Chernobyl Chernobyl Chernobyl () is a city in the restricted Chernobyl Exclusion Zone situated in the Ivankiv Raion of northern Kiev Oblast, near Ukraine's border with Belarus. Chernobyl is about northeast of Kiev, and approximately southwest of the Belarusian city of Gomel and 16 km [10 mi] from Ukraine’s border with Belarus. The city was the administrative center of Chernobyl Raion (district) from 1923 until it was disestablished in 1988. Before its evacuation, the city had about 14,000 residents. The city was evacuated on 27 April 1986, 30 hours after the Chernobyl disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which was
Chernobyl disaster as planned, the procedure would almost certainly have been carried out safely; the eventual disaster resulted from attempts to boost the reactor output once the experiment had been started, which was inconsistent with approved procedure. The Chernobyl power plant had been in operation for two years without the capability to ride through the first 60–75 seconds of a total loss of electric power, and thus lacked an important safety feature. The station managers presumably wished to correct this at the first opportunity, which may explain why they continued the test even when serious problems arose, and why the requisite approval