<h5>What’s nuclear energy?</h5>  <p>You’ve probably heard of nuclear weapons, deadly bombs that kill all living things in the place where they’re dropped. These bombs are so awful that, except for one time in World War II, they’ve never been used.</p>
<p>
The same technology that’s used to make nuclear weapons is also used to make nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is used to create electricity. Nuclear energy produces clean electricity that doesn’t pollute the world, unlike electricity produced from fossil fuels like coal which harms the climate.
</p> <h5>How is nuclear energy produced?</h5>  <p>Nuclear energy is extracted from an atom using a process called nuclear fission. The process of nuclear fission is done in nuclear power stations. Inside a nuclear power station are machines called nuclear reactors. A nuclear reactor contains and controls the process of nuclear fission. A lot of heat is released while producing electricity in this manner.</p>
<p>
Nuclear fission is a volatile process that needs to be done extremely carefully. Otherwise, a lot can go wrong, as the Chernobyl disaster shows us.
</p> <h5>Oh no! How did it start?</h5>  <p>Chernobyl is a city in Ukraine that used to be a part of another country called the Soviet Union. There was a nuclear power station located about 16 kms away from Chernobyl.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Soviet Government ordered the workers of the power station to perform an experiment. The experiment required electricity being produced by a reactor to be highly reduced (by cooling the reactor).</p>
<p>Just as the workers were about to slowly reduce the electricity produced by the reactor, the station got a phone call. The phone call was from a company asking the power plant to keep producing electricity at full power for a while longer so there would be no lack of electricity in the locality.
</p> <h5>Tell me more!</h5>  <p>The smart thing to do would have been to keep producing electricity at full power and do the experiment on another day. Instead, the workers kept the reactor at full power and then cooled it down rapidly to do the experiment on the same day. This was a big mistake.</p>
<p>
When they tried to reduce the power too soon, the temperature of the reactor fell way below what they needed for the experiment. To increase the temperature again, they removed the safety rods of the reactor. This caused the reactor to heat up too quickly. On 26th April 1986, around 1 AM, the reactor exploded.
</p> <h5>That’s awful - what happened next?</h5> <figure>
        <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/newsahoot.appspot.com/o/what-was-the-chernobyl-disaster%2Fwhat-was-the-chernobyl-disaster-section1.jpg?alt=media&token=9add2d3e-2827-47b0-bf53-6ca1b8c6765e" alt="That’s awful - what happened next?" >
        <figcaption>A room in Chernobyl. Photo by Jorge Franganillo / CC BY 2.0; https://live.staticflickr.com/4576/38870924891_d1749341b4_h.jpg</figcaption>
      </figure> <p>The explosion led to a fire that burned for ten days. The explosion released massive amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. High levels of radiation were detected in the air of countries as far as France and Italy. Other than Ukraine, the countries closer to Chernobyl like Belarus and Russia were the worst affected.</p>
<p></p>
<p>About 350,000 people were evacuated because of the explosion. All the forests, cattle and animals in the area died. About 56 people, mostly accident workers, died directly as a result of the fire. Thousands more died in later years because of illnesses they developed due to being exposed to toxic radioactive fumes.</p>
<p>36 years later, Chernobyl is a ghost town.</p>
<p>The Chernobyl explosion is the worst nuclear disaster in human history. Since then, people have been extra careful when it comes to handling nuclear energy, determined to never let a repeat of this incident occur.
</p>

36 years ago, an explosion led to the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen. What happened? Let’s find out.

What Was The Chernobyl Disaster?

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What Was The Chernobyl Disaster?

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