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
High-altitude nuclear explosion High-altitude nuclear explosion High-altitude nuclear explosions are the result of nuclear weapons testing. Several such tests were performed at high altitudes by the United States and the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1962. The strong electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that results has several components. In the first few tens of nanoseconds, about a tenth of a percent of the weapon yield appears as powerful gamma rays with energies of one to three mega-electron volts (MeV, a unit of energy). The gamma rays penetrate the atmosphere and collide with air molecules, depositing their energy to produce huge quantities of positive ions and