Ukraine ousted Khrushchev and became the Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982. Many prominent Soviet sports players, scientists, and artists came from Ukraine. On 26 April 1986, a reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, resulting in the Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history. This was the only accident to receive the highest possible rating of 7 by the International Nuclear Event Scale, indicating a "major accident", until the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011. At the time of the accident, 7 million people lived in the contaminated territories, including 2.2 million in Ukraine. After the
Nuclear power in Ukraine country inherited from the Soviet Union. Nuclear power in Ukraine Ukraine operates four nuclear power plants with 15 reactors located in Volhynia and South Ukraine. The total installed nuclear power capacity is over 13 GWe, ranking seventh in the world in 2016. Energoatom, a Ukrainian state enterprise, operates all four active nuclear power stations in Ukraine. In 2014, nuclear power supplied 49.4% of Ukraine's electricity production of 168 TWh. Ukraine relies to a large extent on nuclear energy. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, is located in Ukraine. In 2006, the government planned to