On April 26, 1986 a nuclear accident occurred at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the northern part of Ukraine, a little over 100km away from the capital of Kyiv. Considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, it was the first time an accident was classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale, and remains one of only two events with such a rank.
The accident released large quantities of radioactive material into the atmosphere that settled over Western Russia and Europe. Half a million people were involved in the work to contain the accident and prevent an even worse one, at a cost of approximately 18 billion rubles (Wikipedia). Eventually a 30km exclusion zone was created around the site "in order to evacuate the local population and to prevent people from entering the heavily contaminated territory", though some people refused to leave or returned illegally later.
For more information on the tragedy, you can visit the Wikipedia page here, and there is also a Discovery Channel documentary called "The Battle of Chernobyl".
In Kyiv, there is a museum to remind and educate people about the tragedy.
![[Plaque]](http://img.geocaching.com/cache/3e88e023-b663-4629-af29-2baf7b4a1593.jpg)
![[Memorial]](http://img.geocaching.com/cache/e5d5bb4b-4d53-4ea4-846c-cb2995c10a86.jpg)
![[Display Vehicles]](http://img.geocaching.com/cache/1986fba1-0f87-4d4f-af10-4483e1aebcd9.jpg)
This cache was placed outside the museum on April 26, 2011 - the 25th anniversary of the event. Please be discrete when retrieving the cache, and use the helper pictures to make the find quickly; I was once questioned by police when doing maintenance; they thought I might be hiding drugs. The cache is a black magnetic nano attached to the back of a drain pipe on a building across the street.
![[Tank]](http://img.geocaching.com/cache/ce01894e-173b-49e9-ac16-89af1f7d7061.jpg)