On the night of April 26, 1986, at 01.23:5, a powerful chemical explosion occurred at the fourth power unit of the Chornobyl NPP, which caused the destruction of part of the reactor unit and the engine room. As a result of the explosion, a fire broke out, which spread to the roof of the third power unit. The fire was extinguished until 10 o'clock in the morning. However, in the middle of the fourth block, it was possible to liquidate it only on May XNUMX, when most of the graphite was burned.
After the explosion and fire, a radioactive cloud was formed, which covered not only the territories of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, but also the territories of many European countries - Sweden, Austria, Norway, Germany, Finland, Greece, Romania, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia.
According to the International Scale of Nuclear Events (INES), this accident was classified at the highest - the seventh level of danger. From the very beginning, Moscow and the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR hid the fact of the accident and the consequences of the environmental disaster. Sweden was the first to report an increase in radiation levels. Only on April 28 did the first official notice appear in the USSR.
In the first days after the accident, the population of a 10-kilometer zone was evacuated, later the evacuation zone was expanded to 30 kilometers. In total, 2293 settlements in Ukraine became radioactively contaminated, in which more than 2,6 million people lived at the end of the eighties of the last century. As a result of this disaster, more than 5 million hectares of land were withdrawn from agricultural use.
In order to prevent the spread of radiation, at the end of 1986, the destroyed reactor was covered with a special "sarcophagus". According to experts' estimates, about 95% of the fuel that was in the reactor at the time of the accident remained under it, as well as a significant amount of radioactive substances, which consist of the remains of the destroyed reactor.
For safety reasons, on December 15, 2000, the work of the Chornobyl NPP was stopped. At the same time, the "Shelter" facility, built in 1986, gradually fell into disrepair. Ukraine appealed to the international community to hold a competition of projects for the transformation of the "Shelter" facility. In 2004, a tender was held for the design and construction of a new "sarcophagus" - the New Safe Confinement. Its construction began in 2012.
On November 29, 2016, the Ark of a new secure confinement was pushed onto the "Shelter" facility. On July 10, 2019, the State Specialized Enterprise "Chernobyl NPP" put the NBK complex into operation. However, in 2022, the Chernobyl NPP came under Russian occupation. The invaders occupied the territory of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, located near the border with Belarus, on the first day of the invasion, February 24. They captured the Ukrainian military and actually held the station's civilian staff hostage. The occupiers were in the Chernobyl zone for five weeks. As a result of their actions, the station was several times without power supply, which is necessary for cooling spent fuel. And at this moment, the world was once again on the verge of an ecological disaster.
After the de-occupation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, numerous cases of destruction and disassembly of equipment were recorded. Not a single office remained undamaged, furniture was broken, computers and office equipment were looted and smashed. In addition, the occupiers disabled the Automated Radiation Control System, which includes 39 sensors measuring the dose of gamma radiation. According to the State Agency for the Management of the Exclusion Zone, the losses suffered by the territory of the exclusion zone and the enterprises located there are more than 100 million euros.
