1:40 AM: One of the four reactors at the Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, explodes: 130 dead in the explosion, 500 rescue workers, and more than 5,000 in the following years (most from thyroid cancer, which stores iodine-131). The radiation released into the atmosphere is more than 500 times that of the Hiroshima bomb (which exploded 700 meters above the ground); approximately 50 tons of radioactive material is released into the atmosphere over an area populated by 5 million people. The explosion’s radioactive emissions are comparable to those of a 12-megaton H-bomb (2003 study).
