The safety test that destroyed Reactor 4
1986 · Event
At 1:23 a.m., a botched turbine test on a reactor with a hidden design flaw ends in two explosions that blow the thousand-tonne lid off Reactor 4 and set its graphite core burning in the open air. The operators, trained to believe an RBMK cannot explode, spend hours dousing a reactor that no longer exists.
On these timelines: Chernobyl, Eastern Europe & the Balkans, Russia & the USSR, Science & Technology, Master
More from Chernobyl
- Chernobyl disaster (1986)
- Pripyat is evacuated (1986)
- A Swedish alarm exposes the secret (1986)
- The liquidators (1986)
- The first responders take fatal doses (1986)
- The sarcophagus seals Reactor 4 (1986)
- Gorbachev breaks the silence (1986)
- The Chernobyl exclusion zone (1986)
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