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
Effects of the Chernobyl disaster been a high incidence of chromosomal changes in plant and animal aquatic organisms, and this generally has correlated with the contamination and resulting genetic instability. Most of the lakes and rivers surrounding the Chernobyl exclusion zone are still highly contaminated with radionuclides (and will be for many years to come) as the natural decontamination processes of nucleotides with longer half-lives can take many years. One of the main mechanisms by which radionuclides were passed to humans was through the ingestion of milk from contaminated cows. Most of the rough grazing that the cows took part in contained plant species such