Introduction:

 

Where is Chernobyl?

 

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is located in Ukraine, 20km south of the border with Belarus. At the time of the accident, the plant had four working reactors.

 

What happened ?

 

The accident occurred on the  26 of April  in 1986, when operators of the power plant ran a test on an electric control system of one of the reactors. The accident happened because of a combination of basic engineering deficiencies in the reactor and faulty actions of the operators: the safety systems had been switched off, and the reactor was being operated under improper, unstable conditions, a situation which allowed an uncontrollable power surge to occur. This power surge caused the nuclear fuel to overheat and led to a series of steam explosions that severely damaged the reactor building and completely destroyed the unit 4 reactor.