Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Chernobyl, from the border of Ukraine and Belarus and about north of Kiev. Construction of the plant and the nearby city of Pripyat, Ukraine to house workers and their families began in 1970, with Reactor N. 1 commissioned in 1977. It was the third nuclear power station in the Soviet Union of the RBMK-type (after Leningrad and Kursk), and the first nuclear power plant on Ukrainian soil. The completion of the first reactor in 1977 was followed by reactor N. 2 (1978), N. 3 (1981), and N. 4 (1983). Two more blocks, numbered 5 and 6, of more or less
Koeberg Nuclear Power Station too expensive to be viable. Nuclear power was considered because it was more economical than transporting coal to the existing fossil-fuel power stations, and construction of new fossil-fuel power-stations, which would have required 300 m tall chimneys to comply with clean-air legislation. Athlone Power Station in the city was too small to provide Cape Town's needs, and the Paarden Island power station (itself too small) has been demolished. Koeberg was one of the first nuclear power stations designed to be specifically resistant to earthquakes. The reactors at the Koeberg nuclear power station are built upon an aseismic raft designed –