Over 30 years after the disaster that made it infamous, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant continues to captivate and disturb many. The catastrophic events of April 1986 were recently brought to life in an HBO series, but what truly transpired, and why did it send shockwaves across the globe?
Following World War II, the Soviet Union heavily invested in nuclear power, and the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station, located 10 miles north of Chernobyl, became operational in 1977. The site housed four RBMK nuclear reactors, each capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of electrical power. On the night of April 25, 1986, sleep-deprived plant workers conducted a series of tests on Reactor Four during routine maintenance. Their objective was to determine if the reactor could be cooled in the event of a power loss. However, safety protocols were violated, leading to several power surges within the reactor. This triggered a chain reaction of explosions powerful enough to blow off the steel and concrete lid, exposing the reactor’s core and releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere.
Official reports initially claimed that two plant workers died in the explosion, though some estimates suggest the number was closer to 50. Additionally, dozens of firefighters who were called in to extinguish the flames were hospitalized with radiation sickness. Amid the ongoing Cold War, the Soviet Union attempted to prevent the disaster from gaining international attention. It took 36 hours before orders were issued to evacuate the nearby town of Pripyat, which had been built for plant workers in 1970. By the time Swedish monitoring stations detected airborne radioactivity, the Soviets could no longer maintain secrecy. A brief announcement was made on April 28, sparking widespread concern in many Western European countries about the dangers posed by the radioactive emissions.
To contain the fire in the exposed core, sand, boron, clay, and lead were dropped onto the flames. The Soviets then attempted to clear debris using remote-controlled robots, but when the machines began to malfunction in the toxic environment, groups of men were sent in to remove 100 tons of radioactive material. Later that year, the first steel sarcophagus was constructed to encase the plant’s fourth reactor. Although structurally unsound, it remained in place until 2016 when a new containment structure was built. Even with this protection, it is estimated that the area around the reactor will not be habitable for another 20,000 years.
The Soviet Union eventually established a 19-mile-wide exclusion zone around the reactor, displacing approximately 335,000 people. Despite this, a UN report stated that over 6,000 children and adolescents developed thyroid cancer as a direct result of the incident. Hundreds of thousands more may have been affected in other ways. The disaster is estimated to have caused around $235 billion in damages, contaminated nearly one-quarter of the agricultural land in modern-day Belarus, and accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Aside from a few scientists and tourists interested in Chernobyl’s history, the area around the power plant remains eerily quiet and is restricted to those without a permit. Even today, the full scale of the disaster is not completely understood and continues to be an area of active research.
