In This Month: April

Chernobyl Explosion
On 26th April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine blew up in the worst nuclear accident in history. This photo, which was taken from a helicopter just after the explosion, shows the destruction to the reactor power block. The reactor burned for more than 10 days, sending radiation across a large swathe of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, which led to the evacuation of more than 336,000 people.

According to a World Health Organisation report in 2005, there were 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers, and nine children with thyroid cancer), plus another 4,000 extra deaths due to cancer among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed and 5,000 among the 6 million living nearby. The plant was officially shut down in December 2000.