Tuesday 26 April 2011

25 Years Ago: Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster


Today it is 25 years ago that at 1:23am on April 26th, 1986, a routine safety test at the Chernobyl nuclear station went wrong, resulting in an explosion in one of four nuclear reactors.

Moscow was slow to admit what had happened, even after increased radiation was detected in other countries. The lack of information led to exaggerated claims of the number killed by the blast in the immediate area. Contamination is still a problem, however, and disputes continue about how many will eventually die as a result of the world's worst nuclear accident.

The Big Picture stories in photographs.

1 comment(s):

Anonymous said...

What a tragedy... so many people affected.. what can be done to stop this? We must prevent such an event from repeating itself.
I recently saw an interview where a panel of experts discussed what the US can learn from nuclear disasters of the past, and how we can work to prevent such tragedies. Here is the link to the video--
http://bit.ly/e02awE