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
Coal in Ukraine 2014 several mines were closed in Eastern Ukraine because of fighting during the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine. Because of this War in Donbass (according to the Ukrainian Energy and Coal Industry Ministry) raw coal production in Ukraine dropped by 22.4% from 2013, to 64.976 million tonnes. As a result, Ukraine begun importing power-generating coal from South Africa and Russia. Lack of coal for Ukraine's coal-fired power stations and a shut down of one of the six reactors of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant lead to rolling blackouts throughout the country from early till late December 2014. Coal consumption in