On April 26, 1986, 1,650 square kilometers of land were irradiated by a serious leak and explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the former Soviet Union's Ukraine*** and country. Subsequent explosions sparked fires and emitted large amounts of highly radioactive material into the atmosphere. The radiation dose released by the disaster was more than 400 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. The accident killed 30 people on the spot.
This was a serious nuclear accident. Radiation fallout from the accident traveled through the atmosphere to many parts of the former Soviet Union, and contaminated Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia the most, and the accident indirectly led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine continued to invest in the aftermath of the accident and in the health care of their populations every year, and a 2005 IAEA report found that up to that point 56 people had died, 47 nuclear plant workers and nine children had developed thyroid cancer, and estimated that about 4,000 people would eventually die from illnesses brought on by the accident.
The findings, released by Greenpeace, were even more alarming. The organization reported on April 18, 2006, that the Chernobyl accident caused cancer in 270,000 people, with 93,000 deaths as a result. A study by researchers suggests that the long-term effects of the Chernobyl nuclear accident may have led to an additional 66,000 deaths from cancer. In other words, in addition to the number of deaths recognized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), another 66,000 people have died of radiation-induced cancer, which alone is more than 15 times the number of deaths recognized by the IAEA.
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