On April 26th , 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl
Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
The explosion spread radiation throughout the area, releasing 400 times more than the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
In the months and years following the accident, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated
from their homes, some unable to ever return.
So, what happened at Chernobyl, and how bad is it now?
On the day of the accident, nuclear operators were in the middle of performing safety tests
when one of the reactors suffered a power spike.
This set off a chain reaction of explosions, and caused the reactor to rupture and catch
fire.
The explosions sent radioactive fallout into the atmosphere, contaminating Belarus, and
much of the western Soviet Union and Europe.
More than 350,000 people were forced to evacuate and resettle.
The accident directly killed 31 people through fatal radiation doses or physical injury.
In the years since the accident, the United Nations has attributed about 6,000 cases of
thyroid cancer in the surrounding areas to the disaster.
However some sources have placed the number of dead at nearly a million.
Part of the controversy surrounding the accident stems from the delayed response and intentional
cover up of subsequent health issues.
The Soviet Union government directed doctors to mis-categorized cases of acute radiation
poisoning as an unrelated medical condition in order to lower the perceived effects of
the disaster.
Later, the government claimed that a radiation exposure limit 350 times the modern US standard,
was safe, in order to repopulate contaminated areas.
After the accident, the damaged reactor was encased in a giant concrete sarcophagus to
prevent more radioactive spread, and is intended to be replaced with a more robust shelter
in 2017.
The overall cleanup effort required about half a million workers, a number of whom were
unaware of the severity of radiation, and have since suffered from poor health or died.
Today, the Chernobyl power plant is surrounded by an 18 mile exclusion zone, covering about
1,000 square miles.
The area is essentially an abandoned ghost town, and visitors are prohibited from entering.
However, roughly 200 elderly residents who have refused to leave still live near the
radioactive site, along with a number of illegal squatters.
An interesting side effect of the ban on people is that the exclusionary zone has become one
of the world’s largest wildlife preserves.
In the decades since the accident, the damage to both the environment and people’s health
has been incalculable, and cleanup efforts are still in progress today.
However, much of what we know about dealing with nuclear disasters comes from Chernobyl.
The knowledge has saved countless lives in terms of improved safety precautions, and
responding to other disasters like Fukushima in 2011.
Nuclear energy has its dangers, but Nuclear weapons are far more terrifying.
To find out which countries have nuclear weapons in their arsenal, check out our video here.
Or, if you're curious about how uranium becomes nuclear fuel, I broke it down over on DNews
and that video is here.
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