25-th anniversary of Chornobyl disaster

2011 is the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Disaster. 25 years ago on April 26, 1986 explosion took place in reactor №4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The radiation from this explosion carried all across Europe with the most contaminated areas being in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Over 400,000 people were evacuated from their homes, many of them never able to return. Today there are still over 5.5 million people who are living on land that is contaminated from this disaster. On 26 April 1986, at 01:23 (UTC+3), reactor four suffered a catastrophic power increase, leading to explosions in its core. This dispersed large quantities of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere and ignited the combustible graphite moderator. The burning graphite moderator increased the emission of radioactive particles, carried by the smoke, as the reactor had not been encased by any kind of hard containment vessel. The accident occurred during an experiment scheduled to test a potential safety emergency core cooling feature, which took place during the normal shutdown procedure.