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Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986 at 01:23 a.m., consisting of an explosion at the plant and subsequent radioactive contamination of the surrounding geographic area. The power plant is located near Pripyat, Ukraine, at the time part of the Soviet Union. It is regarded as the worst accident ever in the history of nuclear power. A plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland and eastern North America. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. About 60 percent of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus, according to official post-Soviet data. Contamination from the Chernobyl accident was not evenly spread across the surrounding countryside, but scattered irregularly depending on weather conditions.
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October 13, 2026
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Latest Headlines
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Oct. 11, 2026 An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a remarkable formation in Madagascar that looks surprisingly similar to the Moon’s bright highlands. Made of anorthosite, a rock ...
Oct. 6, 2026 New research suggests animals could have evolved as early as 800 to 700 million years ago, roughly 200 million years earlier than some previous estimates. If so, the first animals may have lived ...
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Sep. 26, 2026 Scientists have found that a famous 2-billion-year-old chemical signature, once thought to record a massive global change in Earth’s carbon cycle, may instead have been produced by local magma, ...
Sep. 25, 2026 Scientists have captured a subduction zone off Vancouver Island in the process of tearing itself apart, revealing that these massive tectonic systems may die piece by piece rather than all at once. ...
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