Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant or Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station (, "Chornobyls'ka Atomna Elektrostantsiya", , "Chernobyl'skaya AES") is a decommissioned nuclear power station near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, northwest of the city of Chernobyl, from the Belarus–Ukraine border, and about north of Kiev. Reactor No. 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the power plant is now within a large restricted area known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Both the zone and the former power plant are administered by the State Agency of Ukraine of the Exclusion Zone (Ministry of Ecology
Ryanggang explosion popular speculation that the explosion was nuclear in origin. United States Secretary of State Colin Powell said there was "no indication" that it was nuclear, and South Korea similarly said that it did not appear to be nuclear. It would be some days before the effects of a nuclear explosion would be unequivocally visible to apolitical authorities. It would not be possible to hide the nuclear nature of such an explosion for long, as the radioactive isotopes created by a nuclear explosion would be detectable to outside observers around the world. North Korea initially denied that the explosion was nuclear.