Chornobyl

The technical malfunction at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which resulted in the worst nuclear disaster of the 20th century, has always attracted a lot of attention from scholars, journalists, politicians, filmmakers, and extreme travelers from around the world. The consequences dramatically changed thousands of lives, turning former residential areas (2,600 sq kilometers, or 1,000 sq miles, surrounding Chornobyl) into an exclusion zone. For the Soviet state, the consequences were immense, and Chornobyl accelerated the collapse of the Soviet superpower, which by then, had become only a matter of time. Our Educational Platform offers researchers materials that can help to understand what, how, and why the fateful night of April 26, 1986 happened, and what it meant for people, cities, states, and the environment. The catastrophe changed Slavutych, the city erected together with the nuclear station, and had enormous influence over urban life in late Soviet Ukraine.