On April 26, 1986, technicians conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four to explode. Several hundred staff and firefighters tackled a blaze that burned for 10 days and sent a plume of radiation around the world. More than 50 reactor and emergency workers were killed.
Reportedly, a huge recently-completed enclosure called the New Safe Confinement, the world’s largest land-based moving structure, will be “pulled slowly over the site later this year to create a steel-clad casement to block radiation and allow the remains of the reactor to be dismantled safely.”
ABC’s Tom Rivers joined us from London.