The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurred on April 26, 1986, in the city of Pripyat, in the Ukrainian Soviet*** and State, when the 4th generating unit of the plant exploded, destroying the entire nuclear reactor and leaking large quantities of radioactive material, making it the largest accident since the era of nuclear power.
The radiation hazard was so severe that it led to 31 deaths in the three months before and after the accident, 60,000-80,000 deaths in the 15 years that followed, 134,000 people suffering from various degrees of radiation sickness, and more than 115,000 people forced to evacuate from a 30-kilometer radius. To this day there are still births of deformed fetuses affected by radiation.
This was the worst nuclear accident in history. Leaked radioactive dust drifted through the atmosphere to the western part of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia in Northern Europe. Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were the most contaminated, and it is estimated that about 60 percent of the radioactive material fell on Belarusian soil because of the wind direction. The accident raised public concern about the safety of nuclear power plants in the Soviet Union, and indirectly led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The countries that became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union, including Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, continue to invest money and manpower each year in the aftermath of the disaster and in the health care of their populations. The number of people who died directly or indirectly as a result of the accident is difficult to estimate, and the long-term effects of the accident are still unknown.
Many children in the radiation-contaminated areas received doses of up to 50 Gy. This is because they are drinking milk that has been contaminated with radiation from locally produced milk, which is contaminated with iodine-131, which has a half-life of eight days. Many studies have found that Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian children are also developing rapidly increasing rates of thyroid cancer.
Because of the long-term exposure to radiation, many trees in the Chernobyl area have developed very unusual patterns, due to mutations in their genes. The increasing number of mutations significantly affected the trees' growth, reproduction, and survival rates, among other things. In addition, the study found that the trees that survived the accident, especially the relatively young ones, are becoming more and more difficult to withstand environmental stresses such as drought.