Chernobyl disaster other undamaged reactors at the power station, with No. 3 continuing to produce electricity up into 2000. The accident motivated safety upgrades on all remaining Soviet-designed reactors in the RBMK (Chernobyl No. 4) family, of which eleven continued to power electric grids . The disaster began during a systems test on 26 April 1986 at reactor 4 of the Chernobyl plant near Pripyat and in proximity to the administrative border with Belarus and the Dnieper River. There was a sudden and unexpected power surge. When operators attempted an emergency shutdown, a much larger spike in power output occurred. This second
Chernobyl disaster It is difficult to establish the total economic cost of the disaster. According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union spent 18 billion rubles (the equivalent of US$18 billion at that time) on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself. In Belarus the total cost over 30 years is estimated at US$235 billion (in 2005 dollars). Ongoing costs are well known; in their 2003–2005 report, The Chernobyl Forum stated that between 5% and 7% of government spending in Ukraine is still related to Chernobyl, while in Belarus over $13 billion is thought to have been spent between 1991 and 2003, with 22%