April 26, 1986 – Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident

On this day in history, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded, creating what has been described as the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen.

The four reactors at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant were located about 81 miles north of the city of Kiev, Ukraine.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the explosion put 400 times more radiation into the Earth’s atmosphere than did the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. An uninhabitable exclusion zone with a radius of 19 miles still surrounds Chernobyl today.

There are two recent books out about the incident. You can read reviews of Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham and A Chernobyl Guide to the Future by Kate Brown here.

The reviewer notes that “Adam Higginbotham’s ‘Midnight in Chernobyl’ is a gripping, miss-your-subway-stop read. . . . Higginbotham captures the nerve-racked Soviet atmosphere brilliantly, mostly through vivid details about the participants.” Of the other book he says, “Kate Brown’s ‘Manual for Survival’ has a different style and emphasis. Its aim is to be an exposé of the attempts to minimize the impact of Chernobyl.”