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The Chernobyl nuclear power station was one of the largest in the Soviet Union. It was located just outside of the town of Pripyat', about 18 km (11 mi) northwest of the town of Chernobyl. The plant was only 16 km (10 mi) from the border between the Ukrainian and Belarussian republics and roughly 110 km (70 mi) north of Kiev, the capital and largest city of Ukraine. Construction of the plant began in the 1970s, with reactor No. 1 commissioned in 1977, followed by No. 2 (1978), No. 3 (1981), and No. 4 (1983). Each reactor had a generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts, and the four together produced about 10 percent of Ukraine's electricity at the time of the accident. Two more reactors (No. 5 and No. 6, also capable of producing 1,000 megawatts each) were under construction at the time of the accident.
In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, reactor No. 4 was operating at very low capacity (6 to 7 percent) during a planned shutdown. Plant personnel intended to monitor the performance of turbine generators, which supplied electric power for the plant's own operation, during a changeover from standard to a backup source of power. The reactor's design made it unstable at low power, and the operators were careless about safety precautions during the test. After a sudden power surge, two explosions destroyed the reactor core and blasted a large hole in the roof of the reactor building. Radioactive debris moved up through this hole to heights of 1 km (0.6 mi), carried by a strong updraft. Fires caused by the explosion and the heat of the reactor core fed the updraft.
An estimated 100 to 150 million curies of radiation (primarily radioactive isotopes of iodine and cesium) escaped into the atmosphere before cleanup crews were able to bring the fires under control and stabilize the situation some two weeks later. Initially, prevailing winds carried the radioactivity northwest from the plant across Belarus and into Poland and Sweden, where heightened radiation levels detected on April 28 first brought the accident to the world's attention. Subsequently, from May 1 to 5, wind patterns shifted so that the bulk of radioactivity was carried more directly north and northeast, over Belarus and southwestern Russia.
The full dimensions of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (the worst single accident of the industrial age) are unknown to this day. But nearly 16 years later, the suffering continues and the possibility of another nuclear accident remains although the Chernobyl Plant was finally shutdown in 2000.
On December 15, 2000, the last reactor in operation at the Chernobyl site was shut down and the phase of decommissioning began. This involves the removal and disposal of fuel and wastes, decontamination of the plant and the area surrounding it, including any soil and water that may be radioactive. There are three retired reactors to be decommissioned on site, a project expected to take several decades. The project will be conducted under the supervision of the Ukrainian government. The IAEA will assist by providing planning, engineering and administrative advice. The fate of the fourth reactor where the tragic accident occurred in 1986 is as yet undetermined.
The contaminated area of Ukraine and Belarus is about 61,780 square miles - the size of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Birth rates in Belarus have fallen 50 percent. Thyroid cancer, particularly among children, is up 285 percent in Belarus. About 7,000 people in Russia alone are believed to have died from the accident (The Ukraine Ministry of Health estimates as many as 125,000 deaths in the Ukraine). Belarus spends 20 percent of its annual budget coping with Chernobyl's aftermath; Ukraine, four percent; Russia, one percent.
The United Nations trust fund for Chernobyl victims is "virtually empty." The World Health Organization estimates it alone needs $200 million over the next 20 years, but only a fraction of that is likely to be made available. During April 2000, it was hoped that citizens across the world would remember the Chernobyl accident, and take action to expose its full impact, help relieve the suffering, and hasten the end of the nuclear age, but this has not happened yet so the devastated areas in Belarus and Ukraine are still very much in need of urgent help and assistance.
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