To this day, it remains the only accident in the history of the civil use of nuclear power when radiation-related fatalities occurred. The accident destroyed reactor 4, killing 30 operators and firemen within three months and causing numerous other deaths in weeks and months that followed.
The 50,000 inhabitants of the adjacent town of Pripyat were evacuated, never to return.
Wind carried contaminated particles over Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, as well as parts of Scandinavia and wider Europe. Thirty-five years on, Chernobyl is still as well-known as it was a generation ago.įires broke out, causing the main release of radioactivity into the environment. It was the worst nuclear accident the world had ever seen, with far-reaching political, economic and ecological consequences.
At 01:23:40 on 26 April 1986, the failure of a routine test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, caused reactor 4 to explode, releasing parts of its radioactive core.
