By Sam Silvernagel, Alex Tomaszewski

April 26, 1986 Chernobyl is a city in the Ukraine Chernobyl is former USSR

The accident at Chernobyl happened at the fourth unit of the nuclear power station The operating crew was testing the turbines and their ability to power the coolant pumps Power was turned down, but went to low. When an attempt was made to turn it back up, the power surged, and the plant went up into flames, releasing massive amounts of radiation into the environment.

Attempts were made to put out fire with sand, lead and water, but this only made the problem worse. The last attempt to put out the fire was by using liquid nitrogen. It took a total of five hours to put out the devastating fire.

About 800,000 people involved in cleanup. 300,000 of those received extremely high amounts of radiation and 100,000 of them died from cancer. Those who survived suffered from serious medical conditions. Four hundred times more radioactive material was released from Chernobyl than by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Approximately 1000 kilometers of land was significantly contaminated with fallout with the worst hit regions being Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. The truth is, that Chernobyl will be radioactive for as long as there will be humans on this earth, so there have been few clean up attempts made, outside of putting out the fire.