14 Facts About Chernobyl

April 26, 1986
1. The Chernobyl nuclear accident is known as the worst and most serious accident in nuclear history. It remains the only level 7 incident on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) making it the biggest man-made disaster of all time.

2. The disaster released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

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3. Nuclear rain from the disaster fell as far away as Ireland.

4. The accident has caused the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars.

5. The environmental group Greenpeace places the eventual death toll at 93,000 cancer deaths world wide and expects up to 60,000 cases of thyroid cancer from the incident. Surprisingly, the overall rate of cancer deaths and other health effects related to Chernobyl accident is lower than initially feared.

6. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 28 of the workers at Chernobyl died in the four months following the accident. 800,000 men risked their lives by exposing themselves to radiation in order to contain the situation. 25,000 of these have died and 70,000 are disabled. 20% of those deaths were suicides.

7. More than 5 million people live in areas that are considered to be "contaminated" with radioactive material from the accident. Some people have returned to the affected area with their families in order to take advantage of the government's compensation benefit.

8. The radiation leak caused the nearby forest to turn a bright ginger color, thus the forest was named the "Red Forest". The region has become one of the world's most unique wildlife sanctuaries with thriving populations of wolves, deer, beavers, eagles, and other animals.

9. Every renovated house in Chernobyl today has an inscription on it bearing the name of the property owner.

10. Many doctors throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union advised pregnant women to undergo abortions to avoid bearing children with birth defects in spite of the fact that radiation levels the women were exposed to was too low to cause problems.

11. Belarus received 70% of the contamination from Chernobyl.

12. Officials say that it could take up to 100 years before the station is completely decommissioned and around 97% of the radioactive material (200 tons) are still inside the reactor.

13. Chernobyl's last reactor was shut down in 2000.

14. You can play PokémonGo

Something cool I found: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Citywide+center,+Pryp'yat',+Kyivs'ka+oblast,+Ukraine/@51.4078495,30.0555814,3a,75y,58.92h,46.7t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1siIAHpUkKNpP52yxbOCQAmA!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x472a7c5dcec1698b:0x11947c1f8efede07

Source: www.list25.com/25-facts-you-may-not-know-about-the-chernobyl-accident/5/