TODAY IN HISTORY: Explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

The Chernobyl nuclear accident happened at 1:23 am on a day like today in 1986, in Ukraine.

It was one of the greatest environmental disasters in history. It caused the death of 31 people (2 at the time of the explosion and the rest in the following months), about 200 were hospitalized and more than 100,000 were forced to evacuate the area. Radioactivity spread across much of the continent, even reaching distant countries such as Italy or Greece.

The explosion originated from a series of tests that had to be carried out that day inside the nuclear plant. One of them was to simulate a power cut to check if the turbines of the reactors had enough energy in case of any failure. During this experiment, one of the reactors suddenly increased its power, causing an overheating of its nucleus and the subsequent explosion of the hydrogen that was inside it. It is estimated that the amount of radioactive material expelled was 500 times greater than that of the atomic bomb of Hiroshima. This nuclear accident remained the most serious in history until the year 2011, when the Fukushima I explosions occurred in Japan.