26 April 1986. Chernobyl. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
2008. I went to see.
The plume had drifted over extensive parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and eastern North America resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people, mainly in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.
The Chernobyl Forum, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organization (WHO), attributed 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers, and nine children with thyroid cancer), and estimated that there may be 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people.
