Yesterday was the 28th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster and this is an excellent film reveals many secrets kept hidden by the former Soviet Union.
An explosion and fire at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union. released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the Western USSR and Europe.
The Chernobyl disaster is the first of the two worst nuclear power plant accidents in history, classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, which may have already eclipsed the ravages of Chernobyl, if the same level of secrecy practiced by the Soviets is today being practiced by the Japanese and the interests of the nuclear energy industry.
The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles (US$23M). The official Soviet casualty count of 31 deaths has been widely disputed, and long-term effects, such as cancers and deformities are still being accounted for. By some estimates, there have been at least 1,000,000 deaths throughout Europe that were directly attributable to the Chernobyl disaster.
