26 April 1986 - a date that stirs fear in the hearts of those who knew the dangers of nuclear contamination. That was the day the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (officially Ukrainian SSR), which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow, exploded. The explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe. It is widely considered to have been the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster). The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles, crippling the Soviet economy.
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