test and get power back to normal levels, a sudden spike in power caused the reactor to explode, knocking a 1,000-ton steel lid off the top of the reactor.įifty tons of hazardous material shot into the air and drifted all over the surrounding area. We don’t know the circumstances because the engineers who would know died in the hospital of radiation poisoning. When the power dropped to the target of 500 MW, it suddenly dropped down to 3 MW, a near shutdown state. The test called for a gradual power decrease in reactor No. If things had gone to plan, the night shift would have only had to monitor the after-effects of the initial test.Įven worse, Anatoly Dyatlov, the deputy chief-engineer, decided to oversee the test, overriding senior personnel’s objections with more hands-on experience. The delay ended up lasting until the night-shift, giving them very little time to prepare. Because of another regional power plant shutdown, the test didn’t move forward to meet new electric demands. The day-shift planned a routine test as part of a reactor shut down. Problems started early on April 25, 1986. At the time of the disaster, it provided 10% of Ukraine’s power. A fifth reactor was almost complete, and seven more were planned to go live by 2010. 1 was operational, with four more completed by 1986. With construction beginning in 1970, Chernobyl was the third Soviet RBMK nuclear plant and the first on Ukrainian soil. A Brief History of Chernobyl Before The Disaster Today, it’s merely the Chernobyl exclusion zone, long since abandoned, tragically full of past relics. A city of the future that could only be matched by the massive achievement of nuclear power. ![]() Pripyat, the town built next to the plant, was intended to be a symbol of Soviet strength. Even after billions spent cleaning up and at least four thousand dead, the area itself is a ghostly shell of itself, long reclaimed by plant and animal life. ![]() It’s been over three decades since Chernobyl experienced the most massive nuclear disaster in history. ![]()
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