Chernobyl Disaster:
After a brief but fierce battle, Russian troops were able to capture the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine, the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in human history.
- The Chernobyl tragedy was the result of a nuclear accident on 26 April 1986 at reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the town of Pripyat in the Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic).
- There were nearly 8.4 million people exposed to radiation in the three nations.
- It occurred when a group of technicians in what was then Soviet-controlled Ukraine carried out a botched safety test that led to a series of explosions.
- It is said to have released 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan.
- Since the Chernobyl is under Russia’s control now, damage to the nuclear waste storage facility could lead to radioactive dust spreading across Ukraine, Belarus and parts of Europe.
