Environmentalists's Blockade Reports

The environmentalists blockade took place on 26th April 2007, the anniversary of the explosive meltdown of the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, near the border with Belarus. Twenty one years ago on that day, a nuclear reaction went out of control whist the safety system was temporarily switched off. Temperatures reached over 2000oC, the fuel rods melted and the graphite covering the reactor ignited. With a violent explosion, the 1000-tonne sealing cap on the reactor was blown off and radioactive fuel and fission products released into the air, contaminating neighbouring towns, through Ukraine and Belarus and spreading across Europe. The explosion released 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.