Terme de Glossaire
Chernobyl was the location of the most serious catastrophe involving a nuclear power plant in all of history. An accident took place on April 26, 1986 in the Lenin nuclear power plant located 15 km from the city of Chernobyl in the Ukraine, which at that time was part of the Soviet Union. Following an experiment carried out at reactor No. 4 concerning emergency electric power, and after numerous breakdowns, the reactor temperature began to increase. Eventually the heat built up to the point that the reactor core exploded, throwing a great deal of radioactive and toxic material into the atmosphere. The result of this catastrophe is very controversial, since the number of persons killed, according to different sources, varies from several dozen to tens of thousands. A large number of people received a heavy dose of radiation, and undoubtedly fell victim to cancer as a result.
