somewhat OT - Chernobyl disaster anniversary
April 26, 1986. Reactor No4 suffered a catastrophic power surge, rupturing the containment vessel and causing a series of explosions that ripped open the reactor room roof. Radiation was spread across various nations in Europe.
The Chernobyl nuclear accident has been claimed as the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union as the emergency required an unheard level of openess between the Soviet Union and the nations at its borders as well as the world in general.
It's claimed that this lead to the policy of Glasnost in the late 1980s and the eventual dismantling of the Soviet state into the various nations that comprised it and then, to the end of the Cold War
|