Thread by @tenebra99

On this day, 37 years ago, April 26, 1986, at 1.23 am, the worst nuclear disaster in history occurred: The #Chornobyl/#Chernobyl disaster. Unit 4 of Chornobyl NPP exploded. Today we remember and honor those who suffered and gave their lives to contain the catastrophe.
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To visualize the impact of th disaster:
On the left you see how Unit 4 looked before the accident.
On the right, you see the aftermath. A large amount of radiation was released into the atmosphere, contaminating the area. The radioactive cloud spread over Europe.
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The reactor burned for days. Plant workers and firefighters were exposed to lethal levels of radiation while looking for their colleagues and trying to combat the flames. Many of them died of acute radiation sickness.
The official death toll: 31 people.
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If you are interested, #Chornobyl NPP released a video recently, it includes phone calls from the night of the accident, from before the explosion and after it happened.
The video has English subtitles.
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The debris had to be cleaned up, the reactor had to be covered.
People had to do that job. Thousands helped with the clean up of the site. They were called #Liquidators. Some of them had 45 seconds to shovel and throw highly radioactive debris down into the dark hole.
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It is unknown how many of them developed cancer or died a premature death due to their radiation exposure.
In November of 1986 they managed to entomb what remains of Unit 4 in a concrete structure called the Sarcophagus.
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However, the old Sarcophagus was not build forever. It was covered with the New Safe Confinement in November of 2016. It was planned to disassemble the remains of Unit 4 underneath.
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The people in a 30 km area around the plant were evacuated a few days after the accident.
The young, thriving city of Pripyat turned into a ghost town overnight.
Many people lost their home forever.
The area will remain contaminated for hundreds of years.
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Last year was a particularly difficult year for #Chornobyl NPP and for #Ukraine.
On February 24, 2022 russia launched its genocidal invasion of Ukraine, in the process taking control of Chornobyl NPP and holding the workers there hostage for over 600 hours.
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After a month of occpuation the Ukrainian flag finally returned after the russians had left.
The russians kicked up radioactive dust, dug around in highly contaminated areas, they stole equipment, took the National Guard members who were stationed at the plant as prisoners.
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While Chornobyl NPP is now liberated, russia still has control over Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest NPP in Europe.
This is a dangerous situation, this is nuclear terrorism. There can be no safety as long as russia has control of Zaporizhzhia NPP.
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As for the #Chornobyl exclusion zone itself, before the invasion it was visited by thousands of tourists every year.
But nowadays, it is empty, no tourists, nature is covering the tourist paths. Nature is once again recapturing what humans left behind.
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ChernobylZone on Instagram (instagram.com/chernobylzone/) has access to the zone and has made videos on how it looks currently.

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#Ukraine will win this war.
I hope once it is over, people will be able to return to see the zone, the consequences of the #Chornobyl disaster with their own eyes. May the heroes and their sacrifices never be forgotten!
Україна переможе!
Слава Україні!
Героям Слава!🇺🇦
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To end this thread, before anyone accuses me of misspelling Chornobyl: That is how it is transcribed from Ukrainian Чорнобиль. Chernobyl would be transcribed from russian Чернобыль.
/end.