Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Chernobyl Disaster
Mains level: Not Much
Ukrainian authorities said that radiation levels had increased in the Chernobyl exclusion zone after the Russian Invasion.
What is Chernobyl Disaster?
- The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of Ukraine (formerly USSR).
- It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history both in cost and casualties.
- It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at seven—the maximum severity—on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
- The other such incident was the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.
Destruction caused
- Some sources state that two people were killed in the initial explosions, whereas others report that the figure was closer to 50.
- Dozens more people contracted serious radiation sickness; some of them later died.
- Between 50 and 185 million curies of radionuclides (radioactive forms of chemical elements) escaped into the atmosphere.
- This is several times more radioactivity than that created by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
- This radioactivity was spread by the wind over Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine and soon reached as far west as France and Italy.
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