Massive meltdown in a nuclear powerplant in Pripyat? Major international disaster. Was bought to the forefront of news alongside the Fukishima meltdown (which is but a mere scratch compared to Chernobyl). Also featured in top gear recently and CoD4 EDIT: Oh, and the 3rd transformers film
Sums it up pretty well. Here you go. Start watching at a minute to get to the interesting stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YtVV1VJ4f8
Awesome thing about Chernobyl is that you can visit it. Im not sure exactly the price of going there but it looks pretty interesting, id love to go although to be honest i would be scared.
Something cool I found in one of the imgur albums, a moon rover originally intended (but never used) for the soviet space program was used for part of the cleanup operation: These men could only work on that roof for 40 seconds at a time before taking breaks. Mil Mi-26 I already mentioned: There was also this unfortunate accident where a helicopter hit a cable, all hands lost. Also got a documentary vid here:
Radiation levels are still uninhabitable, but low enough now that for large areas of pripyat you can travel around without requiring protective gear, some areas are significantly higher radiation levels still - the tours don't go there. The reactor building itself, lethal still. Prolonged exposure, take a radiation suit.
I saw that crash. I also noticed when paths needed to be cleared they would badly drill led onto tractors. (imported from here)
Why could they only work for 40 seconds at a time? Edit - no worries i found out why "They realized people would have to do this task. The roof was so radioactive that a person could only work for 40-45 seconds before receiving dangerous levels of contamination. They would scrape off a few shovel fulls at a time, then be replaced with other workers. Workers reported that after this 45 seconds they could hardly move: a combination of contamination and the heavy steel suits they wore to counteract the radioactivity as much as possible. They would also vomit afterwards. One worker reported it was like having your blood sucked by a vampire. 3,500 people participated. Most didn't want to, but they knew somebody had to do it. Nobody knew the exact level of radiation at the time."
Radiation, remove the suit (stuffed with as much stuff as they could to eliminate radiation) and it was thought to be lethal with less than a seconds exposure. 40 seconds would be max exposure for total emergency conditions, well well over safe exposure still. Many stayed longer than that even.
