Reactor 4 Chernobyl by Karl Smits

About "Reactor 4 Chernobyl"

by Karl Smits

About the artwork

Chernobyl, Saturday, April 26, 1986, 1:23:40 AM. Ironically, a safety test triggered the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (officially Vladimir Illich Lenin Memorial Atomic Energy Station) located 110 km from the capital, Kiev. The site where the nuclear power plant was to be built was carefully chosen at the time because of its' safe distance from the capital Kiev, and had an easy water supply - the Pripyat River - and the existing railway line running from Ovruc in the west to Chernigov in the east. . Broadly speaking, the failed safety test caused a sequence of events and resulted in a catastrophic increase in power that resulted in nuclear explosions and ultimately a major, highly radioactive fire. Nuclear accidents were previously known, even in the CNPP (Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant) Reactor 1 had its first accident on September 9, 1982, when an initial partial meltdown occurred. The damage was minor, but the accident was not made public until several years later. The 1986 disaster was much worse, and would have global consequences, and is thus widely regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear energy. So there were already problems with the RBMK-1000 type reactors, of which reactor 5 & 6 were under construction, all of which could produce 1000 Megawat. The four existing reactors combined accounted for 10% of Ukraine's electricity at the time and, if units 5 and 6 were completed, Chernobyl would have been the highest capacity non-h