Today’s history: Terrible accident at Chernobyl nuclear plant, 5 million people were victims of radiation; 4000 died of cancer

On this day in 1986, there was a horrific nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Power Plant in the Soviet Union. Due to this, 40 people present in the plant died instantly, while after this accident 50 lakh people were affected by the radiation emitted from the plant. Due to this, more than 4,000 people died due to serious diseases like cancer.

The accident happened at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in the city of Pripyat, 130 km north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. At that time Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The Chernobyl nuclear plant accident is counted among the top-5 industrial accidents in the world.

How the accident happened at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant
Testing was to take place at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant on 26 April 1986. There were four nuclear reactors at the Chernobyl power station before the accident. Work on two reactors was going on when the accident happened. The test was to be held at the nuclear plant on 26 April. Tests began on the night of 26 April and at around 1:30 pm the valve controlling the turbine was removed.

The reactor’s emergency cooling system and nuclear fusion inside the reactor were also stopped. Suddenly the process of nuclear fusion inside the reactor went out of control. All eight of the reactor’s cooling pumps ran at low power, causing the reactor to overheat and further accelerate the nuclear reaction.

The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union was one of the largest industrial accidents in the world.

50 lakh people were affected by radiation
After the explosion, there was chaos in the nuclear plant and amidst the efforts to shut down the reactor, there was a loud explosion in the actor. The explosion was so strong that the roof of the reactor blew up. In that accident, 32-40 people working there died. The radioactive radiation emitted by this explosion was 400 times more than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

For the next several days, radiation from the Chernobyl power plant continued to spread through the wind into northern and eastern Europe. Due to the spread of radiation, 5 million people of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus were affected by it. Due to the spread of radiation, 4 thousand people died due to serious diseases like cancer. There was a loss of 2.5 lakh crore rupees due to this accident. The last working reactor at Chernobyl was also shut down in 2000.

try to hide the accident
The Soviet Union did its best to hide the incident and blocked media coverage and movement of people at the scene. He did not even inform the world about this accident for many days. But, the radiation spread in the air so much that its ashes reached Sweden’s Radiation Monitoring Station, located 1100 km away.

With the sudden increase in the radiation in the air, the Swedish authorities started to find out from where did so much radiation come from. When Sweden issued a report about it and then asked Moscow, then the Soviet Union agreed to the nuclear accident.

Other important events that happened on 26 April in the history of the country and the world-

2010: The Government of Bihar decided to brand the famous Chinia Banana of Bihar as ‘Ganga Kela’.
2005: Syria gave up its military authority in Lebanon after 29 years.
1999: Indian President KR Narayanan dissolved the Parliament to hold fresh elections. In the 1999 elections, the NDA government was formed under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which ruled for 5 years and became the first non-Congress government to do so.
1989: In Bangladesh, 1,300 people died due to the storm that hit Daulatpur-Saturia.
1962: For the first time an American spacecraft touched the surface of the Moon. Spacecraft Ranger-4 reached the surface of the moon. It was the first American spacecraft to reach the Moon.
1920: The great Indian Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan passed away in
1929: The first non-stop flight from England completed the journey.