After World War II, the Sovient Union invested a lot of money in nuclear power plants. It built many nuclear power plants on of which was the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It’s official name was “Vladimir Lenin Nuclear Power Plant”. It was built in the early 1970s, even though it is named the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, it wasn’t built in the city of Chernobyl. Chernobyl was a small city approx 16 km away from this nuclear power plant.
But friends, this Chernobyl Plant was among one of the most advanced nuclear power plants in the Sovient Union. There were four nuclear reactors in this, in the RBMK 1000 design. RBMK 1000 is a type of nuclear reactor. The operations of the first 2 reactors had begun in 1977, the third in 1981, and the fourth in 1983.
The purpose of power plants is to generate electricity. In this case, each reactor could produce 1,000 Megawatts electricity. The four reactors could together supply electricity to meet 10% of Ukraine’s electricity demand. So you can imagine how powerful these reactors were.
Coming to the Chernobyl disaster, this disaster took place in the Reactor Number 4, during a routine safety test. To understand exactly what had happened that day, we first need to understand how a nuclear reactor works.
