LUCKNOW, India — In the early hours of April 26, 1986, the world experienced one of its worst nuclear disasters. Reactor No. 4 of Chernobyl power station, near Pripyat in Ukraine, exploded. Two explosions blew the dome-shaped roof off the reactor, causing its contents to erupt out.
As air was sucked into the shattered reactor, it ignited carbon monoxide, resulting in a fire that raged for nine days. As the reactor was not housed in a reinforced concrete shield, large amounts of debris escaped into the atmosphere.
The accident released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Much of the fallout was deposited close to Chernobyl, in parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, where measurable health effects were observed. But traces of radioactive debris were found in nearly every country in the Northern Hemisphere.