Individual involvement in the Chernobyl disaster Individual involvement in the Chernobyl disaster The Chernobyl disaster, () "Chornobylʹsʹka katastrofa," was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (then part of the Soviet Union), now in Ukraine. The following is the individual involvement in the accident. Most of the information here is based on Grigoriy Medvedev's work. In the night from 25 to 26 April, in the two power plant complexes, there were 160 people on duty, including technicians and maintenance personnel of the various departments. Three hundred more workers were present at the
Steam explosion Steam explosion A steam explosion is an explosion caused by violent boiling or flashing of water into steam, occurring when water is either superheated, rapidly heated by fine hot debris produced within it, or heated by the interaction of molten metals (as in a fuel–coolant interaction, or FCI, of molten nuclear-reactor fuel rods with water in a nuclear reactor core following a core-meltdown). Pressure vessels, such as pressurized water (nuclear) reactors, that operate above atmospheric pressure can also provide the conditions for a steam explosion. The water changes from a liquid to a gas with extreme speed, increasing dramatically in