On April 26, 1986, the world had its first full-scale nuclear disaster. On that day, the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant in Ukraine exploded, sending a huge cloud of radioactive dust across Europe. Earlier this month, Ukraine's government shut down the last working reactor at the Chernobyl complex. That does not end this grim chapter in nuclear history: The impact of Chernobyl is still being felt, the lessons are still being learned.
A design flaw caused a huge power surge that blew the top off the Chernobyl reactor and released the radioactivity, estimated to be 500 times bigger than that created by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The United Nations estimates that 9 million people were directly or indirectly affected by the accident. The then Soviet government put the death toll at 32 people, 30 of whom died within three months of the disaster. Ukraine has reported more than 4,000 radiation-related deaths among cleanup workers and the current Russian government says that more than 55,000 of the 860,000 workers who dealt with the aftermath of the accident have died, perhaps as many as 6,000 of them prematurely. More than 115,000 people were permanently evacuated in the first days of the accident.
The living suffer as well. The effects are most visible in the sharp rise in thyroid-cancer rates among children in affected areas. Youngsters in the parts of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that received the heaviest fallout have thyroid-cancer rates at least 10 times the world average. Vast swaths of land have been left uncultivable. Scientists worry that genetic mutations in crops could continue for generations. Greenpeace estimates that the total cost of the accident could reach $300 billion.