The Common Good

On 26 April, 1986, at 1:23 am, reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, near Pripyat in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area.

Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The plume drifted over extensive parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and eastern North America, with light nuclear rain falling as far as Ireland. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.

The Chernobyl disaster is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history and the only level 7 instance on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The meltdown resulted in a severe release of radioactivity following a massive power excursion which destroyed the reactor. Two people died in the initial steam explosion, but most deaths from the accident were attributed to radiation.

For a small country with a population of only 10 million, the Chernobyl disaster has been devastating. Belarus has lost 485 villages and townships, with over 70 raised to the ground and buried. One out of every four Belarusians live on contaminated land...