The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. An explosion and fire released large amounts of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere that spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. At least 31 people died soon after in the accident itself and it is estimated that the disaster may end up causing thousands of additional cancer deaths. The accident had devastating environmental and economic impacts requiring the evacuation of over 100,000 people and rendering large areas of land unsafe and unusable for many years. It was the worst nuclear disaster in history both in terms of cost and casualties and exposed flaws in the Soviet nuclear safety standards.

2. •An event producing a subversion of the order or system of things; a final
event, usually of a calamitous or disastrous nature; hence, sudden calamity;
great misfortune.
•A violent and widely extended change in the surface of the earth, as, an
elevation or subsidence of some part of it, effected by internal causes.
•A sudden disaster which destroys a lot of thing and brings pity on people
•A tragic and sudden event of the greatest severity, usually on large scale

3. •Occurred on 26 April 1986 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power
Plant in Ukraine.
•An explosion and fire released large quantities of
radioactive
•contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over
much
•of Western USSR and Europe.
•All of the safety precautions were taken offline during
• a test, which attests to the ignorance of the operators.
•When a series of things went wrong, there was nothing
•to keep a chain reaction from going off.
•The accident is widely accepted as the worst nuclear
•disaster in history

4. • Located 11 miles north of the city of Chernobyl
• Plant consisted of 4 reactors
• Produced 10% of Ukraine’s electricity
• Construction began in the 1970’s
• Reactor #4 was completed in 1983
• At the time of the accident, reactors #5 and #6 were in progress.

5. Saturday, April 26, 1986:
-Reactor #4 was undergoing a test to
test the backup power supply in case of
a power loss.
-The power fell too low, allowing the
concentration of xenon-135 to rise.
-The workers continued the test, and in
order to control the rising levels of
xenon-135, the control rods were pulled
out.

6. After the explosion, most of the
plant is still standing. Some might
think from this picture that the
disaster wasn’t all that bad, but
what makes the Chernobyl
disaster the worst in history is the
sheer volume of radioactive
materials that where spewed
across the European continent.

7. • As the map shows, the explosion
and the resulting radioactive
contamination affected a large
area of Europe, not just around
where the accident happened.
• Workers at a Swedish nuclear
power plant were found to have
radioactive particles on their
clothes, and after it was
determined that the Swedish
reactor had no leak, the news of
a widespread problem reached
mainstream news.

8. -Following the accident hundreds of
thousands of people had to be
evacuated and between 1990 and 1995
an additional 210,000 people were
resettled.
People evacuated:
-May 2-3 (1 week later)
10 km area (45,000 people)
-May 4
30 km area (116,000 people)
-50,000 people from Pripyat, Ukraine were evacuated 2 days after
the accident.

9. A more significant flaw was in
Lack of knowledge of nuclear
the design of the control rods
physics and engineering, as
that are inserted into the
well as lack of experience and
reactor to slow down the
training.
reaction.
Lacking a containment vessel. Operating instructions and
design deficiencies found

10. 203 people were hospitalized immediately. 31 of them
eventually died. Most of these people were workers in the
plant or local firefighters.
 Evacuation of people from the affected zones.
o Radiation/Health Impact
 Increase in incidence of cancer and leukemia.
 Increase in congenital birth deformities.
 Increase in suicide in the contaminated zones.
 Increase in risk to mental health.
o Psychological Impact
People have been led to think of themselves as victims over
the years, and are therefore more apt to take a passive
approach toward their future rather than developing a
system of self-sufficiency.

12. oEconomic impact
Removal of radiation affected agricultural and forest land from
production.
Hugh amount of money in Belarus and Ukraine used for Chernobyl
related benefits .
Agricultural production costs have increased due to the need for
special cultivation techniques, fertilizers and additives.
Apart from the 57 direct deaths in the accident itself, 4,000
additional cancer cases due to the accident have been predicted.
Many other consequences of the disaster such as groundwater
contamination and birth defects have been documented, but there is
no real way to know the extent of the damage that the Chernobyl
disaster caused.

13.  The scale of the material and the financial losses in mitigating
the consequences of the Chernobyl accident provide
compelling evidence of the extremely high price of errors and
shortcomings when ensuring the safety of nuclear power
plants and of the need for strict compliance with
international safety requirements during their design,
construction and operation.
 The cost of ensuring the safety of nuclear facilities is
significantly lower than that of dealing with accident
consequences. Large-scale man-made accidents cause great
social and economic damage to countries located in their
area of influence. Hundreds of billions of US dollars’ worth of
direct and indirect damages have been reported by Belarus,
Russia and Ukraine as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear
power plant accident over the past 20 years.

15. Mikhail Gorbachev was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and General Secretary of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union when the disaster happened. This means that he was
the leader of the Soviet Union at the time. Many people blamed him directly
for the explosion but he said that the military leaders prevented him from
knowing of the disaster until later. During the time of his leadership before the
explosion, reforms were being made, but at a slow pace. Historians believe
that because of the Chernobyl nuclear explosion, many reforms were made in
Soviet Russia because a large public outcry reached Gorbachev after the rest of
the country found out about it.

16. • Valeri Legasov was the chief of the investigation committee of the
Chernobyl Disaster. He made the decisions that prevented larger
explosions from taking place and spoke to the governments, as well as his
fellow scientist and the press, about the accident.
• Soviet government was uncomfortable because he was so open about the
accident and never recognized his contribution.
• He became ill because of the radiation he was exposed to, and suffered
from depression over his lack of recognition. He committed suicide on the
second anniversary of the disaster.

17. • Mohammad ElBaradei is the current director of the International
Atomic Energy Association. He was the director when the IAEA report
on the Chernobyl disaster was released in 2005. That report is the
most respected report on the disaster.
• It attributed 56 direct deaths and estimated that there may be
4,000 extra deaths due to cancer among the approximately
600,000 most highly exposed and 5,000 among the 6 million living
nearby.

18. A memorial to the firefighters
who died after trying to stop A memorial to all of those who
the fires that engulfed the died at Chernobyl
plant. They weren’t even told
there was radioactivity.

19. MADE BY-SHUBHAM
CLASS-8B
ROLL NO.-9461/27