A nuclear experiment with explosive results
The explosion at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what was then Soviet Russia is one of the world’s most infamous human-made disasters – and with good reason. It started innocently enough, with engineers performing a routine experiment to find out if the plant’s emergency water cooling would still work during a power outage.
The test had been carried out previously, but on this occasion there was a power surge and engineers couldn’t shut down Chernobyl’s nuclear reactors. Steam built up in one reactor, the roof was blown off, the nuclear core was exposed and radioactive material was released into the atmosphere. Many workers and firefighters were hospitalised and 28 people passed away from acute radiation exposure. It took nearly two weeks and military intervention to extinguish the fires. Crucially, it took more than a day for the 50,000 residents of nearby Pripyat to be evacuated. Following this, the government established a 19-mile ‘exclusion zone‘ and built a containment dome over the top of the site. In the years following the incident, studies estimate that thousands of people have developed cancer because of the radiation. It’s one of the most expensive disasters in history, too, and it’s estimated that containment and clean-up efforts will continue until 2065.
“The explosion at Chernobyl is one of the most infamous human-made disasters”